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+--Forum: After the Bar Closes...
+---Topic: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. started by oldmanintheskydidntdoit


Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Aug. 12 2007,07:23

O'Leary breathlessly announces a new ID film. Obviously all that ID based peer reviewed research leaves them craving a break...


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The film, directed by Nathan Frankowski, features people like Rick Sternberg, Guillermo Gonzalez, and Caroline Crocker, scientists victimized by the Darwin cult. Stein also confronts a number of cultists, including the Smithsonian congregation that drove out Rick Sternberg (and called security on the film crew), as well as Richard Dawkins.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



A "major feature" film defends intelligent design, no less.

O'Leary also notes

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The film has already received endorsements from Michael Medved, Peter Furler (of Newsboys)and J.I.Packer. It is not funded by Discovery Institute but by software entrepreneur Ruloff who lives on Bowen Island in British Columbia, Canada, and a team of supporters.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's come to something when you've got to note that this time your propaganda is not funded by the usual suspects.
Posted by: Louis on Aug. 12 2007,07:40

YAWN.

Wake me for the second reel.

Why didn't they go the whole propaganda hog and ressurect Leni Riefenstahl for the director's chair? After all wasn't she merely a misunderstood and misused propagandist film maker? Shouldn't birds of a misunderstood feather flock together?

Do I win an award for such an early Godwin?

Louis
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Aug. 12 2007,07:46

I think what they don't mention will be more important then what is in the film.

The funding issue for GG for example. He dun't got none....
Posted by: Louis on Aug. 12 2007,08:16

Yes, the accurate reflection of the fact he was denied tenure for failing to bring in the sweet, sweet funding will be replaced by the innaccurate claim that evil Darwinian atheists who hate Jesus materialists hell bent keen on keeping kookery, falsheood, non-science, religious claims and utter drivel The Truth (TM patent pending) which includes Jesus no religious material at all out of science.

Why do these bozos think this shit works?

Louis
Posted by: qetzal on Aug. 12 2007,09:14

Quote (Louis @ Aug. 12 2007,08:16)
Why do these bozos think this shit works?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Probably because it does work among the faithful.
Posted by: Louis on Aug. 12 2007,11:12

Quote (qetzal @ Aug. 12 2007,15:14)
Quote (Louis @ Aug. 12 2007,08:16)
Why do these bozos think this shit works?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Probably because it does work among the faithful.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Damn! I KNEW I'd forgotten some demographic!

Louis

P.S. Sorry I should have made it clear that I was talking about science. You're totally right of course, the faithful love their propaganda.
Posted by: clamboy on Aug. 13 2007,19:41

Ooooh, this waste of time, material, and effort, excuse me, film, has been endorsed by Michael Medved???

Wow. Wowee wow wow.

What a...hmm, "coup" is not the right word, nor is "achievement"...okay, how's this:

"An endorsement from Michael Medved?!? Wow, what a stinking pile of 'So fucking what'."
Posted by: Lou FCD on Aug. 18 2007,14:36

Oh yeah, they've got a summer blockbuster on their hands there.

or not.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Aug. 22 2007,14:41

< Ben Stein Calls for No Censorship; Volunteers; Has Open Comments >

How long will that last?

Remember to copy any pearls you write back here.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 22 2007,14:53

"This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS."

It sounds like philosophy to me Ben, not science. You are perhaps confusing the two. Science is concerned with natural world:

< http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/science >

If God exists then surely it is outside of the physical universe?

Also, I don't thin you understand what 'hypothesis' means. In scientific terms, it doesn't mean belief:

"A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation."

Did they test their hypothesis? Did it become a theory?

People are of course free to believe what they would like. Science is actually evidence based, and ID has none - it is simply an argument from incredulity.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 22 2007,14:55

And the blog says:

"Rich Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation. "


Bwahahahahaha bad creobot tards:
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Aug. 22 2007,15:02

Somebody ought to post a link to the thread here that's all UD bannings...
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 22 2007,15:12

Also see here:

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/bigscienceacademy_expelled.php >

Bono - Prominent scientist.

Einstein - "God does not play dice" quantum mechanics denier. I jest, but I don't think he believed in a personal God:

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in Nature." Albert Einstein

Galileo -
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Church_controversy >
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 22 2007,15:18

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 22 2007,15:02)
Somebody ought to post a link to the thread here that's all UD bannings...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Done:

Here's how the ID community handles censorship / different viewpoints:

< http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....;t=5141 >

Thanks.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Aug. 22 2007,15:30

ooh this is fun.  any advice on how to improve my undercover tard cloaking device?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Can't wait to see the movie.  I'm sure it will blow the socks off those evilutionists who deny the all=mighty purposeful hand of god who has clearly invested a lot of his(her?) time in designing the phalluses of katydids and tinkering with the chimpanzee genome to fool materialists.  

Athiest darwinist materialists have held the pulpit for too long, with their evidence and predictive power.  The tide is turning in churches and homeschooled classrooms across the globe, upholding the observation that all true science is given to us from God and is an exploration of his glory and omnipotence.  Only fools demand evidence to believe something.  

Additionally, with the growing impetus behind Intelligent Design (including a real science journal and lots of internet weblogs that thankfully don't worry about the opposing views to their arguments) soon we can be sure to see some real ID research from the growing number of ID labs in the United States.  All Science So Far!!!

Stifling dissent is unamerican and unchristian.  Intelligent design has nothing to do with religion, there are even atheist pleasurians in the fold.  In short, it is all about the maths.

See here for more about censorship and Darwinism.

[URL=http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=5141
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Rob on Aug. 22 2007,16:13

Ben Stein:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of ?anti-intelligent design? would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him? EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe?EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS? HE WOULD BE BANNED.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Instead of denigrating these employers who fire people for their unspoken thoughts, we should be leveraging their mind-reading powers in more productive ways, like prisoner interrogation, or finding out whether the writers of Lost actually have a story plan.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Aug. 22 2007,16:34

PZ Myers was interviewed, and a segment appears in "Expelled". However, he was < not interviewed for "Expelled" >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Why were they so dishonest about it? If Mathis had said outright that he wants to interview an atheist and outspoken critic of Intelligent Design for a film he was making about how ID is unfairly excluded from academe, I would have said, "bring it on!" We would have had a good, pugnacious argument on tape that directly addresses the claims of his movie, and it would have been a better (at least, more honest and more relevant) sequence. He would have also been more likely to get that good ol' wild-haired, bulgy-eyed furious John Brown of the Godless vision than the usual mild-mannered professor that he did tape. And I probably would have been more aggressive with a plainly stated disagreement between us.

I mean, seriously, not telling one of the sides in a debate about what the subject might be and then leading him around randomly to various topics, with the intent of later editing it down to the parts that just make the points you want, is the video version of quote-mining and is fundamentally dishonest.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: Kristine on Aug. 22 2007,17:13

Quote (clamboy @ Aug. 13 2007,18:41)
Ooooh, this waste of time, material, and effort, excuse me, film, has been endorsed by Michael Medved???

Wow. Wowee wow wow.

What a...hmm, "coup" is not the right word, nor is "achievement"...okay, how's this:

"An endorsement from Michael Medved?!? Wow, what a stinking pile of 'So fucking what'."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Haha. Medved in bed with righter-christers agin. What a stinking pile of "so fucked, what?"

His right-wing fanatic friends behaved like yowling cats in Jerusalem during the New Year's countdown to Y2K. You made your bed (again), Medved. :)
Posted by: "Rev Dr" Lenny Flank on Aug. 22 2007,17:52

Quote (Rob @ Aug. 22 2007,16:13)
Ben Stein: ?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. I
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I certainly do hope, with all sincerity, that this film gets a full and complete showing, in court, the next time some idiotic school board tries to bullshit everyone into accepting some ID "science textbook" because "ID ain't about religion or god, no sirree Bob, and it's just them atheist darwinists and activist judges who think so."

These morons STILL have no clue at all why they keep losing.

Surreal.

I thank God, every single day, that fundies are so utterly completely unalterably irredeemably mind-numbingly jaw-droppingly stupid.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Aug. 22 2007,20:01

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 22 2007,16:18)
 
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 22 2007,15:02)
Somebody ought to post a link to the thread here that's all UD bannings...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Done:

Here's how the ID community handles censorship / different viewpoints:

< http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....;t=5141 >

Thanks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Holy shit.

I visited my creations to find them badly corrupted by the bizarre character set issue that has lately afflicted the board. Search and replace fixed most of the character substitutions (I've learned from Pandas), but this board software does not handle long links well very well (often breaking them into segments such that they are no longer recognized as links) so I was sawing legs of a four-legged table for quite some time (every correction seemed to introduce new errors). They're not completely fixed but I'm gonna leave it alone until the charset issue is corrected.
Posted by: stevestory on Aug. 22 2007,20:06

Quote (Kristine @ Aug. 22 2007,18:13)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


thanks. that made my week.
Posted by: someotherguy on Aug. 22 2007,20:25

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 22 2007,16:34)
PZ Myers was interviewed, and a segment appears in "Expelled". However, he was < not interviewed for "Expelled" >:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Why were they so dishonest about it? If Mathis had said outright that he wants to interview an atheist and outspoken critic of Intelligent Design for a film he was making about how ID is unfairly excluded from academe, I would have said, "bring it on!" We would have had a good, pugnacious argument on tape that directly addresses the claims of his movie, and it would have been a better (at least, more honest and more relevant) sequence. He would have also been more likely to get that good ol' wild-haired, bulgy-eyed furious John Brown of the Godless vision than the usual mild-mannered professor that he did tape. And I probably would have been more aggressive with a plainly stated disagreement between us.

I mean, seriously, not telling one of the sides in a debate about what the subject might be and then leading him around randomly to various topics, with the intent of later editing it down to the parts that just make the points you want, is the video version of quote-mining and is fundamentally dishonest.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Even for creationists, I find this kind of behavior to be somewhat shocking.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 22 2007,21:51

comments are up on his blog...
Lots of science questions from scientists and a few "right-ons" from, erm, engineers?
Posted by: Freelurker on Aug. 23 2007,00:35

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 22 2007,22:51)
comments are up on his blog...
Lots of science questions from scientists and a few "right-ons" from, erm, engineers?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, the "right-ons" are from creationists.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 23 2007,00:37

Quote (Freelurker @ Aug. 23 2007,00:35)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 22 2007,22:51)
comments are up on his blog...
Lots of science questions from scientists and a few "right-ons" from, erm, engineers?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, from creationists.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Same thing!*



*disclaimer. If you're a rational engineer disgruntled at my comment, please keep building safe bridges.
Posted by: Freelurker on Aug. 23 2007,01:28

Richardthughes,

As I've said here before, engineers and scientists are natural allies in this dispute. When the IDist engineers talk about engineering they misrepresent it as much as they misrepresent science. I have pointed this out over at UD several times, with some limited success.

You don't hear more from the mainstream engineers simply because the IDists aren't calling for reforms of engineering. (They conveniently ignore the fact that engineering is at least as materialistic as science is.)

Oh, and F*** you. :angry:
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 23 2007,01:43

Quote (Freelurker @ Aug. 23 2007,01:28)
Richardthughes,

As I've said here before, engineers and scientists are natural allies in this dispute. When the IDist engineers talk about engineering they misrepresent it as much as they misrepresent science. I have pointed this out over at UD several times, with some limited success.

You don't hear more from the mainstream engineers simply because the IDists aren't calling for reforms of engineering. (They conveniently ignore the fact that engineering is at least as materialistic as science is.)

Oh, and F*** you. :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not enough CSI in that for me to decode!

;)


< http://www.puzzlexpress.com/cgi-bin/query.cgi?query=f%3F%3F%3F >

Hoping for "Fund" or "Feed"!!  :p
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Aug. 23 2007,02:51

Mario A. Lopez shows us that ID is more about appearances in the comments


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Hello Mr. Stein,

I am glad to see that you have joined in the battle against the Darwinian Gestapo. The great thing about all of this is that they have already admitted to the ?appearance? of design in nature, and better still, lack the mechanism to account for it.

These are exciting times.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Is that kinda like how ID has the "appearance" of intelligence but it vanishes on closer examination?

And Darwinian Gestapo? Something of an insult to the real people who were tortured by the real Gestapo methinks....
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Aug. 23 2007,08:58

Is that mario lopez from saved by the bell?  He is a genius.





Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Aug. 23 2007,09:28



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Errrm, ID doesn't have anything to do with religion or God.  It has to do with defeating materialism, which is anti-religion and anti-God.  See it doesn't have anything to do with it.  

And it's all science so far!!!  the Explanatory Filter can identify design, except in cases where it doesn't, and your credit card number either has Complex Specified Information in it, or it doesn't.  You just have to ask the right IDist and be prepared for the definition and talking points to change.

And it is completely compatible with evolutionary theory, except in cases where it isn't.  Depends on who you ask in the BIG TENT of Intelligent Design.  Some are young earth creationists (based on the evidence, of course, given in Genesis), some are Old Earth Creationists (based on the evidence, of course, given in Genesis) and some (one) are atheist pleasurian polymaths, and many many many many more (the rest) are just regular old bible-believing plain folks that don't have time to wade through facts and the logical structure of propositions.  Science=Democracy!  All Science So Far!!!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 23 2007,16:03

< http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=577874 >
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 24 2007,11:37

This fella is an engineer:


< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-366 >




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I am a 35 year practicing engineer and work with permutations of these laws daily. I?m glad they are there or I couldn?t do my job!!

1. The second law of thermodynamics and the law of entropy preclude creation without a creator.
2. The laws of probability preclude even one simple protein strand from assembling itself (if 1/10^50 is commonly accepted as the level of absolute impossibility, the odds of a single very small protein assembling itself is in the range of 1/10^150), let alone complex proteins or a DNA chain.
3. The law of irreducible complexity precludes gradual evolution of innumerable living constructions.
4. The law of information is absolute proof of intelligent design. These learned men would scoff at anyone claiming the Encyclopedia Britannica (do they still sell those door-to-door or even publish it any longer or is it all on the web now?) spontaneously assembled itself. However they have no problem believing a strand of DNA, a compilation of precise information that makes the Britannica look like a Dr. Seuss book, just decided to come together one day.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Please, please don't 'engineer' anything that the public might use..
Posted by: J-Dog on Aug. 24 2007,12:36

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 24 2007,11:37)
This fella is an engineer:


< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-366 >


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I am a 35 year practicing engineer and work with permutations of these laws daily. I?m glad they are there or I couldn?t do my job!!

1. The second law of thermodynamics and the law of entropy preclude creation without a creator.
2. The laws of probability preclude even one simple protein strand from assembling itself (if 1/10^50 is commonly accepted as the level of absolute impossibility, the odds of a single very small protein assembling itself is in the range of 1/10^150), let alone complex proteins or a DNA chain.
3. The law of irreducible complexity precludes gradual evolution of innumerable living constructions.
4. The law of information is absolute proof of intelligent design. These learned men would scoff at anyone claiming the Encyclopedia Britannica (do they still sell those door-to-door or even publish it any longer or is it all on the web now?) spontaneously assembled itself. However they have no problem believing a strand of DNA, a compilation of precise information that makes the Britannica look like a Dr. Seuss book, just decided to come together one day.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Please, please don't 'engineer' anything that the public might use..
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From his ramblings, it looks like he is perfectly suited to design bridges like the 35W in MN.

Although I have to admit, at least he didn't bring a banana to his argument...
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Aug. 25 2007,18:38

One wonders why Ben Stein has such concern over IDC advocates variously underwhelming tenure review committees with a whole lot of didn't do squat since hired, trying to force people to like them despite playing shady politics with peer review, or telling students that "There really is not a lot of evidence for evolution," while ignoring the general expulsion of scientific views from the current administration. Whether the issue is public health (epidemiology of AIDS, "abstinence only" sex education, etc.), environmental issues (gutting the Endangered Species Act), or climate change (telling scientists what their results are or just to shut up), these things are manifestly happening and are causing actual damage.

Where's the "Expelled" project for exposing the right's war on science?
Posted by: Nomad on Aug. 25 2007,20:36

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 25 2007,18:38)
Where's the "Expelled" project for exposing the right's war on science?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm sure there's an independent film out there somewhere that deals with the results of two Bush White House terms on the federal science agenda.  I've been seeing things like this showing up on a cable channel, possibly sundance.  There was one on the Patriot Act, there was one on the history of Karl Rove..  I can't recall seeing one specifically about science, but I suspect it's out there.

Truth be told, if anything I think the fundies are behind in the propaganda film business.  Perhaps the bible colleges need to start adding art courses.  They could start up their own independent movie circuit, I'd suggest somewhere in Florida as a good first venue.  Call it something like the Independent Thought Festival, where, of course, every movie would say exactly the same thing, rehashing the same arguments that were debunked decades ago.  It could be a whole new thing for them, supplementing the tedious pseudo-textbooks and occasional lawsuit fiasco.

I suspect Rupert Murdoch might be up for sponsoring something like that.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 26 2007,12:37

JAD shows up:

< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-634 >

Loves it so!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Aug. 26 2007,12:51

Wow, that's the most succinct, least weaselly statement of Javison's barmy views I've ever seen:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
While there is no tangible evidence for a living God, it is unthinkable that one would even dream of denying a past presence for one or more such entities. Yet that is exactly what such compulsive atheists as P.Z. Myers, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins continue so arrogantly to proclaim. Several months ago I managed to introduce on RichardDawkins.net forum the following thread for discussion - God or Gods are dead but must have once existed. During about a week it attracted over 60,000 views after which I was summarily terminated along with my viewing rights to his forum. I achieved a similar honor at ARN and have been banned from all the major forums with the exception of ISCID's brainstorms where I am still allowed to hold forth. While I am a Creationist, I have rejected both the Darwinian and the Christian Fundamentalist camps, which apparently is the primary reason I am anathema to both. I welcome any comments at ?brainstorms, here, or anywhere else. I will probably not respond to anonymous posters. A person who cannot put his name to his words is a coward. The internet teems with such. It should never have been permitted.
A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.
John A. Davison
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



(my boldfacing)

I do wish VMartin (of course his real full name) would tell us whether he agrees that God is dead and that 'there is no tangible evidence for a living God'. :p
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 26 2007,15:04

Slimey Sal links to this in his posts:

< http://media.coralridge.org/customp....ucation >


No religion there, then..
Posted by: Henry J on Aug. 26 2007,18:28

So is Davison like a parahna to both current science and the ID/C movement?

Henry
Posted by: J-Dog on Aug. 26 2007,19:59

Quote (Henry J @ Aug. 26 2007,18:28)
So is Davison like a parahna to both current science and the ID/C movement?

Henry
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


As a matter of fact, Davison is so pathetic he could even be a pirahia to paranhas.
Posted by: Hermagoras on Aug. 26 2007,20:23

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 26 2007,15:04)
Slimey Sal links to this in his posts:

< http://media.coralridge.org/customp....ucation >


No religion there, then..
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


D. James Kennedy (the link Sal provides) is one of the sleaziest, most dangerous figures of the American religious right.  He's not as famous as, say, James Dobson, but his show is viewed by many millions every week, and he knows a lot of DC insiders.  (He's been sidelined with a heart attack for some months, but his show goes on.)
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 27 2007,14:47

New advert in the Tardshoppe window:

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/ >
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 27 2007,22:13

Wes, I think JAD has a man crush:

< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-763 >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
John A. Davison Says:

...It is hard to imagine dumber scientists than Richard Dawkins, Wesley Elsberry and P.Z. Myers, atheists all.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Meeeeeeoooooooow!

Edited so as not to give a forum to the bewildered.
Posted by: Henry J on Aug. 27 2007,22:48

Weren't phlogiston theory (chemistry) and ether theory (physics) mistakes due to insufficient data, rather than hoaxes?

Henry
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Aug. 27 2007,22:55

JAD's just as well-informed about current evolutionary biology as he is about < my personal beliefs >.
Posted by: Nerull on Aug. 28 2007,17:20

< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng...._be.php >

Producer Mark Mathis apparently doesn't have the time to write a real reply to someone interviewed for the movie (PZ) or to Richard Dawkins, apparently.
Posted by: C.J.O'Brien on Aug. 28 2007,18:15

Kennedy was on Fresh Air - the radio interview show. I've never heard Terry Gross actually get rattled before (well, except for by Gene Simmons, but that was a little different).

He is frightening.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Aug. 28 2007,21:40

Quote (C.J.O'Brien @ Aug. 28 2007,19:15)
Kennedy was on Fresh Air - the radio interview show. I've never heard Terry Gross actually get rattled before (well, except for by Gene Simmons, but that was a little different).

He is frightening.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Once he has recovered, let's lock James D. Kennedy and Gene Simmons (in full KISS regalia) in a room for an hour and see what comes out.

(Both do some pretty strange things with their tongues, neither very appealing.)
Posted by: guthrie on Aug. 29 2007,03:57

Quote (Henry J @ Aug. 27 2007,22:48)
Weren't phlogiston theory (chemistry) and ether theory (physics) mistakes due to insufficient data, rather than hoaxes?

Henry
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yup.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 30 2007,14:09

JAD has a rare moment of unintentional clarity:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The internet is specifically designed for insecure blowhards who can?t cut the mustard in the real world!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-902 >

TA comes up with this nugget:




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Tom Aquines Says:

August 30th, 2007 at 10:22 am
If evolution were true, mothers would have three arms.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-902 >
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Aug. 30 2007,15:42

Is anybody saving that thread anywhere?  Certainly by any scientific and philosophical sense, Ben is being slaughtered, while creos and IDiots merely parrot their long-destroyed claims, or far more commonly, whine that we point out their deficiencies in intellect and argumentation.

They're doing a good job at not censoring the discussion at this moment, but I can see how it all might conveniently disappear at some point in the future.

Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Aug. 31 2007,13:23

Wesley suggested on one blog that we archive our posts on Ben Stein's blog here. ?Because I don't trust it all to disappear some time in future, I'm going to take him up on it. ?The last post hadn't been approved at the time I copied it to here:

?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says:

August 24th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Perhaps the most telling reason why ID is not only useless but wrong, is that the evolutionary patterns among the eukaryotes are substantially different from those in the prokaryotes. Notably, we see the appearance much horizontal transfer among the asexual (but conjugating) bacteria and archaea, and almost solely vertical transfer among the sexual (it appears that all asexual eukaryotes had sexual progenitors) eukaryotes, regardless of what level of evolution is considered.

If the Grand Designer were in fact designing through evolution, why does it choose to produce the patterns expected from the differing mechanisms among eukaryotes and prokaryotes? Why virtually no horizontal transfers in the vertebrate lineage, why a difficult-to-sort out pattern of evolution in prokaryotes, due to their rampant promiscuity?

It looks as though known mechanisms might be responsible for the evolution of eukaryotes and the evolution of prokaryotes. It takes quite a designer to so carefully design evolution just as if it were the known and established mechanisms were operating over the course of earth?s history.

That?s what we?re ?censoring,? of course, a ?theory? that has utterly failed to explain anything at all, only claiming that the predictions of modern evolutionary theory ?can fit? with the lack of predictions about their ?designer?. Of course it can, because the IDists haven?t said anything substantial at all.

Why not simply resort to Last Thursdayism or Omphalos creationism? It?s the same reasoning, that all of the predictions of science are meaningless because an undefined and unconstrained designer could make it all look like it?s old, and that Darwinian mechanisms have operated in organisms through all time.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says:

August 24th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I commend Ben Stein for running a blog which allows all comments, presumably within certain reasonable rules of dialog. We?re really not used to this from pro-ID spokespersons.

And I do hope that Ben interviewed Dembski, whose own blog is the opposite of open, having expelled nearly all critics of ID. Indeed, this was done recently in the discussions about this movie on Uncommon Descent, Bill Dembski?s blog. See Dembski expel the inconvenient critic here:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-133745 >

You have to scroll up to see what ?Rocket? had said that ?merited? this censorship.

Meanwhile, Panda?s Thumb and Pharyngula remain open to virtually all comments, except for the truly trollish ones. It is rare that Paul Nelson and Sal Cordova avail themselves (the rest of the DI tribe do not at all, even if Dembski did in the past) of such openness, generally preferring (or so I have to assume) the secret conversations held by highly restricted net groups. I only know about these latter because a former member of one, David Heddle, tired of the limits of discussion enforced by that group, and complained publicly as he was ousted for disagreeing with them. Heddle?s a good source to look up on the web as a critic of ID censorship, who still sympathizes with cosmological ID (probably biological as well, but he doesn?t discuss it much, if ever).

Okay, so forums are open to the IDists, they just don?t use them much. Forums are closed to us (Dembski?s blog kicks us off piecemeal), so that ID doesn?t have to face sound criticisms.

Any chance that Stein will cover these important details, if not in the movie, at least in a future blog?

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says:

August 29th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Again, were Ben concerned over the real freedom issue, he?d be skewering IDists for censoring so many of their blogs. Dembski?s blog is well-known to be censored, and I linked to an example of this in #395.

ARN is the only ID forum I know about which is relatively uncensored. But, as any pro-science poster there knows, writing of the intellectual dishonesty of the IDists who post there is often censored, even though that?s the only remaining issue at stake once all of the ID ?arguments? have been properly answered (and I don?t go there any more because of it).

One of the potentially best places for ID to be discussed, at Behe?s forum on Amazon, has had the comments disabled. Anyone can see this here (at least at the time of this posting):

< http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Ev....&sr=8-1 >

Gee, you?d think that the ?censored IDists? would jump at the chance to provide all of the ?censored evidence? which supposedly is ?prohibited? by the big bad anti-religionists (you know, including the 40% or so of scientists who are religious). But no, Behe hides behind a wall that keeps out all of the questions that he can?t answer (like why the Designer made yet another prediction of evolution come true, malarial parasites doing what evolved organisms do, taking energy and matter in any manner possible, but being limited to derived and modified components to do so), the requests for evidence that he can?t supply.

Indeed, there is a lack of openness and freedom which is worth investigating. It?s being caused by the IDists, who have never been able to compete in a the legitimate evidence-driven discourse of science.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says:

August 29th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I?ve got some waiting time right now, so I figure why not go through most of Ben?s ?points??

?I?m glad you found this site, because I want to share with you my thoughts from time to time here about a subject that is very near and dear to me: freedom.?

Yes, freedom, the right to do meaningful science, and to be tried according to the evidence, not according to religious notions which fail empirical tests.

?EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial, soon-to-be-released documentary that chronicles my confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world?s top scientists, educators, and thinkers.?

I fail to recognize, say, Behe and Dembski as top scientists or thinkers. And indeed, science is open to all, religious and irreligious alike, unlike ID which cannot be done by people who rely only upon empirical evidence.

What is more, the idea that anything is changing is utterly unsupported by any evidence. As far as can be determined, we?re operating according to the same rules utilized by Newton and by Einstein, such as Newton?s ?Rules for Reasoning in Philosophy? (which is what he called his science):

?RULE I.
We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

RULE II.
Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

As to respiration in a man and in a beast; the descent of stones in Europe and in America; the light of our culinary fire and of the sun; the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets.

RULE III.
The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for universal all such as universally agree with experiments; and such as are not liable to diminution can never be quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which uses to be simple, and always consonant to itself. We no other way know the extension of bodies than by our senses, nor do these reach it in all bodies; but because we perceive extension in all that are sensible, therefore we ascribe it universally to all others also. That abundance of bodies are hard, we learn by experience; and because the hardness of the whole arises from the hardness of the parts, we therefore justly infer the hardness of the undivided particles not only of the bodies we feel but of all others. That all bodies are impenetrable, we gather not from reason, but from sensation. The bodies which we handle we find impenetrable, and thence conclude impenetrability to be an universal property of all bodies whatsoever. That all bodies are moveable, and endowed with certain powers (which we call the vires inerti?) of persevering in their motion, or in their rest we only infer from the like properties observed in the bodies which we have seen. The extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and vis inerti? of the whole, result from the extension hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and vires inerti? of the parts; and thence we conclude the least particles of all bodies to be also all extended, and hard and impenetrable, and moveable, and endowed with their proper vires inerti?. And this is the foundation of all philosophy. Moreover, that the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another, is matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated. But whether the parts so distinguished, and not yet divided, may, by the powers of Nature, be actually divided and separated from one another, we cannot certainly determine. Yet, had we the proof of but one experiment that any undivided particle, in breaking a hard and solid body, offered a division, we might by virtue of this rule conclude that the undivided as well as the divided particles may be divided and actually separated to infinity.

Lastly, if it universally appears, by experiments and astronomical observations, that all bodies about the earth gravitate towards the earth, and that in proportion to the quantity of matter which they severally contain, that the moon likewise, according to the quantity of its matter, gravitates towards the earth; that, on the other hand, our sea gravitates towards the moon; and all the planets mutually one towards another; and the comets in like manner towards the sun; we must, in consequence of this rule, universally allow that all bodies whatsoever are endowed with a principle of mutual gravitation. For the argument from the appearances concludes with more force for the universal gravitation of all bodies that for their impenetrability; of which, among those in the celestial regions, we have no experiments, nor any manner of observation. Not that I affirm gravity to be essential to bodies: by their vis insita I mean nothing but their vis inerti?. This is immutable. Their gravity is diminished as they recede from the earth.

RULE IV.
In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from ph?nomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other ph?nomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.

This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.

< http://members.tripod.com/~gravitee/rules.htm >

Tell me how we deviate from those rules, then I might start listening to your complaints.

?Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given.?

I?ll take that as metaphorically true. As such, why would anyone wish to take away our freedom by imposing ID into education and science, when it cannot withstand the scrutiny of science?

?A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry.?

Absolutely, and Galileo was persecuted for inquiry. IDists wish also to impose a ?science? which cannot be engaged in by impassionate seekers of empirical knowledge.

?Freedom of inquiry is basic to human advancement. There would be no modern medicine?

Right, and modern medicine has been predicated in part in evolutionary theory, in order to interpret results from animal experiments, and to tweak medicines and trials for humans. IDists threaten modern medicine, particularly as it is increasingly reliant upon comparisons of our genome with the genomes of related organisms (and the only sensible interpretation is that undirected evolution is responsible for changes in genomes).

?no antibiotics?

Quite. Antibiotics work against bacteria and are relatively harmless to humans and related organisms. This fits in with the predictions of non-teleological evolution, while ID has no basis for any sort of predictions, not as formulated by present IDists (though they claim to predict function for junk DNA, while contradictorily claiming that vestigial organs fit in with ID?vestigial organs essentially are the result of a kind of junk DNA).

?no brain surgery, no Internet?

Right, brain surgery and the internet come from classical science which effectively adheres to causal mechanisms. Unlike ID.

?no air conditioning, no modern travel, no highways?

Oh, so science has been good to us. Then why bring unevidenced charges against it, as you do?

?no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.?

Absolutely. Science has had great success, while ID tells us that we ought to resort to pre-scientific assumptions which have never proved their worth.

?This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates.?

Completely allowed. ?Naturalism? is only a convenience for theists, who wished to put their God beyond the realm of observation. Science itself cannot exclude God from possible inquiry, it?s just that nobody has ever found a way to observe God or God?s doings in the cosmos.

?This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.?

OK, then what?s your complaint?

?Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.?

True for Galileo and Newton, not true of Einstein. Einstein?s ?God? was at most ?Deus sive Natura,? Spinoza?s conflation of nature and divinity which could never propose a ?designer God? or any such epistemological horror.

?Operating under that hypothesis, they discovered the most important laws of motion, gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, and even economics.?

Good grief, you really don?t know anything about them, do you? Thermodynamics was developed by other people, especially by Lord Kelvin (another theist, btw). And none of us fault Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Lord Kelvin (though Kelvin?s theology interfered with certain of his claims), for they did exactly the kind of science that modern scientists do today. Indeed, anyone who reads Darwin may recognize how he is trying to bring biology into the same sort of scientific regime in which Newton operated, the cause-and-effect analysis of the data.

?Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.?

You should be sorry to say it, because it isn?t true. IDists mean to suppress inquiry, but so far have been thwarted in their attempts.

?Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator.?

No evidence or argumentation is brought forth to back up this banal claim. Indeed, Nature wrote an editorial praising Francis Collins? efforts to bridge the science/religion divide, which they suppose he is able to do precisely because he finds science to be compatible with God and Xianity (if hardly all forms of Xianity).

?Do you realize that some of the leading lights of ?anti-intelligent design? would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him? EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe??

No, I didn?t know that, though it could be true. Even if it is true, it hardly backs up your charges against science as a whole.

?EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS? HE WOULD BE BANNED.?

What do you mean ?banned?? I?m sure that all kinds of factors prevent scientists from working together, many much more trivial than religion. It hardly troubles me that some scientists would not like working with certain theists, nor that certain theists would not like working with certain atheists (PZ comes to mind as a possibility).

?In today?s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.?

There is almost certainly no reason to think that today?s America differs substantially from the one that welcomed Einstein with open arms rather than sending him back to Nazi Germany. Einstein would be showered with grants and opportunities, were he alive today, and I?ll bet that even you know it.

Newton could run into trouble if he espoused alchemy, a pseudoscience like ID (though almost certainly more scientific than the latter, able to give rise to aspects of chemistry). That said, Newton could almost certainly be more open about his religious ideas than he was able to be in England in the 17th century.

And it?s laughable to see the religion-persecuted Galileo brought up by the pro-pseudoscience spokespeople as if he?d be troubled by the scientists of today. Galileo is substantially responsible for modern science, something that Heidegger points out with some disapproval (why don?t we try to force Heidegger?s perspective into the sciences along with ID? At least it?s not the result of religious dogma, no matter that it?s still tendentious nonsense).

?They cannot even mention the possibility that?as Newton or Galileo believed?these laws were created by God or a higher being.?

Of course they can, and some do. It behooves Stein to learn a little bit about science and how it is done.

?They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off.?

Unlikely, though I suppose it?s within the realm of possibilities (there are the prejudiced and the idiotic in science, just as anywhere).

?This can happen.?

Anything can happen. It remains for IDists to bring up evidence for any of their claims, for they haven?t produced sufficient evidence for their non-trivial charges and claims thus far.

?It has happened.?

I?d like to see the evidence. Not Sternberg, who appears to have shepherded junk science through the process meant to weed it out.

?EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed comes to theaters near you in February 2008. To learn more, check out my blog here often ? and explore the rest of our site for new developments, or to volunteer to help spread the word.?

You have not made a compelling case for anyone to ?learn? anything else from you. Just a bunch of claims made without evidence, claims that have been exhaustively answered on science blogs like Pharyngula and Panda?s Thumb, while the ID blogs remain mostly impervious to open discussion.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says:

August 29th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
I?m still waiting for the ?censored evidence? that could answer the post I made a few days back. Here it again is for all of those who are just waiting to provide the evidence of ID:

?Glen Davidson Says:

August 24th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Perhaps the most telling reason why ID is not only useless but wrong, is that the evolutionary patterns among the eukaryotes are substantially different from those in the prokaryotes. Notably, we see the appearance much horizontal transfer among the asexual (but conjugating) bacteria and archaea, and almost solely vertical transfer among the sexual (it appears that all asexual eukaryotes had sexual progenitors) eukaryotes, regardless of what level of evolution is considered.

If the Grand Designer were in fact designing through evolution, why does it choose to produce the patterns expected from the differing mechanisms among eukaryotes and prokaryotes? Why virtually no horizontal transfers in the vertebrate lineage, why a difficult-to-sort out pattern of evolution in prokaryotes, due to their rampant promiscuity?

It looks as though known mechanisms might be responsible for the evolution of eukaryotes and the evolution of prokaryotes. It takes quite a designer to so carefully design evolution just as if it were the known and established mechanisms were operating over the course of earth?s history.

That?s what we?re ?censoring,? of course, a ?theory? that has utterly failed to explain anything at all, only claiming that the predictions of modern evolutionary theory ?can fit? with the lack of predictions about their ?designer?. Of course it can, because the IDists haven?t said anything substantial at all.

Why not simply resort to Last Thursdayism or Omphalos creationism? It?s the same reasoning, that all of the predictions of science are meaningless because an undefined and unconstrained designer could make it all look like it?s old, and that Darwinian mechanisms have operated in organisms through all time.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7? >

Now come on, on Panda?s Thumb I asked Paul Nelson to provide the answer, and he simply disappeared. I asked here, and all I got was someone who asked me what I actually know about evolution, when that post mentions several things that I know about evolution (I?ve never run into an IDist who could answer my questions forthrightly, which is surely evidence of something). Stein claims that ID is being stifled, when all I can see is a bunch of IDists who can?t answer reasonable questions.

Somehow I expect that nothing has changed in the past few days.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And the one not yet posted as of this time:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

August 31st, 2007 at 12:51 pm
I?d guess the reason Ferris Bueller took the day off is that he?d already learned all that Ben Stein had to teach him: The answer to everything is, ?God did it?.

On the other hand, why wouldn?t Ben be expelled from a good school if the only answer he could give to every question (yes, I know, IDists implausibly accept science outside of biology, but they?re inconsistent when they demand that evidence actually be used to back up charges against them, rather than vague (and typically wrong) analogies) was ?God did it?? There?s actually more to investigation and learning than resorting to Behe?s puff of smoke every time the questions get hard.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And one more added in edit, on 9-1-07



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

September 1st, 2007 at 11:35 pm
By the way, I know that the pro-IDists, pro-creationists try to do what every conspiracy-theory monger does, which is to whine pitifully that we label nonsense as nonsense, and to shout ?conspiracy? instead of answering the questions.

It?s very thin gruel, and it won?t wash with anybody who understands what goes into making science. The very fact that such a sad little conspiracy theory is the best Stein and the producers is the best that they can do shows just how badly ID has failed in its stated goal of actually convincing scientists that magic (they didn?t call it magic, true, but they never demonstrated that it was anything else) is science.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Added 9-5-07



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Let's set the scenario.  The times have changed, and it is the new improved future when the requirement of evidence for "doing science" and convicting criminals has at last been overturned.  ID thus reigns supreme, and the evidence of relatedness means nothing any more.

Now DNA means nothing in the courts.  Why should it?  God may very well have intervened to make a person's DNA fit with the DNA retrieved from the crime scene, or God may have changed the DNA from the crime scene to fit your DNA.  Are you trying to tell me that God couldn't do this?  That's exactly what IDists tell the "Darwinists" when the latter point to DNA evidence that agrees with non-teleological evolutionary predictions.

The Bulgarian medical personel are sent back to Lybia to be killed.  After all, it required phylogenetic evidence to show that they didn't infect the Lybian children with HIV.  And the IDists tell us that God intervenes in evolutionary processes, hence such evidence is worthless, now that ID is no longer "censored" by gov't and educational institutions.

Guys are happier now, because mere DNA evidence indicates nothing to the courts.  After all, if apparent DNA relatedness doesn't show that we're related to chimpanzees, why should DNA relatedness tell us anything about paternity?  God might have intervened in evolution, and who can tell God that he can't design in a way that makes it appear that the baby is related to one who is not the father?

And I am much happier, now that the computers which disappeared out of the warehouse and appeared in my basement cannot be traced either by serial number, nor to me.  Good grief, do you really think that God couldn't have changed the serial numbers, or even if God didn't do that, that God couldn't have rewarded me with the gift of all of those computers?  You don't know that they're either the same computers or that I actually took the computers, since God might have intervened (I never really had the computers, you know, it's an example).  After all, isn't this the sort of scientific explanation that is being "censored" by the evilutionists?

But I cheated a bit on that last one.  How?  Because a burglary has all of the marks of design.  That is to say, it is not irrational to say that God, the Designer, aliens, or leprachauns might have picked the locks, jammed the burglar alarms, and moved the computers from one place to another.  There is no good solid evidence for it, which means that in the ancient and dark past when evidence was required, nobody would believe me that God or space aliens put the computers in my basement.  But it isn't actually irrational to say that something that is designed, like a burglary, could have been done by a hypothetical rational agent like God or space aliens.  

Biology is different, and was recognized as different at least as far back as Aristotle.  Biology was physis to the ancient Greeks, while machines were made by techne.  This is why machines are made rationally, with straight lines, foresight, teleology, and according to the numbers, while plants and animals are quite something else, "physis" or nature.  Plants and animals do not have a purpose as such, nor are they at all designed as humans would design them, with "poor designs", and by adapting rather unlikely organs to serve new functions, such as taking legs and making wings out of them.

The descent of the testicles is hardly design, it is adaptation from what previously existed, abdominal testicles, and their descent leaves weak spots in the abdominal walls (the doctor says, "now cough").  The primate foveas and bird pectens partially get around the poor "design" of the eye which put blood vessels right in front of the light-sensing retinas, but these are only ways of dealing with inherited problems expected in evolution and easily avoided by intelligent designers.

Back to wings.  Think about it:  three different types of vertebrates evolved wings, and none of the earlier wings were used in order to make the later wings, nor were any designed from scratch.  Now the best designs would be from first principles, but humans might very well take wings from one example and adapt them to fit another purpose (as indeed the Wright brothers did).  What a sensible designer would never do would be to take legs and change them in order to make wings out of them.  It's just a ridiculous way of designing wings.

Pterosaurs had the first known vertebrate wings.  From what were they "designed"?  From thecodont legs.  What does evolutionary theory predict (in context) would give rise to pterosaur wings?  Thecodont legs.  By what sort of thinking would anyone expect a designer to make pterosaur wings out of thecodont legs?

The next wings were better, bird wings.  So were bird wings an improved version of pterosaur wings?  Why no, bird wings were made from dinosaur legs and dinosaur feathers.  What would evolutionary theory predict?  That bird wings would be made from dinosaur legs, and likely would utilize feathers, since they already existed and produce superb airfoils.  What would honest design principles predict?  Either wings from first principles, or at least from other wings.  Bird wings came from legs, hardly promising material, but the only organs available to evolve into wings.

At least bird wings were an improvement, however odd the route of "design" chosen by this exceeding odd "designer" that the IDists give to us.

Bat wings were a step back, however, because as evolution predicts, they were produced from an unlikely source, mammalian legs and no feathers.  The "designer" only copies legs to make vertebrate wings, not copying excellent vertebrate wings as one might expect of an actual thinking entity.  Indeed, bats sleep upside down in part because they are not as good fliers as birds are, and can gain airspeed by dropping down from their roosting positions to partly compensate for their poorer flying ability during takeoff.

Then there's the odd fact that design took four billion years or so, around the time expected for non-teleological evolution, rather than the at most a few years expected from known designers.  Funny that, everything comes out like non-teleological evolution predicts, and the scientists complain when Behe tells us that we should understand it all to have been designed.  The "designer" steps in to produce what non-teleological evolution would produce, but can't according to Behe's numbers?  Um, I'm sort of thinking, why?

However, this is Ben's dream world, in which evidence no longer counts for anything.  No more "censorship" by the evidence, every notion is the equal of another and should be taught as equals.  Don't teach the scientific method in biology, it's unfair to those who prefer theological claims to evidence-based claims.  This is the post-modern world of Michel Foucault, where the mere fact that Ben has to use a blog to say what he does, instead of having his theology taught in the schools, now counts as "censorship".  

And as so many bleat on this thread, surely the fact that we protest only demonstrates our censorious nature.  Yes, fighting to preserve the Enlightenment and the only bases we have for law, justice, science, and technological advancement, only indicates prejudice and bigotry.  Sure, but that's just us, we are not schooled in the ways of understanding preconceived theologies as superior to the ideas that gave us democracy and science.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



There, it's saved from the possibility of future religious suppression of my (and to a considerable degree, our) ideas.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Sep. 01 2007,02:16

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 27 2007,14:47)
New advert in the Tardshoppe window:

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/ >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha Ha Ha!

Look at the screen dumps of the questions.  In the first, it's cut off at the right.  The second is for question 77, and it's not cut off, so we can see most of one of the potential answers.  We can also therefore see the current score - 22%.

Bob
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Sep. 01 2007,12:47

Quote (Bob O'H @ Sep. 01 2007,02:16)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 27 2007,14:47)
New advert in the Tardshoppe window:

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/ >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha Ha Ha!

Look at the screen dumps of the questions.  In the first, it's cut off at the right.  The second is for question 77, and it's not cut off, so we can see most of one of the potential answers.  We can also therefore see the current score - 22%.

Bob
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's just too good not to repost.And it might get "edited" :)< http://www.evolutionnews.org > gets 22%

Rehosted.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Sep. 01 2007,19:58

Meanwhile, Ben Stein is doing a < fine > job creating < buzz > for Expelled...
Posted by: Jim_Wynne on Sep. 02 2007,15:48

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Sep. 01 2007,12:47)
Quote (Bob O'H @ Sep. 01 2007,02:16)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 27 2007,14:47)
New advert in the Tardshoppe window:

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/ >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha Ha Ha!

Look at the screen dumps of the questions.  In the first, it's cut off at the right.  The second is for question 77, and it's not cut off, so we can see most of one of the potential answers.  We can also therefore see the current score - 22%.

Bob
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's just too good not to repost.And it might get "edited" :)< http://www.evolutionnews.org > gets 22%

Rehosted.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From the "Physician, Heal Thyself" department:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In 1970 an estimated 65,000 black rhino could be found throughout sub-Saharan Africa, despite widespread poaching that targeted the animal for its ivory tusk...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 05 2007,16:00

Ben Stein manages what many have tried:

< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-1042 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
John A. Davison Says:

September 5th, 2007 at 6:41 am
I am obviously wasting my tme here. Adios.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Rob on Sep. 05 2007,17:43

Quote (Richardthughes @ Sep. 05 2007,16:00)
Ben Stein manages what many have tried:

< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-1042 >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
John A. Davison Says:

September 5th, 2007 at 6:41 am
I am obviously wasting my tme here. Adios.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Getting JAD to growl good-bye and head for the door in a huff is pretty easy.  Getting him to actually leave is another story.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Sep. 06 2007,02:50

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Aug. 28 2007,21:40)
 
Quote (C.J.O'Brien @ Aug. 28 2007,19:15)
Kennedy was on Fresh Air - the radio interview show. I've never heard Terry Gross actually get rattled before (well, except for by Gene Simmons, but that was a little different).

He is frightening.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Once he has recovered, let's lock James D. Kennedy and Gene Simmons (in full KISS regalia) in a room for an hour and see what comes out.

(Both do some pretty strange things with their tongues, neither very appealing.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Whoops.  Too late. >
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 06 2007,13:19

Just recording my (not posted at this time) response to Luskin on Stein's blog, in case they decide to censor them in the future:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Listing some pro-ID Rebuttal links?--

Yes, of course.  Why don't you answer the questions, particularly the ones asked of your DI propaganda?  You know very well that virtually everything the DI has put out has been answered, usually without the DI addressing the points made by those who responded.  Instead we get the same droning nonsense over and over again.

Why don't you answer the questions I raised in post #389 and in #1031?  I know why, it's because you have no good answers to them.

I'll link to a few of the responses made to the ID propaganda.

--This is a fascinating and incredibly long discussion, but I?m glad to see the interest that is being sparked by this movie. Some Darwinists try to pretend that ID proponents imagine the discrimination that in many cases has actively harmed their careers,--

Of course we don't deny that unevidenced religious bias presented as "science" isn't largely rejected by academia.  What we do deny is that it is anything that shouldn't be done, as astrologists, homeopathists, and alchemists are also rejected (well, usually).

--but I suspect it will be difficult to make such claims with a straight face after this movie comes out.--

Quit changing the subject.  The issue is the false claim that ID is being "censored", as Ben claims, which it is so very clearly not, as Casey's list of links shows.  That it isn't accepted by academia in lieu of its miserable showings on the evidentiary front, and its attempts to change science so that "it looks designed" counts as evidence, is only to the credit of academia (which is hardly perfect, certainly).

--Thanks to Ben Stein and others behind this movie for being willing to stand up for the persecuted minority:--

We're waiting for evidence of the "persecuted minority".  Not that the lack of evidence stops IDists from making outrageous claims.

--they will be viciously attacked for making this movie, as they already are being attacked.--

Yes, we are so mean for calling ID on all of its false claims, and Ben's unsupported charges.

--They should be commended for standing up for those whose voices are often silenced, even if that means they themselves become attacked for making the film.--

Why aren't you standing up for genuinely ignored science, instead of for long-falsified claims, and subsequent non-predictive claims which avoid falsification by denying the obvious predictions which an honest ID theory would make?

--Regarding this thread: internet Darwinists often think that by throwing up links to websites like TalkOrigins that they can win an argument. I?ve surveyed many of the links repeatedly posted on this list by such internet Darwinists and unfortunately there have been few posts to some of the many rebuttals to these arguments.--

They're rebuttals, not actual answers.

--I only have time for one post on this thread, but I?m going to post some pro-ID rebuttals to many of the links Darwinists have posted in this discussion:--

And why didn't you post the rebuttals to the DI's sorry nonsense?  You know very well that, quite unlike the charges of "censorship" suggest, that you have been amply answered.  And most importantly, your "rebuttals" are largely attacks on "Darwinism", not at all evidence for your theological intrusions into science.

1. A few Darwinists have posted a link to the TalkOrigins Common Descent FAQ at < http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ > But there is a direct and comprehensive rebuttal to that FAQ at:

A Critique of Douglas Theobald?s ?29 Evidences for Macroevolution?
< http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1a.asp >  --

It is not direct, nor comprehensive.  It's an attempt to nickel and dime the real predictions of evolution to death, without addressing the real predictions made by evolutionary theory.  Unfortunately, the "29 Evidences" could have been written more carefully (for there is no inherent prediction that all life should be related, and for other reasons), however it does get to the gist of evolutionary prediction, while the "response" merely cavils on minor aspects and mistakes by the "29 Evidences" authors.  I can hardly respond to the entire piece, but here's an example I picked up at the very beginning:

--Unless one inserts an additional premise imposing a limit on the degree to which descendants can vary (which would require specification of a mechanism of descent), the claim of common ancestry does not require that all of the descendants share one or more traits.  There is no logical reason why completely novel organisms could not arise in one or more lineages.--

Of course there is no logical reason why completely novel organisms could not arise in one or more lineages (which would be something like abiogenesis, only of too-complex organisms), it's because of what we've learned about evolutionary mechanisms that insists that this cannot happen.  The author is trying to make a point that is entirely specious in the overall theory of evolution, which is based upon many limiting factors.  Thus his argument here is entirely bogus, except as a cheap debating tactic.

Here's a really quite good response to some of the above link's many claims, one that I think is really a better source than "29 Evidences" ever was:

< http://www.botany.wisc.edu/courses....nes.ppt >

Note in particular how it mentions how desert grasses have the same photosynthetic machinery as do grasses in cool moist areas do, NOT the better photosynthetic mechanisms of cacti.  One would predict this from known evolutionary mechanisms (or at least, that whatever desert grasses have would not be the same as those of cacti, and that convergent evolution would be evident from any recent evolutionary convergences), and one would naturally predict a designer to design desert grasses for their environments, not to mimic grasses in cool wet regions (IDists don't predict this, solely because they'd be immediately falsified).

And here's another link that covers only one aspect of where Casey's linked site goes so very wrong:

< http://wiki.cotch.net/index.p....uscles_ >

--Many of the individuals arguments made in the TalkOrigins Common Descent FAQ are rebutted in other locations, such as these links:

Fossils:

Punctuated Equilibrium and Patterns from the Fossil Record
< http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1232 >  --

As usual, Casey only attacks evolutionary theory, he doesn't support design or creation at all.  Furthermore, he's faulting evolution over punctuated equilibrium, when the real proponents of punctuated equilibrium recognize the familiar evidences of non-teleological evolution to be compelling.  Casey writes:

--Another study, "Evolutionary Explosions and the Phylogenetic Fuse," found a bird (as well as a mammal) "Early Tertiary 'explosion'" because many bird and mammal groups appear in a short time period lacking immediately recognizable ancestral forms.--

This appears to be a deliberate, or very ignorant, confusion of what is meant by "explosion" in those contexts.  Not even the "Cambrian Explosion" is as Casey characterizes it, but I'll concede that it's still an issue, no matter that evolution during the Cambrian is evident and chordates do not appear at the beginning.  Birds and mammals do radiate rapidly at times, particularly after the Cretaceous, but that's all we see, rapid evolution.  We do not see novelty appearing, as one might expect from ID.

--34 Finally, others have called the origin of our own genus Homo, "a genetic revolution"35 where "no australopithecine [ape] species is obviously transitional"35 leading one commentator to call it, like others called the Cambrian Explosion, a "big bang theory" of human evolution.--

Again the twisting of what is meant by "explosion" there.  Certainly the evolution of H. sapiens from H. erectus is well accepted by scientists, and australopithecines have no obvious reason to exist at all except as part of a hominin adaptive radiation, whether or not any are our direct ancestor.  Indeed, why do IDists suppose that australopithecines, were "designed", only to go extinct?  It's an answer that Casey, like the others, never gives to us.

--36 While these papers appeal to adapative radiation, niche-filling, and "genetic revolutions" as the mechanisms for these explosions, the pattern of rapid appearance of diverse morphologies without transitions remains an important pattern in the fossil record.

Conclusion:
Out of thousands of species in the fossil record, only a few are claimed to be transitional forms. This lack of transitional forms poses, as Darwin said, "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against [evolutionary] theory."1 And, at least to this point, it appears to be an objection that is unsolved by evolutionists. --

Casey seems not even to know what punctuated equilibrium is meant to answer, which is the problem of speciation.  There are in fact very many transitionals identified in the fossil record (he's just wrong about that), and all vertebrate classes have at least one intermediate form extant in the fossil record.

As far as Casey's quote mining of Darwin goes, Darwin went on from the "gravest objection" to give a number of possible reasons why intermediates to the species were not found (as it was at that time, not at the present).  

More importantly, Casey has utterly failed to explain why transitional fossils like Archaeopteryx are in fact "poorly designed" compared to modern birds, just as non-teleological evolutionary theory predicts (that's the short version of how we even know that they are transitional), and ID would not.

--Human Origins and Intelligent Design
< http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1146 >  --

Here's a link that partly addresses Casey's claims in the above link:

< http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/meet_selam.html >

--The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories < http://www.discovery.org/scripts....Science >  --

Answered here:  
< http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/08/meyers_hopeless_1.html >


Junk-DNA:
--Intelligent Design and the Death of the ?Junk-DNA? Neo-Darwinian Paradigm
< http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1437 >  --

Such "ignorant yammerings" (as Matzke calls them in the link) are routed here:

< http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/06/junk_dna_junk_s.html >

--Design vs. Descent: A Contest of Predictions
< http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/846 >  --

A short, pithy response to such meandering nonsense is found here:

< http://www.pandasthumb.org/archive....t-95724 >

And frankly, that's enough.  For anyone with an honest desire to learn, those alone answer so much of what IDists claim, and show up how pathetic their little apologetics pieces actually are.  More importantly, I've shown by finding responses to almost every one of Casey's links on the web that the responses are out there, so that anyone can find them.  Casey just doesn't acknowledged that, far from being censored, ID has been exposed for the sham that it is, and IDists simply link the same quote mining and worthless argumentation no matter how many times they have been answered.  

And I repeat that virtually everything written by the DI and Casey merely attacks current science, it rarely even purports to produce any evidence for ID, and never comes close to presenting any legitimate evidence that organisms have been designed.  Indeed, if they had that, they'd have answered the two posts that I pointed out have gone begging for answers from the IDists, post #389 and post #1031.  They have no answers, so that even if #1031 was posted after Casey had written the comment that I have responded to here, it's safe to say that it hasn't been answered properly and won't be merely because IDists have no answers, not because of any "censorship".

I'll only respond further to Casey's closing paragraph:

--I do not have time to make any further posts on this blog thread--


And still you've written dozens, if not more, posts on the internet which have failed to give any evidence for ID.  I'd think you could answer our questions, if you had any answers to our questions.

--but I hope that some of these links are helpful to you all in your discussions.--

They are not.  I posted several which are helpful, and which are generally written by actual scientists, not lawyers like Luskin (he does have degrees in earth science, reportedly, not, however, in biology).

--Thanks and I hope all will do their best to keep the discussion here friendly and civil!--

Yes, IDists always want us to "be civil" as they attack science with the most worthless bilge, quote mines, and frequent false claims.  We have answered them, they continue to avoid telling us how ID can account for different patterns of evolution in prokaryotes vs. those in eukaryotes, and why vertebrate wings are modifications of legs, not designs from first principles or even modifications of good wings (posts #389 & #1031 respectively).  Furthermore, they almost always do nothing but attack science, while refusing to make even the obvious design predictions expected (because they know that they'd fail), and never providing any evidence of rational thought behind the "designs" of organisms.  Rational thought is more than a little evident in nearly all of human creations, and would be expected from alien designs as well (if aliens do not produce rational signals and tools, we likely could never detect their designs).  It's God (or "the designer") alone which is supposed to design without anything actually appearing to be designed, or to be techne, as the Greeks called it.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on Sep. 06 2007,13:20

Good post Glen
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 07 2007,14:31

Thanks, J-Dog.

I don't know why posts aren't appearing in any timely fashion, but it makes me more certain that I ought to save my posts here.  I wrote another one today, which at least is supposed to be awaiting moderation.  It goes thusly:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'm going to try to post, though it doesn't seem that posts are going through now.

Here's Kevin Miller, one of the writers of "Expelled":

--When I say ID is friendly to belief in God in a way that classical Darwinism is not, what I mean is Darwinism literally has no need for the God hypothesis. According to Darwinists like Richard Dawkins, everything can be explained purely by natural forces--including the origin of information, consciousness, and life itself. If you want to bring God into the picture, that is a belief that you are adding to science. It is not required by the science itself, and many Neo-Darwinists believe it gets in the way of science. ID, on the other hand, suggests that rather than something tacked onto one's interpretation of science, God--or whoever you believe to be the Intelligent Designer--is literally at the heart of nature itself, as expressed through information like the genetic code. Therefore, the search for potential signs of intelligence in nature becomes a legitimate scientific enterprise rather than a pseudo-scientific one. IDers are essentially asking the same question as the Darwinists: How did the information get there? What separates them from the Darwinists is that they are willing to consider intelligence as one possible cause. This is not to deny the power of mechanisms like random mutation and natural selection. All the IDers are saying is that such forces are simply inadequate to explain the origin and development of life. Once again, it is not just the IDers who are questioning this. There is huge debate amongst the Darwinists themselves as to which mechanisms are most important and at what level (group, individual, molecular) they operate.--

< http://ArtsAndFaith.com/index.p....=156729 >

This tells us all that we need to know about both ID and about the movie.  What Miller doesn't know is that science doesn't presuppose entities like God or the wink-wink nudge-nudge "Designer", it looks for the best hypothesis.  He is trying to tell us that ID is science because it has decided already that God (or "the Designer") is at the heart of nature, so instead of simply searching for the best explanation, ID searches for "potential signs of intelligence in nature".  

That is not science, that's apologetics.  This is what Stein is accusing "Big Science" of suppressing, which of course it is suppressing in the realm of science, for the very good reason that insinuating religious presuppositions about God's role in nature into science is a perversion of the search for explanations in which science engages.  It is exactly the kind of perverse injection of religion into science that Galileo opposed, and for which he was persecuted.  I guess Stein and the rest just want to bring back the good old days of harming those who won't accept religion as the adjudicator of science.

Miller is admitting that his religious presuppositions are what drive ID and the whine in the movie, and, for anyone who believes in the integrity of science, he provides the clinching case against both ID and the movie's false charges of suppression (that is, I don't deny its suppression in science, I deny that there is anything illegitimate about keeping pseudoscience out of science).

It should (but doesn't) go without saying that scientists are not unwilling to consider that intelligence could play a role in the development of life.  The fact that there is no evidence for this intelligence in evolutionary processes is why the null hypothesis (that intelligence is not involved, save through modern human manipulations) is the working hypothesis in science, and will be up until the point where evidence of intelligence guiding evolution is produced by someone (it is unlikely that IDists could produce such evidence, even were it to exist, for they do almost no science--indicative of how little even they think of ID as actual science).  It is grossly unfair to claim that we won't consider intelligence, since we do in any number of cases, and our complaint against ID is that it merely assumes intelligence without any evidence, a fact that Miller tacitly concedes in the excerpt above.

ID is nothing but religious apologetics, a fact that many IDists deny, but one that Miller and Stein's movie only demonstrate is the case.  Science doesn't simply assume that God is directing hurricanes and earthquakes to cause death and destruction to humanity, nor does it simply assume that God designed malarial parasites to effectively sicken and kill humans like Behe suggests that he did.  

Science looks at the evidence, and sees that malaria organisms (Plasmodium falciparum) show evidence of having non-teleologically evolved, both in the manner of its uncaring attacks on humans and in its genomic information, and thus it accepts that it evolved non-teleologically under the present evidence.  Miller and the other IDists have to assume that malaria was designed, then they have to insist that undesign-like features, such as its genome evolved along the constraints predicted by evolutionary theory, are, contrary to all expectations, the result of design.  

This they do because from the start they assumed that God was central to the development of life, which they do not similarly assume for the development of hurricanes.  Why do they suppose that we ought to accept the one assumption without any evidence, while not accepting the other one, due to its lack of evidence?

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This post added on 9-9-07

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Glenn Davidson:

I must respecfully challenge your contention that creation science and intelligent design are equivalent.--

Considering that I never made that contention here, I have no idea why you're trying to pin me with it.  The fact is that one may treat the various types of creationism differently, or one may treat them as the same, much as IDists do whenever it is convenient for them to do so.

As Deleuze notes, repetition involves difference.  That's why I usually speak of IDists and creationists if I'm discussing both, no matter how similar the two are.  That some will always include a "C" with ID is also understandable (that is, they write "IDC" rather than "ID"), as in "Intelligent Design Creationism".  It hardly matters, of course, whether one drags out creation over 4 billion years or so, the essence is still creation.  It's an absurd concept that "design" would require as long a time as non-teleological evolution is thought to do, but there's nothing new about religious apologists being absurd.

--To better appreciate the differences, I submit to you an interesting historical perspective of both movements.--

Actually, the history is that Paley was an inspiration both to IDists of various stripes since his time, including young earth creationists (YECs).  "Design" is an old YEC claim, and most of Behe's examples were used before Darwin's Black Box by creationists.  Look up "cdesign proponentsists" on the web for the cavalier manner in which one "textbook" was turned from a creationist one into a "design proponent" text.

--Mankind has always been interested in investigating the relationship between God and nature.--

Or the gods and nature, or in how the spirits of nature themselves operate (like the Greek river gods).  It's interesting how readily the "scientific" intelligent design "theorists" allow their theologies to creep into their language.

--At times, philosophy defined the debate; at other times, science seemed to have the upper hand.--

Get real.  Modern science began with, say, Galileo, or more certainly with Newton.  Science has mostly had the upper hand since then, although IDists are very unhappy about actually applying scientific standards to biology.  Hence they wish to change it to accept unevidenced flim-flam, the most beautiful example being when Behe noted on the stand at Dover that astrology would be science under his definition (he seems to have meant only until it was found not to produce results, but it hardly matters, since he there was equating anthropocentric "hypotheses" and actual science hypothesization).

--What has always mattered in this discussion is in which direction the investigation proceeds.--

What has always mattered is how the investigation begins, whether with evidence and minimal biases, or with theistic prejudices.  Kevin Miller wants us to believe that the latter is as legitimate a starting place as the former.  I bet he wouldn't want to be tried for a crime under similar prejudices.

--Does it move forward, that is, does it assume something about God and then interpret nature in that context;--

Assuming something about God is not moving forward.  It is moving backward to the time when science was checked by theology.

--or does it move backward, that is, does it observe something interesting in nature and then speculate about how that might have come to be?--

No, it hypothesizes about how something came to be, and it uses scientific knowledge to do so.  That is, normal causal knowledge is used in any legitimate science.  What Stein, Kevin Miller, and apparently you, want to do is to believe in the kind of "Cause" that Aquinas believed in, something that is only speculation, not the result of continued investigation like causes in classical science happens to be.

--If the investigation moves forward, as does CD, it is faith based; if it moves backward, as does ID, it is empirically based.--

Here you show how very little you know about the practice of science.  Speculation is for metaphysics and theology.  Good solid evidence understood according to normal causality is how science proceeds.  ID only tries to force God into the picture because it is theistic metaphysics.  You can't honestly move from the evidence of continued inheritance with modification with no identifiable breaks into the theistic belief in "design".  If the IDists were honest they'd admit that there is nothing similar between known design practices and evolved characteristics, even if sometimes the results can have a functional equivalence and overall similarities (but the details are what always differentiate evolutionary products and design, hence Dembski's snort at our "pathetic level of detail" which he refuses to engage in, when all of science is about the "details").

But then you seem not to be discussing science, only claiming that religious ID operates differently from religious creationism.  I really don't care, of course, since neither one is doing honest science.

--Each approach has a pedigree that goes back over two thousand years.--

The fact is that the two are doing much the same thing, utilizing their prior beliefs to try to cram themselves into science.  Of course ID wants to claim that it's making valid inferences from the evidence, but it quite obviously is not.  Both intend to bring "science" into accordance with theology and the Bible, of course, the main difference being that creationism tends toward literalism, ID tends more toward medieval metaphysics.

--We notice the forward approach, in Tertullian, Augustine, Bonaventure, and Anselm.--

The whole point of Anselm's ontological proof is to show that God exists sans prior belief in revelation.  So you're hardly characterizing him properly there.  Augustine seems to go back and forth between your "forward approach" and the supposedly different "backward approach".  And he might as well, since modern philosophy and science understand both "directions" to be impossibly dependent upon beliefs which "deconstruct" upon questioning.

--Augustine described it best with the phrase, “faith seeking understanding.” In each case, the investigation is faith based.--

Augustine was not particularly a literalist, and often brought "faith" ideas into line with the evidence as he understood it.  Furthermore, he himself was something of a philosopher who used more than just faith to make his arguments.  Famously, Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" appears to be a reformulation of Augustine's anti-skepticism argument, and from they way that he uses it, one guesses that it was a familiar anti-skeptical argument of his day.

--By contrast, we discover the “backward” orientation in Aristotle,--

You have no business putting Aristotle in with Aquinas and Paley.  Aristotle was nothing like an IDist, or a faith-based thinker like Aquinas and Paley.  He was what philosophers often call "logocentric," if not as much as Plato was.  Nevertheless, he is sometimes called the "first scientist", for he did use empirical data for some of his conclusions, most notably biological conclusions.

--Aquinas, Paley, and others.--

These guys are apologists.  Nothing strikingly wrong with that, especially considering Aquinas's excellent thought.  Nevertheless, if Aristotle was at least somewhat like a modern scientist, Aquinas is solidly metaphysical and a non-scientist, while Paley is just a Reverend trying to come up with evidence that "proves" his faith.  There is nothing new about the fact that Paley's "argument" wasn't based on literalism, just as ID is not, but it relies wholly upon an unevidenced concept, God, to "explain" without the rigor of scientific causality.

--Aristotle’s argument, which begins with “motion in nature” and reasons BACK to a “prime mover,” is obviously empirically based.--

It obviously is not empirically based.  Rather than noting motions in the heavens (which seems to be where his "god" is most being used to "explain motion") and acknowledging that he did not have an explanation for them under his "physics," he just invented a God "thinking himself" which supposedly produced the motions.  It isn't for nothing that such a speculation came in the book now called "Metaphysics," for that work is largely involved in non-empirical speculations.  It is a thoughtful and intelligent work, nothing like ID's attempts to confuse the issues and to have God producing exactly the sorts of patterns of evolution among prokaryotes and among eukaryotes that would accrue through the mechanisms we see affecting each respectively, however it is not an empirical approach at all.

--Obviously, Barbara Forrest and Judge Jones III and others miss the point. CS and ID are simply the latest manifestations of each tradition.--

Obviously they do not miss the main point, which is that although ID is based more in medieval metaphysics and creationism is based more upon a kind of Biblical literalism, both are nothing other than apologetics.  If they had a bit more philosophical knowledge they might at least differentiate between ID and creationism somewhat better, for there are some actual differences (Catholics who reject science tend more toward medieval metaphysics and ID, Protestants who reject science tend more toward Bible literalism).

--I therefore ask you to reconsider your point that the the two are synomymous,--

I ask you to read what I write better than you have, for I did not claim that the two are synonymous.  They're equally non-scientific, though, which I no doubt did imply or state at some point.  Perhaps that is why you merely assumed that I made the two out to be synonymous.

--either theoretically or pragmatically.--

What matters in this debate is that neither one is science, and both are religious apologetics.  Science is what should be taught in science classes, not religion.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This, on 9-10-07



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Glen Davidson, rather than respond to all your points (many of which I would challenge),--

You don't challenge them.  More importantly, you haven't the knowledge to do so, but deny like IDists normally do.

--I will try to narrow the focus even more. You tend to impose religious concepts in places where they don’t belong.--

Sorry, I'm the one trying to keep religion out of where it doesn't belong.  Your confusions are inadequate to keep religious presuppositions in their place.  Or more to the point, in many hands they seem designed to deliberately confuse the issues.

--Aristotle did not mention a “prime mover” to inject God into the discussion.--

Here you go in your strawman attack mode again.  I wrote:

--Rather than noting motions in the heavens (which seems to be where his “god” is most being used to “explain motion”) and acknowledging that he did not have an explanation for them under his “physics,” he just invented a God “thinking himself” which supposedly produced the motions. It isn’t for nothing that such a speculation came in the book now called “Metaphysics,” for that work is largely involved in non-empirical speculations. --

I didn't begin to say that Aristotle did "mention a 'prime mover' to inject God into the discussion," which false charge is as incorrect as your many other errors.  I wrote, essentially, that he had no explanation, so he invented one.  That's what religions have often done.

--His point was similar to Aquinas’. Everything in nature that moves must be moved by something else.--

Well gee, I suppose it was similar to Aquinas' "proof of God," since Aquinas' "proof" almost certainly comes ultimately from Aristotle.  

Importantly, everything in nature that moves must not in fact be moved by something else.  This gets back the metaphysics of Aristotle, for indeed he speculated where he had no empirical evidence.  

--In his judgment, that process can not go on forever—it must stop at the point of a “prime mover.” Aquinas made the same point, popularizing the term “inifinite regress,” meaning that the number of prior causes must be finite and finally culminate in a causeless cause. In that context, they were not beginning with faith, they were beginning with observation.--

I wonder why those ignorant of philosophy think they have something to tell those of us who are adept in philosophy.  I know very well what Aristotle, and Aquinas following him, said.  My point was that there is nothing empirical in their "solutions," unlike Galileo's and Newton's physics, and you yammer on about the rationale of a non-empirical "physics" and metaphysics which existed prior to Galileo.

Can't you at least see why we oppose the insistence of the pseudoscientists that we adopt the Aristotelian nonsense that was used (in part) to persecute Galileo?  That's what ID is, where it isn't actually the same as creationism, an attempt to base their "science" on the mistaken presuppositions of Aristotle and medieval scholastics.  

Indeed, Dembski quite directly claims that we need to consider the other "causes" listed by Aristotle (material, formal, and final), along with his "efficient cause" (which really wasn't the same as causation today, though it at least is related to it).  Well we largely gave up the others because they don't work in science, and we're not impressed with the claims made by Aristotle which have been refuted by modern science.  And ID has little else, and nothing worthwhile.

--Obviously, that doesn’t mean that Aristotle and Aquinas never thought about God, it means that they were looking for a method that would dramatize the power of reason without presuming God’s existence.--

Except that they had indelibly in their minds the "fact" of God's existence, though certainly Aristotle was willing to play around with this "fact".  And they operated with metaphysics which assumed top-down imposition of form and motion, while modern science understands it, more or less, bottom up (I don't like speaking of modern science as "bottom up", but compared to the hierarchical IDist claims, and in its metaphysical language, that's the closest I can come to a comparison).  That's why the great majority of Aristotle's work is not science, no matter that he had some of the elements of science working even in his unworkable "physics" (and science almost certainly benefited by Aquinas' incorporation of Aristotelian ideas into Western thought, until Aristotle became a millstone around Galileo's neck).

--One may or may not have religious motives for undertaking such an investigation, but the motive does not define the process.--

Another strawman from Stephen.  I have repeatedly noted that religious motives needn't define the process, as in Galileo, Einstein, Newton, and Lord Kelvin (though both Newton and Kelvin left science in some of their claims).  It's the IDists, not religious people in general, who object to the science which developed to its full flowering within Christendom (with help from ancient pagans and contemporary Jews and Muslims, and almost certainly others as well) who have to force their unwarranted presuppositions into science because they are unwilling to accept the tests of their ideas that science provides.

--So why do I fuss about that?--

No doubt because you'd rather attack a strawman than what I actually wrote, and because you have nothing with which to legitimately argue for ID.

--Why do I narrow the topic to so sharp a point?--

I see nothing sharp or on-point in your treatment of the subject.  Learn some philosophy, at least, if you're unwilling to learn science.

--Because the major objection to intelligent design is the false assertion that THE PROCESS begins with presupposition (faith) and therefore cannot possibly be science.--

Good grief, the major objection to intelligent design is that it has absolutely no sound evidence in favor of it.  I know that you're just making up stuff as you go along, Stephen, but you'd look a whole lot more competent if you'd learn what's at stake.

And the fact that theistic assumptions are necessary in order to arrive at "God" or "the Designer" is another grave objection, one that you seem not even to understand how to potentially address.

--One either begins with presupposition or one begins with observation.--

No, one does not.  One begins with the way that one understands the world (Kant), and one begins with observation (which actually shape Kantian "categories" and the like).  Even presuppositions begin with observations, however they do often intrude into further observation, as is the case with ID.

--Intelligent design begins with observation.--

ID begins with a prejudice, the sort of animistic/typological sense that the world must operate like humans do (probably unavoidable in early humans, for what other processes could they know?).  There are observations involved (gee, it's pretty complicated, and other equally mindless ID tripe), but first and foremost ID begins with a metaphysics which is illegitimate in science and in modern philosophy (possibly not in some dungeons of analytic philosophy (think of Saul Kripke), but certainly in mainstream analytic and continental philosophy).

--If you will not concede anything else, surely you will concede that.--

Sure, I studied philosphy in order to concede that metaphysics is due to observation.  Ha.  

What I can say is that you're pretty far from a good understanding of metaphysics, philosophy, or science.  ID cannot reach the "conclusion" that there was a "designer" without first putting their God into their premises (or, one might say, only if they fail to disabuse themselves of their anthropocentric prejudices, since that's from where those premises come).  It's all top-down metaphysics, assertion that DNA information can only come from mind, and denial of the evidence of derivation of all life via the processes operating at present.  

If you knew anything about the philosophy you invoke, Stephen, you'd know that I'd never concede that ID begins with observation, for I have studied both the history of philosophy and those who have analyzed the presuppositions of the metaphysicians and logocentrists.  One does not concede a falsehood, above all.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Another on 9-11-07



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

September 11th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
–Glen Davidson, actually, I made a typo on post 1118. What I meant was that you missed my point, not that you didn’t read the post or respond in a timely manner. So, calm down.–

I hadn’t responded to you yet, so how could I have missed your point?

–You say that you haven’t conflated CS with ID, yet you continue to claim that ID, in effect, bootlegs religion into its methodology which is what CS does–

I don’t conflate CS with ID, but I also don’t accept your unevidenced assertion that the difference is that ID isn’t religious. In fact, all of the evidence is that ID is overwhelmingly religious, from it’s “big tent” strategy and its refusal to address the scientific question of the age of the earth (physicist Heddle had a falling out with IDists over that, because he knows that the age of the earth is extremely important in science, and for him, especially astronomy), to the religious statements known from most of its prominent proponents. Dembski famously stated that, “Dembski: “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory,” Touchstone Magazine. Volume 12, Issue4: July/August, 1999? (my source for this was Wikipedia, article “Intelligent Design”).

I would not say that one absolutely has to be religious in order to take up the most minimal tenets of ID. They’d be wrong to do so, likely basing their acceptance of it on teleological biases and incredulity at self-organizing principles, but they wouldn’t have to be exactly religious (arguably, however, they’d be using a metaphysics which is in essence religious, without their recognizing this). What matters is that the movement, and particularly the attempts to force ID into schools and to censor science and its standards, is heavily based in religion and done for the sake of religion.

–So I don’t get why you think I am putting words in your mouth.–

That’s because there is so much that you don’t get. You have your unquestioned “reasons” why ID isn’t the same as creationism, and when someone disagrees with you and tells you how they really do differ, you simply don’t grasp the reasons I have. That is to say, like so many pro-IDists, you really don’t know what makes up philosophy and science, and the various ways that we have of addressing matters, and instead you rely on the narrow claims of IDists and other religionists to set the “standard”.

It’s precisely such narrowness that we are trying to prevent. And no, of course we’re not trying to force the teaching of evolution in the churches, for it is the open society that negates Ben Stein’s charges. The problem is that Ben and the rest wish to intrude their non-standards into another sector of society that allows the reality-based community scope for action, thereby compromising our freedoms to associate and to act as we wish.

Indeed, if that happens it will be the worst for the religious, for there will no longer be any reason why the churches shouldn’t be forced to teach evolution or anything else that society at large might wish everyone to learn.

–If one begins with presupposition (faith, bias, religion etc), one is doing creation science; if one begins with observation and draws inferences from data, one is doing ID.–

Again, Dembski said, “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”

–I say ID begins with observation; you (seem) to say it begins with a religious presuppoition.–

How about this, why don’t you tell me what observation leads one to God, or to “the Designer”. I mentioned that the major problem we have with ID is not that it is religious, but that it has no sound evidence in favor of it. That it begins with religion is a problem, but if by strange chance ID (an earlier ID, one that wasn’t so intent on refusing to make inherent predictions) happened to make the right predictions predicated on what we know about design, it would likely be accepted as science (depends upon the circumstances).

That is to say, we keep asking for meaningful observations from IDists, and we never receive any (other than the equivalents of “it looks designed” or the false dichotomy of “evolution isn’t up to the task, hence design is true”—we want evidence for ID, for, even if modern evolutionary failed, there’s no apparent reason why ID would explain anything at all). So yes, of course I’m saying that ID doesn’t begin with observation, that’s essentially the whole case against ID as any kind of science, even as a failed science. We ask for observational data which would point to design (like rational layouts of organisms and systems, instead of the evolved systems and organisms that we see). We ask and ask and ask, and we never receive it. If ID began with observation (and we do mean using the standard observational practices of science and forensics), I’m sure that we’d either have some of the evidence for ID that we have requested, or an admission on the part of IDists that ID isn’t science.

–Am I misreading your position or connecting dots that aren’t there?–

There isn’t any question that I state and have alwasy stated that ID doesn’t begin with observation. IDists no doubt often think that they do, however their unquestioned assumptions and unquestioned human predilections for presupposing purpose and design that isn’t there, precede them.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 11 2007,13:40

Still just archiving, as Wesley initially suggested.  Jbagail's post is a particularly nasty and dishonest attack, I would note:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Glen

“I’m the one trying to keep religion out of where it doesn’t belong”.

Is this like keeping Blacks out from where they do not belong?--

Since you guys can't make any sort of "argument" except by lame analogy, I'm not surprised that this absurd comment cropped up.

OK, Jbagail, we'll not tolerate being kept out of where we're told that we don't belong.  I demand to be made the pastor of D. James Kennedy's church.  I'm certainly more qualified to tell the truth, and why should I be kept out just because I don't agree with his church's teaching?

So is this an exact analogy?  No, of course it isn't.  One complication is that the gov't has to make decisions about what to teach and fund.  That, in fact, is exactly why religion is kept out of the funding, and the teaching, of science, because the real legal issue is freedom of religion, and not even the importance of teaching science.  You have no business having your religious ideas funded from the taxpayers' dollars.

Your mindless smear has nothing to do with it.  You aren't being kept ignorant by the gov't, you want the gov't to keep children ignorant and to teach them falsehoods.

--A black female relative of mine was murdered many years ago and the male killer got 6 months because she was where “she didn’t belong.”--

Ah yes, the dishonest comparison and the twisting of words by these "righteous" people who try to smear us.  I didn't even come close to saying that any human being of any race, religion, belief, ethnicity, or IQ level doesn't belong anywhere that anyone else does.  I said that I was trying to keep RELIGION out of where it doesn't belong, which is entangled in a government which is bound by the constitution not to establish any religion.

--I find this comment of yours very offensive.--

I find your unintelligent and faulty analogy to be offensive in the extreme, and your attempt to compare keeping a potentially controlling system of thought from controlling the schools and the government as being akin to keeping a person out of somewhere due to race to be highly tendentious and beneath contempt.

--Who are you to judge where religion does not belong?--

First off, I have no power to say where it belongs.  Secondly, I am a reasonable man who has argued these things out like an intellectual, not a blustering bully like your presentation makes you out to be.

--If a man is a Christian he should act like a Christian in everything he does. Many people feel a Sunday Christian is not a good thing.--

Sorry, we're not arguing about whether or not Xians have the rights that everyone else does to free speech, free expression in general, and free public assembly.  I am entirely in favor of the First Amendment, which you seem to oppose.

--Glen, do you want Christians to go into the closet?--

Do you want to attack strawmen all day?  I repeat, I want to keep religion out of where it doesn't belong, and it belongs in Xians, who are free in this society.

--Is this what you want? What about Jews? Shall they go into the closet? We have a Jew and also a Muslim at the University, and both talk about their faith almost every chance that they get (tactfully) and, frankly, I enjoy their company as does everyone else I am aware of.--

Since the idea that I oppose the freedom of Jews and Muslims is entirely of your own malicious and/or ignorant making, I point out again what a dishonest attack you make upon me.  It appears that the words of an honest non-theist such as myself in favor of the First Amendment is, in your mind, justification for a host of false charges.

--Where I work we stress tolerance for all religions. I have learned much from them. Ben you need to release your film ASAP.--

Apparently you haven't picked up any kind of tolerance, rather you promote hatred of those of us who favor the First Amendment.  Indeed, with people like you praising the film, it shouldn't be too hard to demonstrate exactly why we need to keep religion where it belongs, which is, not acting as an agent of the government to oppress those who disagree with would-be theocrats like Jbagail.

You are one frightening person, Jbagail.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



9-13-07



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--In message 1243 Glen D chose to only comment on my last statement about my anticipation of the movie that is receiving immense criticism even though it has not been seen yet.--

Since it is a strawman attack, while you avoid what we actually wrote, it seems unlikely that anything else you might write is worthy of comment.  

--I was disappointed that he did not offer any comment on the more substantive part of my message (1237) about entropy and the origin of life.--

What's substantive about it?  We've read Granville Sewell, who tries to conflate probabilities with entropy, when the two are not about the same things.

--I addressed this only because some of the earlier messages indeed brought up thermodynamics and the acorn analogy.--

Indeed.

--I simply offered what I thought was a reasoned response.--

Well it wasn't.  How about actually addressing some of the many responses that have been made to Sewell and to others who try to shoehorn SLOT into denying evolution?

--However I guess I was just guilty of more “strawman attacks, unsupported demonizations of their opponents, and the most useless “science” arguments that have ever been answered thousands of times without their getting a single clue.”--

Yes, I pointed out how inappropriate your remarks were.  Why do you suppose that anyone should care about what you write about entropy when nothing prevents you from unfair characterizations of your opponents?  Notably, rather than take back your unfair characterization, you simply move on to more attacks.

But okay, I'll answer again the most useless "science" arguments that have been answered thousands of times without their getting a clue:

--Just a few comments about the origin of life and thermodynamics. It is certainly the case that the 2nd law of thermodynaimcs applies in both open and closed systems. It is also true that in the early earth there was plenty of energy available from the sun. It is also true that an acorn only needs water, sun and soil to germinate and grow into a mighty oak tree. This can all seem to argue that life could have arisen on an early earth as a localized decrease in entropy as the rest of the universe necessarily increases in entropy.--

It doesn't speak to the issue of whether or not life could have arisen on an early earth.  Probability is not the same as entropy, even if someone like Sewell claims that it is.  The point about the sun's radiance is that SLOT doesn't rule out increases in order (not the precise language of entropy, but it should be all right for our discussion), and that it can pay for incremental changes during the course of evolution.

I don't even know why abiogenesis is being brought into this, but again entropic considerations don't rule it out.

--But that’s not the whole story. An acorn also needs a genetic blueprint and cellular machinery to take the raw ingrdients of sun, water and soil and grow into a tree.--

That's where evolution comes into the picture.

--And raw energy from the sun is rather impotent without some kind of energy conversion mechanism to harness that energy for useful cell building work.--

No, energy from the sun is quite potent, able to make radicals, superoxides, amino acids, and what-not.  Of course evolution is needed in addition to produce an oak tree and acorns, but that doesn't mean that the sun is impotent sans energy conversion mechanisms.

--Today that role is primarily filled by the process of photosynthesis.--

And on Mars high-energy molecules are made without photosynthesis.  Possibly providing energy to organisms which evolved there.

--In the early earth, if we are going to go from raw chemicals, water and solar energy to even a simplified first cell, there is a desperate need for some kind of energy conversion mechanism.--

Why?  Don't you know that the first organisms are considered likely to have been extreme heterotrophs?  Just as high-energy ozone is made in the upper atmosphere, high-energy organic molecules could be made by sunlight under the proper conditions.

--Applying raw undirected energy to a system of chemicals is almost always going to be destructive not constructive.--

No, chemicals are zapped by various forms of energy to make high-energy and complex molecules.  Buckeyballs and carbon nanotubes form when electrical discharges are run through various chemicals.  Lightning produces ozone and nitrogen oxides.  The Miller-Urey experiments produced amino acids via electrical discharges.  Carbonaceous chondrites have fairly complex organic molecules in them including amino acids, which is certainly a step up from the monotomic atoms coming out of supernovae explosions.

Self-organizing processes are very well known in chemistry and elsewhere.

--Requiring some kind of energy conversion mechanism apart from cellular machinery before there were cells seems to require some kind of intelligent input.--

This is why I didn't respond to this "substantive" stuff before.  It's all sheer creationism/ID, without any knowledge of what is proposed for abiogenesis, nor with any of the understanding of how early "life" might have incorporated and used compounds for reproduction.  Indeed, replication itself would be the only real "metabolic" function in most scenarios, and that could be provided by various environmental means, like pH changes.

--Something has to manipulate the molecules.--

Only in your assumptions.  Real science involves trying to learn how molecules might self-organize, which does happen in many situations.

--And what about the first cellular information blueprint? All of our experience tells us that useful, complex, specified information arises from intelligence.--

Our experience is that functional information in animals has evolved over the course of evolution.  We do not know how genetic material arose to the level of life in the first place, but if we're not willing to conclude that it was just magic, we work at the problem scientifically, not merely resorting to the unevidenced.

Most importantly, the sort of information found in DNA has never been observed to come from intelligence, ever.  Your claim that "All of our experience tells us that useful, complex, specified information arises from intelligence" is related to the idea that we have only seen wolves and lions coming from intelligence, when in fact we have only seen them coming from reproduction.  But even though we HAVE only seen them come from reproduction, and even though we have evidence that lions and wolves share ancestry, you would prefer to believe that an unknown agent was responsible for there being wolves and lions.

Should we believe the evidence of common ancestry among humans?  Among mammals?  Among vertebrates?  Among all of life?  What is most absurd about ID is that it believes that the "probabilities are too high for 'Darwinism' to account for evolution," when apparently the 95%+ relatedness of chimps and humans is either accidental or due to some unfathomable reasons of the creator.  We know that probabilities could never produce anything like the apparent relatedness and non-teleological evolution of all life, and of course claiming that design caused the expected patterns of "Darwinism" is the most ad hoc and lame claim that I can think of.

--Packaged energy for cellular processes and genetic information scream for an intelligent precursor.--

Non sequitur.  And you completely ignored what is actually proposed for abiogenesis, which are also understood only as a sets of hypotheses at this time (IOW, it is not evolutionary theory).

--Compounding the equation is the apparent necessity for this to be a rapid process since fossilized remnants of bacterial life have been dated at around 3.6 or 3.7 billion years old, only a 100 million years or so after the earth had cooled sufficiently to allow life to survive and the major meteoric bombardment had let up.--

Compounding the equation is the fact that you have put in a bunch of assumptions which are not obviously important to abiogenesis.

--You can find the full thermodynamic equations in Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen’s book, “The Mystery of Life’s Origin.” It’s critique of chemical evolution scenarios remains valid.--

And I'm supposed to believe that claim, when none of your assumptions are shared with those scientists who work on abiogenesis?

--If you’re going to rely purely on chemical and geological forces to account for the origin of life, you just can’t get there from here.--

First off, I can't see that anyone was arguing over abiogenesis.  Perhaps some were, but that's not what this blog is about.  Secondly, none of your points have anything to do with the real work being done to try to explain life's origins.

--I look forward to the movie and am disappointed but not terribly surprised at the ad hominem attacks and negative judgement displayed here about a film no one has even seen yet.--

Still a very unfair statement, considering that almost none of the remarks have disparaged the movie except insofar as it has been characterized by Stein and others involved in the movie.  You seem to fault us merely for answering Ben's claims, and without properly characterizing our answers.

Back to the last part of his more recent post:

--I have been making this observation for many years. Perhaps Glen D can enlighten me as to why he would characterize my comments this way. I welcome any response.--

I characterized it that way because you made an unfair attack on those of us who were not faulting the movie so much as the material that has been released about the movie, and because such untruthful attacks amount to ad hominem attacks.  Then I didn't want to get into abiogenesis, since that's largely beside the point that evolution is a solid established scientific theory the equal of other scientific theories.  

And also I had noted how many times pro-IDists' "science" claims have been answered because it is true, and because I dealt with Granville Sewell's attacks on evolution (invoking entropy) here:

< http://groups.google.com/group....e35a31a >

You have to click on "Read more" to get the full comments.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Alan Fox on Sep. 12 2007,12:21

DaveScot pops in to offer Glen reinstatement at UD "if you can be civil". Then I thought maybe he means JAD, so I posted:

#  DAVESCOT Says:
September 11th, 2007 at 1:27 am

Davidson, I will lift your ban at Uncommon Descent if you can be civil.


Great to see you out and about again, Dave. I thought you had retreated to the UD laager permanently. Just to clarify, are you re-inviting Glen (who apart from the odd hissy fit, usually manages to remain civil if somewhat verbose) or was Davidson a typo and you meant to address John (who possibly has overstepped the bounds of propriety on occasion). I am sure UD can restore its rightful place in the blogosphere with some insightful input from JAD.

Shame about the informatics thingie. Bill could do with a  bit of good publicity to boost those book sales which must be flagging a bit since Dover.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 12 2007,15:20

I was uncertain who was meant as well.  It didn't really matter, though, since I had no idea that I am banned, if I am (I don't know if that's really Springer posting either).  That's how eager I am to post alongside DaveScot.

Not that he isn't the epitome of class in inviting whomever back, if he "is civil".  To a bunch of ignoramuses and/or liars, I am not.

I loved ("I love it so") the response from JAD, though, who certainly thought it was the "Darwinian blow hard," and whined like a kicked dog that the dolts at UD won't take him back in.  Is there any set of people about whom he wouldn't complain if they don't accept him (and even more if they do)?  Someday he's going to be muttering out on the street that no bums will let their rags touch him, which will be believable.  Of course he seems to loathe anyone dumb enough to think he has anything to add (for good reason), so he'll always spit at anyone who gives him the time of day.

Poor old fool, there isn't a forum new enough that it doesn't have a good many on it who already know about how he operates.  He's as lonely on Stein's forum as he always was at his own.  What's sad is that someone so socially needy is almost totally without social skills, and devoid of anything of value to offer anyone.

Glen D

Back to the archiving, 9-12-07



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Glen Davidson,

Please knock off the insults and get back into the business of substantive discourse. --

I'm the only one of the two of us who has brought any substantive discourse into the discussion.  Your inability to address anything properly is what I have to address, since you ignore almost everything that I actually write, and turn to repeat some meaningless claim that you made previously and of which you didn't understand the reply which was made to it.  

It's interesting how quickly someone like you who came in with a completely false charge against me faults me for supposedly not engaging in substantive discourse.  Also, when you haven't begun to address anything substantive that I've written.

--Intelligent design is in no way dependent on religion, nor has Dembski ever defined it that way.--

I wish you could actually make a point that would have some intellectual meaning.  I know how dishonest Dembski is about ID, and I didn't suppose or claim that he ever defined it as dependent on religion (it would hurt the legal case if the truth were told).  That it is dependent upon religion is the substantive issue, the one that you haven't begun to address.

--Here is one of the many ways he has expressed it::--

Do you dream that we haven't heard the droning claptrap of the ignorant Dembski over and over again?  What's important is that we're independently capable of evaluating ID apart from the bogus claims of those who want to pretend that it is science, when that is the least plausible claim that it makes.

--“Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence.--

The trouble is, it doesn't.  What Dembski does is to claim that simple but "unlikely" design is complex, contrary to any meaning of that term.  Then he tries to claim that design is detected by his measure of "complexity," completely ignoring the fact that we rely most of all upon the marks of rational thought which are visible in designed objects, and also upon any evident purpose, novelty, and "borrowing" for an obvious or a non-obvious reason.  What Dembski states is hardly credible.

--"Note that a sign is not the thing signified. Intelligent design does not try to get into the mind of the designer and figure out what a designer is thinking.--

Of course it doesn't.  That's because their "designer" is inscrutable, just like Maimonides', or to a lesser extent, Aquinas's God.  The "Designer" also is apparently capable of fine-tuning the universe, which in ID circles means some nearly-omnipotent Being (that we might be in a simulation is speculated on by non-IDists, in which case it might be a guy sitting around, drinking beer and playing a video game.  Not the scenario proposed by IDists).

Actual science is concerned about anything that can be deduced from a putative cause, while the IDists are not concerned about investigable causes.  We'd be intensely interested in the mind and purposes of a real designer, if you people would actually come up with something for once.  

Thanks for pointing out how unlike science ID is.

--"Its focus is not a designers mind (the thing signified) but the artifact due to a designer’s mind (the sign).--

Dembski doesn't even know how to use the terms "sign" an "signified" properly.  The mind that creates is not what is signified by the object, except in unusual self-referential cases (I don't dispute that some aspect of mind is essentially signified in "signifying something else," but that's already understood by actual scientists).  The sign or object often does signify something, but something other than the mind that creates it.  Dembski either ignorantly or deceitfully switches the meaning of words to avoid the fact that a real designer would indeed be expected to put signification into said designer's object, and this might actually tell us something about that mind (as it does with humans).

But of course Dembski's "Designer" is like the philosopher's God, hence one isn't supposed to speculate about this God, uh, "Designer".  Once again, completely unlike how real science operates.

--"What a designer is thinking may be an interesting question, and one may be able to infer something about what a designer is thinking from the designed objects that a designer produces (provided the designer is being honest).--

Why yes, apparently the "Designer" thinks in genetic algorithms, because instead of ever producing anything that appears like designed objects do, this "designer" is making organisms appear as if they had evolved.

--"But the designer’s thought processes lie outside the scope of intelligent design.--

How convenient, and how unlike real science.  In real science, you have to know something about the cause in order to match it with its hypothesized effects (and ID cannot honestly predict complexity or simplicity, let alone pretend that complexity can only come about through the divine, er, the inscrutable designer).  So Dembski declaims any concern about the actual cause, yet insists that life is its effect.  That's bogus philosophy, let alone being pseudoscience.

--"As a scientific research program, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such.”--

Yes, we'll ignore the cause, and claim the effect.  That's certainly not science, rather it is what is often known from religion.

--As everyone knows (including you, I trust) Barbara Forrest pulled the quote about “logos theory” to make it appear that ID is religious based.--

Simpleton, of course it was pulled out in order to provide evidence (you know, what none of you people ever provide) for the obvious fact that ID is about religion.  Dembski said, it, quit pretending that there's anything wrong with using it.

--As it turns out, Dembski made that comment discussing intelligent design in the context of its relationship with theology and metaphysics for a Christian audience.--

Yes, we know that extremely well.  During the week, he's telling us that ID is science.  On Sunday, he's preaching ID as religion.  This has been discussed a good deal on forums like Panda's Thumb, and of course you merely make our point, that not only is ID religion, ID is very dishonest regarding its claims to the contrary.

--Unlike many scientists, Dembski is formally trained in philosophy and theology–not just science.--

Dembski is not formally trained in science (I suppose he's taken some classes in it, but I have yet to see any indication that he understands it and its methods).  Quit coming up with false claims.  And he's not adept in philosophy at large, but only in a kind of metaphysical-religious sort of philosophy.

--That means, of course, that he is qualified to discuss controversies that appear at the intersection of science and philosophy,--

Only if he actually understands philosophy beyond a certain metaphysical ghetto, plus had an understanding of science.  I have yet to see him understand any philosophical position that is critical of metaphysics, or science above grade-school level.

--an attribute that not everyone in this dialogue can lay claim to.--

Neither can he.  And you certainly evince no knowledge of science or philosophy that would pertain to this subject.

--From a Christian’s faith perspective, intelligent design does have religious implications, of course.--

Ya think?  I'd like to see what it has to do with anything other than religion.

--But the methodology itself is scientific,--

You know, it gets very tiresome to read you making the same monotonous claim each time you come in here to reveal still more of your ignorance.  I asked you for evidence, for observational data that would support ID.  As with all IDists, you utterly and completely fail to get up to the starting point of science, but merely complain whenever we point out how devoid of science content ID obviously is.

--as Dembski pointed out earlier in the same discussion.--

So, you're resorting to argumentum ad verecundiam.  That's the formal name for your fallacy.

--To ignore the distinction is to violate reasonable standards of fairness. --

And so you convict yourself.  

--If it is not asking too much, please limit your response to this one subject--

If it's not asking too much, please respond intelligently to even one thing that I've written.  And by the way, the fact that you can't discuss or understand the range of issues involved is your problem.  The repetition of untrue claims, fallacies, and your complete inability to broach the issues revolving aroud science and the pseudoscience of ID is unproductive and revelatory of your reliance on the bogus claims of the egregious IDists.

And I already posted this at post #1090, but here is an excerpt of something that one of the writers of this movie posted on a forum regarding ID:

--When I say ID is friendly to belief in God in a way that classical Darwinism is not, what I mean is Darwinism literally has no need for the God hypothesis. According to Darwinists like Richard Dawkins, everything can be explained purely by natural forces–including the origin of information, consciousness, and life itself. If you want to bring God into the picture, that is a belief that you are adding to science. It is not required by the science itself, and many Neo-Darwinists believe it gets in the way of science. ID, on the other hand, suggests that rather than something tacked onto one’s interpretation of science, God–or whoever you believe to be the Intelligent Designer–is literally at the heart of nature itself, as expressed through information like the genetic code.--

Try to understand for once, Kevin Miller is contrasting "Darwinism" with its lack of need for a God with ID's prior belief that God is at the heart of nature.  Of course one could try to bring up the charge of argumentum ad verecundiam, but it won't work because this is simply an example from a pro-IDist, while I've argued the actual case a great deal, here and elsewhere.  Not only does Dembski betray his "during the week" claims when he's selling his book to the rubes, this whole movie happens to be a complaint that we're supposedly suppressing ID because it is religious (and we are suppressing it along with other bogus "science" in certain venues, but only where religion isn't supposed to be supported by gov't, and where our own freedom of speech and association give us the right to do so--along with the other pseudosciences and conspiracy theories).  

Perhaps you should actually read Ben's blog.  He doesn't mention ID, unlike Miller does, but Miller confirms that the movie primarily concerns ID, and the whine is that we're "keeping God out".  Yes, that's what science does, unless you can actually come up with evidence that God is a proximal cause.  You'd be a whole lot more convincing that ID isn't about religion if you weren't commenting under a blog whose main complaint is that ID is being suppressed because, in fact, ID is religious.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



9-13-07



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

September 13th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
–Dear Ben,

I see by the comments that you’ve ticked off a bunch of Darwinists. It’s interesting that they can only resort to calling you names.–

Where are your answers to the questions and points that I raised in posts #389, #1031, #1065, and #1090, for starters? Oh, you didn’t answer them, did you? You prefer to write the blatantly false claim that we can only call names, when in fact I have not seen much other than name-calling from the creos and IDists, and the little else was recycled nonsense (and we have answered virtually all of it, no matter how tiresome it is to do so).

So your credibility level is—about where Dembski’s is, hovering around zero.

–I just wanted to let you know that I applaud your willingness to put out the truth about the suppression of dissension.–

And you provide as much evidence as Ben did for such flim-flam, none at all. But then the need for evidence famously doesn’t trouble IDists.

–My bachelor’s degree is in electrical engineering. It’s interesting that none of the courses (taught in a secular university) which I took had anything to do with evolution.–

Fascinating that a non-teleological biological process wouldn’t be taught to an engineer. Must mean something, huh? But sadly, Josh can’t quite relate what this meaning is (so he invents it).

–It was never even mentioned because engineering has to do with science,–

Actually, it does not. It has to do with applying the conclusions of science. You’re not the first ID engineer to make the colossal error of thinking that in bypassing science with your engineering degree you have nonetheless become an expert in science.

–not science fiction.–

Gee, imagine anyone resorting to name-calling. Well, it wasn’t me, Dimensio, Craig, or a host of other pro-science commenters who thought that name-calling and false accusations would stand in for discussing science (not that we don’t use the names that fit, certainly), it was the whiner who can’t back up a single claim that he makes.

–It saddens me that most of your critics have never stopped for a moment and questioned what they believe.–

Mere ad hominem, and something that Josh could hardly know. I suspect that many on the pro-science side have seriously studied ID and creationism, like I have by coming from a creationist background. But why should Josh bother telling the truth when Stein’s blog is a mash of untrue claims barely altered from official ID mendacity?

–I have studied both evolution and ID.–

I should think that if you knew anything about evolution you’d be capable of dealing with it in detail. And if you really were a scientist, you’d finally tell us what we’ve been asking for, what is the scientific evidence for ID?

–What are those people afraid of? GOD.–

Why yes, it’s what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Dobzhansky, Father Coyne, Ken Miller, and Francis Collins were all afraid of, God. Oops, no. You’re as wrong about that as you are that engineers study science (aside from a few core courses).

Wow, you got absolutely none of your non-trivial claims right. But that’s as good as most IDists, I’ll admit, so you’re in the right company.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

September 13th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
–I think the negative comments are proof enough of the need to clarify the THEORY of evolution vs. Intelligent Design.–

Yes, negative comments have proven that the city of Atlantis existed, that UFO abductions are a reality, that homeopathy works, that the CIA killed John Kennedy, that our government was responsible for the twin tower attacks, divination by birds, necromancy, Scientology, and Intelligent Design.

See, all you have to do is to make a statement, no matter how absurd, then when someone disagrees, that proves your statement. Anyway, that’s what all of the pseudoscientists tell us.

–One could just as easily ask an evolutionist to come up with real evidence that this THEORY is true as they push on the ID people.–

This tells us all too much about the mentality of most creos and IDists. Darwin published the evidence 150 years ago (accounting for non-teleological aspects (vestigials and some rather odd adaptations) which pointed away from purposeful design–in addition to providing the evidence of common descent itself), and we get the same demand for “evidence” and denial thereof from the sorts of people who never provide evidence for ID. I wonder why they’re so evidence-challenged?

Darwin only began the process of gathering and disseminating the evidence for evolution. Journals are rife with it, of course, though it rarely is called “evidence for evolution” any more than evidence for Newton’s laws of motion is called “evidence for Newtonian laws”–scientists have been satisfied with the evidence for over a century in the case of evolution. And beyond that, people have been repeatedly pointed toward evidence at Talkorigins and blogs which exist just for the purpose of putting out the evidence and discussing it, as well as presented in numerous comments.

It’s sort of what Plato noted in the parable of the cave, that nothing will actually affect people until they actually look. Because few IDists and creos will look at the evidence, or they fail to understand it, the mere fact that we have done what we can to make the evidence available doesn’t prevent the same kinds of demands and questions from being made. This is due to the fact that if they don’t see the evidence, it does the anti-scientists no good at all.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: snoeman on Sep. 13 2007,23:25

Glen,

Gotta compliment you on this series of posts.  Did you apply any anesthetic before dissecting? :)
Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 15 2007,11:11

Oh, Tardfight at "Expelled"!
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 15 2007,16:57

Quote (snoeman @ Sep. 13 2007,23:25)

Gotta compliment you on this series of posts.  Did you apply any anesthetic before dissecting? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



They seem to be already numb intellectually, so I didn't bother.

Archiving, 9-15-07



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Glen Davidson,

About me your wrote, …“that you can’t discuss or understand the range of issues involved is your problem.”

My purpose in zeroing in on a simple point was to provide a little focus for you because you don’t seem to be able to do it for yourself.--

What you don't know is that the interaction of science and philosophy is rather complex when it comes right down to it.  It isn't simplistic like you and Dembski suppose.

-- Apparently, you didn’t get the hint, so I will come out with it. Writing forty of fifty paragraphs when one will suffice does not prove intelligence or knowledge, it only proves verbosity.--

The trouble is that you have no clue about what's involved, so you think that an argument from authority, along with some misapprehensions of philosophy, are sufficient.  You can't discuss anything, so you want to make my learning into a problem.

--That your insufferably long posts do not even address the issue is even more annoying.--

You don't understand the issue, as has become painfully obvious.

--That is why I narrowed the issue to ONE ASPECT OF ONE TOPIC—hint-hint-hint—it’s your cue to make a point, shut up, and get out.--

This is how it always ends, we discuss the issues, you who don't know anything get angry that you have nothing to say, and get nasty.

--The idea is go straight to the issue—not to keep shooting arrows endlessly, hoping that one day you will hit a target,--

I'd like you to be able even to discern what the target is.

--Your latest offering shoots about thirty more arrows, none of which even make it to the outside ring. My original point was simple: YOUR EXAMPLE citing Dembski’s comment about the Logos theory of the Gospel as proof that ID is faith-based is illogical. Dembski’s statement was made in a theological/philosophical context, and therefore does not relate to the question about whether or not ID’s methodology is empirically based. I showed that your contention was wrong, and I made the point SUCCINCTLY.--

If stupid and succinct mean the same thing to you, go ahead and believe that.

--Incredibly, your interminable response ignores this one and only point. I am therefore left to wonder whether you just like to read your own prose or whether you have a problem with reading comprehension. --

Unfortunately, you are incapable of thinking from the evidence, and blither around the evidence that Dembski is theology-driven with a bunch of trivial side issues.

--Instead you weasel out by saying, “I didn’t suppose or claim that he ever defined (ID) it as dependant on religion.” Oh no? Well then, what was your point in raising the issue of logos theory in the first place? I didn’t bring it up, you did. Apparently, you will not allow Dembski to define his own theory. If he insists that ID is empirically based, you will simply say, “sorry, we don’t allow people to speak for themselves.--

He spoke for himself, and essentially said that ID is "Logos" of John 1.  You can't accept that Dembski speaks out of both sides of his mouth, so you deny the most obvious fact, that, for Dembski at least, ID is religiously motivated.

--We accuse them of being so enamored with their Christianity that they lost all sense of judgment and can’t possibly know where religious faith ends and empirical observation begins.” What bigotry.--

Yes, you're incredibly bigoted, close-minded, and unable to make reasonable inferences from the data.

--Your mission, then, should you choose to accept it, is to defend your ridiculous and bigoted assertion that Dembski’s Theological comment about Logos theory proves that his science is not empirically based. Also, try to make every word count. If you can’t do both, do neither.--

Well, I've spent too much time responding to someone who can't begin to make a reasonable argument.  Try a little bit of schooling, it might make you capable of at least reading what I write, if not of responding coherently.

The fact is that Dembski's "Logos statement" does not by itself show that ID isn't religiously based.  Yours and his utter inability to come up with any kind of evidence that would actually pass muster in forensics or in science to demonstrate empiricism is what show that it isn't science.  I made this point to you earlier, but you ignore whatever you don't understand, which is about everything.  Since it isn't evidence-based, it must have some other motivation, and that religious motivation is altogether obvious even without Dembski's Logos statement, and more so with it.

I will probably not respond further to you, since you never properly address the issues involved, any more than that fatuous JAD does (which is sort of a response to him, I know, but if it's more than he deserves, it's still very little).  

I suspect that I can at least have a decent discussion with Kevin Miller, unlike you who want authority to stand where you are incapable of any substance (haven't seen any yet from you).

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 15 2007,18:39

Kevin Miller--one of the writers of "Expelled"--responded to me, and really most dishonestly.  I wrote a very long response, so I'm making another post in which to archive it.  Note, this is before editing and splitting up my comments, which I think I ought to do.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Glen Davidson,

Thanks for being such a lively participant on this blog. However, I’m afraid your enthusiasm may have gotten in the way of a few facts.--

I'm afraid that your claim that I have neglected any facts is itself markedly lacking in fact.  Of course I don't see the matter as you do, I see it as a philosopher does, and just because I disagree with your tendentious interpretation does not mean that I quoted anything out of context or related anything that wasn't the truth.

--Case in point: When you quoted me in comment 1090, you did so out of context.--

I included everything that was in that section.  The earlier section of your post didn't have a lot to do with the later section.  What is more, I linked to your post.  What am I supposed to do, include the entire thread before you'll allow that it wasn't out of context?  I followed standard procedures, I included a lot of context, and I linked to the rest.  

--What I wrote was not meant as an apology for ID but an explanation of why ID is friendlier to theism than classical Darwinism.--

I neither said that it was intended to be an apology for ID nor that it was.  I said that ID is apologetics.  Here it is:



Try to get your facts straight, Mr. Miller.  It's your "explanation" that indicates that ID is apologetics.

--What I said was, ID leaves room in its paradigm for an active designer,--

No, the relevant statement was not that ID leaves room in its paradigm for an active designer, the relevant statement (the one to which I referred in my comments) was, "ID, on the other hand, suggests that rather than something tacked onto one’s interpretation of science, God–or whoever you believe to be the Intelligent Designer–is literally at the heart of nature itself...".  That not just leaving it open, so you've subtly altered your point without any justification for it.

--whereas the best that Darwinism allows is some sort of non-involved deity or a deity that interacts with the world in a way we cannot measure.--

That's not the "best that Darwinism allows" (and why can't you people ever get it right?  In the US it isn't "Darwinism" as such), it is the best that the evidence allows.  You have no business suggesting that we leave out God at the start, we only leave out God for the same reason that meteorology leaves out God, the evidence just isn't there for biology.

--Hardly a satisfying situation for your average theist.--

Which is irrelevant to science and its practices.  Are you going to write a movie about how meteorology leaves God out of the picture?

--Even so, it is not so much a criticism of Darwinism as a mere a statement of fact, and I don’t see how it can be construed as an endorsement of ID.--

Did I call it an endorsement of ID?  No, I did not.  You're setting up strawment left and right.

--If you read my entire conversation with Peter Chattaway, you will see that it was merely meant as a point of clarification.--

Yes, I don't care what it was.  What you wrote is what I was interested in, how completely wrong you are that we aren't willing to consider intelligence acting in nature (we do all the time where the evidence exists), and how you admit that God is insinuated into ID from the beginning.

--I can accept the above mistake as a potential oversight on your part.--

Sorry, I didn't make any mistake, you just assumed that I wrote what I did not in fact write.  If you care to pursue this any further, please bring up any kind of justification you might have for your claims.

--However, my real bone of contention is when you say, “What Miller doesn’t know is that science doesn’t presuppose entities like God or the wink-wink nudge-nudge ‘Designer’, it looks for the best hypothesis. He is trying to tell us that ID is science because it has decided already that God (or “the Designer”) is at the heart of nature, so instead of simply searching for the best explanation, ID searches for ‘potential signs of intelligence in nature’.”

I meant nothing of the sort, Glen, and I suspect you know that to be true.--

I know very well what you wrote, and I properly interpreted it.  And yes of course it's an interpretation, but it isn't an unwarranted one.

--At best, your interpretation of my post is just plain wrong. At worst, it is a wilful distortion of the facts.--

It is neither, and again you fail to bring any sort of justifiable evidence against my reading of what you wrote.

--Perhaps it will help if I clarify things a little: To disqualify ID merely because it starts from a particular philosophical position is ridiculous.--

There are philosophical positions which have assumptions in them which cannot be justified, and there are philosophical positions which merely formalize the practices of working science and forensics.  Indeed, science essentially operated without a real philosophical basis up until the time of Hume and Kant, because the old metaphysical philosophy didn't work in science, and no satisfying new philosophy existed.

--Who doesn’t do science from a philosophical position?--

The most that Newton had were some rules of inference in science.  He was not working within the edifice of ancient or medieval philosophy as such, he merely borrowed the rules that philosophy had acknowledged regarding evidence.  He did not begin with the assumption that God was "working in the solar system," though it is true that he let God take care of the gaps left over.

Only if you insist that the rules of science "come from philosophy," when it is at least as arguable that they originally came from practical matters, can you even begin to claim that science necessarily operates from a philosophical position.  The fact that philosophy helps to deal with empiricism does not obviously mean that it is the basis from which empiricism is done.

What is perhaps more important is that I actually discussed a good deal that you ignore, like the consistency of sticking with the philosophy and/or scientific positions that work in meteorology when one is also doing biology.  Here you come up with a lot of strawmen to attack, while you ignore the importance of consistency in science.  Why am I not surprised at the lack of consistency between what you wrote previously and what you wrote more recently, and at the lack of consistency between what I really wrote and what you claim that I wrote?

The fact is that IDists generally accept the "philosophy" or science that we use everywhere in our science, but you refuse to follow the same position where it comes to biology.  Ignore that point as many times as you wish, Mr. Miller, but it remains a gaping hole in your treatment of the issue.  

But then I hardly allow that medieval philosophy has stood the test of time anyway, so that on philosophical grounds ID fails, even before it fails on empirical grounds.

--That’s all science is: conceptual model building upon a philosophical foundation—a constellation of unprovable assumptions.--

No, that isn't even close to what science is.  It is a way of dealing with the world in an "intersubjectively sound" (I hate use "subjective" at all, but it gets the point across) manner.  Kant detailed some of the "unproven assumptions" that necessarily go into science, and those have been honed and shaped over time into a more nuanced and sound manner (for instance, we know that at least some of Kant's "givens" are shaped by experience), but it is true that in the most foundational sense we cannot prove or empirically demonstrate that we know the world "as it really is," so to speak.

But as Kant (who was no atheist, by the way) noted, we can agree on how we do understand the world, and from there we can do satisfactory empirical science.  And modern science is "based" upon his philosophy, if any, not upon the unwarranted claims of medieval philosophy.  Metaphysics is just speculation, science operates according to working understandings and constructive capabilities of the mind to work through empirical data in a mutually ("intersubjectively") agreed-upon manner.  You want to claim that ID is equivalent to this, when it simply assumes that a sort of philosopher's God exists, when it cannot show that this God exist in either an empirical sense or in the "intersubjectively sound" sense that much of modern philosophy understands our "prior assumptions" to be.

--If you don’t believe me, just look at someone like Richard Dawkins.--

Dawkins is not my God, or any kind of authority to me.  

--While he claims his atheism is inferred from the evidence—which it may have been at one point—his scientific writings are clearly meant as an apologetic for his atheistic point of view.--

Do you have some kind of legitimate point?  Dawkins has his own problems with philosophy and theology, they aren't mine, or science's in general.

--His atheism doesn’t flow from his science; his science flows from his atheism.--

I see absolutely no justification for this claim.  More importantly, this has no bearing upon your claim that science is simply conceptual model building upon a philosophical foundation.  Anyone who leaves out the empirical matters, and the attempts to remain true to the evidence, is hardly an authority on either science or philosophy.

--So if you want to disqualify anyone for mixing their philosophical presuppositions with their science, Dawkins is your man.--

Nothing at all in your "argument" showed that Dawkins's science comes from his atheistic position.  I have faulted Dawkins at times when he got into philosophical matters (recently on Panda's Thumb), but on the whole he just isn't my concern.  The perversion of science is.

--You may not like ID’s philosophical starting point, just as many others may not like Richard Dawkins’s starting point.--

I do not like ID starting with a philosophical position which assumes that entities are acting without there being any kind of evidence for these undetected entities.  Not all philosophical positions are the same, and it's absurd that you treat them as equals.  That you write as if they are all equal indicates that, as a writer for a movie which delves into both philosophy and science, you cannot do justice to the issues involved.

--But if so, that is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one.--

Evidently you are without any adequate knowledge of science.  Science and modern philosophy are meshed together, with give and take in both disciplines.  Einstein was something of a philosopher, as were most of the early quantum theorists.  Most of us who know philosophy as well as science understand how illegitimate the metaphysics behind ID really is, how it completely fails to follow the methods of either science or of modern philosophy.

Why don't you make a movie about how we reject Hindu philosophy in science like we reject Aquinas's philosophy in science?  Of course we do, because Hindu philosophy, like medieval philosophy, merely assumes what it cannot show empirically or "intersubjectively," instead resting many of its claims upon prior religious assumptions.  So not only does your "argument" fall flat on philosophical and scientific grounds, evidently you're insisting upon that a philosophy coming out of Western religions is as legitimate as modern philosophies which make as few assumptions as possible (and ground them in "intersubjectivity" as well").

Why do you suppose that most of the world adopts the philosophical bases for science, while most reject the philosophies behind ID?  It's because the philosophical basis with which science is associated happens to yield practical and intellectual results, while the philosophies of the IDists belong to Western culture and are not universally applicable.

--If you’re going to reject ID—or Richard Dawkins—you need to do so on the basis of their science.--

We do.  The fact that you ignore all of the scientific arguments that I made against ID explains much of your unjustifiable attacks upon my justified argumentation.

--Which brings me back to my post: Contrary to your interpretation, I am not arguing that ID should be classified as science because it begins with the assumption that God is at the heart of nature. I’m merely arguing that ID should not be disqualified on this basis.--

Sorry, not only does your distinction not make much difference, it doesn't relate what you wrote in your post, which was:



You said that ID suggests that God or the "Designer" is at the heart of nature itself, then you claimed that "therefore the search for potential signs of intelligence in nature [which may be taken as a euphemism for ID] becomes a legitimate scientific enterprise."

It was precisely their "suggestion" that God or "Designer" is at the heart of nature that was your premise for why ID becomes a legitimate scientific enterprise.  I "interpreted" you justly, and you simply deny it without dealing with the evidence that I included.

--As I understand it, the core scientific program of ID seeks to explain how information moves in and out of biological systems. That’s it.--

What's scientific about it?  And how do they seek to find out how information moves in and out of biological systems?  More importantly, how would that relate to their core design claims?  You left those out, didn't you (though it's true that they fail to do science to find evidence for design in nature)?  

Look, we know very well what ID claims, and that it fails to provide any legitimate criteria for what would be "designed," claiming instead that a false dilemma would provide "evidence" for ID.  Indeed, if it is studying information in biological systems in a scientific manner at all, this has nothing to do with their core claims, which are that a designer is responsible.

If they were serious about design being in nature, they'd predict that rational "planning" of organisms would be in evidence, and that purpose, novelty, and "borrowing" might also be visible.  Because none of these are (as meant in science), they refuse to predict that the designer did what known designers do, instead pretending that faulting another theory is all they have to do in order to be scientific.

--All of the religious baggage that gets tagged onto the movement is essentially a red herring perpetuated by their opponents.--

Right, that's why they speak largely to religious audiences, refuse to discuss the age of the earth, and repeatedly claim that ID points toward the supernatural.  Remember, we listen to the IDists, and at a speech I attended, Behe claimed that the reason we reject ID is merely that it points beyond science.  Hardly, we reject it because nothing in biology points beyond the cause and effect standard practices of science.

--Darwinian evolutionists think they’ve already solved the information problem by proposing purely natural information-producing mechanisms, such as random mutations and natural selection.--

You really don't know the science, do you?  There are quite a large number of information problems in biology at present, notably because a whole lot of information has recently become available through DNA sequencing.

Yet virtually all of the data point to nothing but the familiar non-teleological mechanisms known from the laboratory and in the collected data.  Moreover, the predictions of non-teleoligcal evolution have been satisfied by the evidence, while teleology and the marks of rational thought are absent.  Thus we stick with the evidence, no matter how much theology attempts to intrude into science.

--But the ID proponents are skeptical that such mechanisms are sufficient to explain the origin and diversity of life.--

Huh, and very few of them are biologists.  We do have the Moonie Jonathan Wells, and biochemist Behe, but Dembski is a philosopher/mathematician, Phil Johnson is an attorney, Paul Nelson is a philosopher (who can't answer the questions we pose on PT), you have a host of engineers, physicians, and the like, while nearly all biologists are satisfied with the direction in which research is going.  Where is the justification for their "skepticism"?

--In their search for a more satisfying hypothesis, they are willing to consider all possible explanations—including some form of superior intelligence.--

Really.  Why don't they answer our questions?  You know, we discuss these issues on numerous forums, while ID forums are often closed to us.  Still, they could answer our questions--if they had answers.  I see that you don't supply any answers either, but merely try to claim that ID is scientific without your telling us any way in which they actually do science, or conform to science practices.

I have yet to see them consider anything but a "superior intelligence," and this all without any kind of cause and effect relationship being proposed.  I've brought this up in at least one post, and instead of you dealing with such a necessary condition to do science, you're claiming that I wrote what I didn't write, and claiming that you wrote something other than to what I actually responded.

--I fail to see how that makes them unscientific.--

Of course you do, because you don't understand to what we're objecting.  We're objecting to the claim that intelligence was involved without evidence either for an inscrutable designer (one not acting like us, but which can nonetheless be seen to act in ways that produce what we see), or evidence for the marks of design that we use to understand whether or not an object was designed by humans.

We'll consider any investigable cause that leads to observable effects.  We're not willing to "consider" a "cause" that cannot be shown to produce what we see, or which perhaps does design in an intelligible manner, yet doesn't produce the patterns seen in biological change.  It's the evidence that fails, and you completely fail to deal with our actual objections.

--In fact, I think it displays an open-mindedness that seems sorely lacking on the part of their purely Darwinian counterparts—including,--

If they and you were open-minded, you'd actually deal with scientific issues, not monotonously droning on about the "open-mindedness" of those who fail to utilize the methods of either modern science or modern philosophy.

--if I may say so, Mr. Glen A. Davidson.--

You cannot legitimately say so.  I've made the point that I am completely willing to consider anything that fits the accepted methods of forensics and of science (which cannot honestly exclude the "supernatural" except by defining the "supernatural" as something totally unreachable with legitimate epistemologies).  We're (at least not those of us steeped in philosophy) not denying that a superior intelligence could never operate in the biosphere, only that there have to be some observed match between the purported cause and the "effects" that we see in organisms.

Open-mindedness entails giving up meaningless claims when they have proven to be meaningless.  That is why I am open-minded, and your IDists are not---they cling to a "cause" for which they claim no causal markers, for effects which are predicted by non-teleological evolutionary theory.  Hanging onto a non-falsifiable "hypothesis" is not open-minded at all.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com2kxyc7 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Bob O'H on Sep. 16 2007,06:46

In amongst Glen's short and pithy replies, we have this:
< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-1275 >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dear Ben,

I see by the comments that you’ve ticked off a bunch of Darwinists. It’s interesting that they can only resort to calling you names. I just wanted to let you know that I applaud your willingness to put out the truth about the suppression of dissension. My bachelor’s degree is in electrical engineering. It’s interesting that none of the courses (taught in a secular university) which I took had anything to do with evolution. It was never even mentioned because engineering has to do with science, not science fiction. It saddens me that most of your critics have never stopped for a moment and questioned what they believe. I have studied both evolution and ID. What are those people afraid of? GOD.

Keep up the good work.

Josh
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Savour, just savour.

Bob
Posted by: someotherguy on Sep. 16 2007,18:19

Quote (Bob O'H @ Sep. 16 2007,06:46)
In amongst Glen's short and pithy replies, we have this:
< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-1275 >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dear Ben,

I see by the comments that you’ve ticked off a bunch of Darwinists. It’s interesting that they can only resort to calling you names. I just wanted to let you know that I applaud your willingness to put out the truth about the suppression of dissension. My bachelor’s degree is in electrical engineering. It’s interesting that none of the courses (taught in a secular university) which I took had anything to do with evolution. It was never even mentioned because engineering has to do with science, not science fiction. It saddens me that most of your critics have never stopped for a moment and questioned what they believe. I have studied both evolution and ID. What are those people afraid of? GOD.

Keep up the good work.

Josh
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Savour, just savour.

Bob
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If I had to guess, I'd say that's a not-so-deep cover troll.  There are just too many telling indicators--the mention of the engineering degree, the arrogance, the overt ID-is-about-God comment, the complete nonsensical reasoning. . .etc.  Yep, that's got to be a troll.  I hope.  ???
Posted by: slpage on Sep. 17 2007,11:17

Quote (someotherguy @ Sep. 16 2007,18:19)
Quote (Bob O'H @ Sep. 16 2007,06:46)
In amongst Glen's short and pithy replies, we have this:
< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/08/21/bens-blog/#comment-1275 >
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dear Ben,

I see by the comments that you’ve ticked off a bunch of Darwinists. It’s interesting that they can only resort to calling you names. I just wanted to let you know that I applaud your willingness to put out the truth about the suppression of dissension. My bachelor’s degree is in electrical engineering. It’s interesting that none of the courses (taught in a secular university) which I took had anything to do with evolution. It was never even mentioned because engineering has to do with science, not science fiction. It saddens me that most of your critics have never stopped for a moment and questioned what they believe. I have studied both evolution and ID. What are those people afraid of? GOD.

Keep up the good work.

Josh
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Savour, just savour.

Bob
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If I had to guess, I'd say that's a not-so-deep cover troll.  There are just too many telling indicators--the mention of the engineering degree, the arrogance, the overt ID-is-about-God comment, the complete nonsensical reasoning. . .etc.  Yep, that's got to be a troll.  I hope.  ???
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I wouldn't < be so sure.... >
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 20 2007,14:51

Ruloff, of "Expelled", came to Ben's blog with the same tired and slimy list of the "persecuted".  He can't come up with a single new thing to say, which I suppose is why he's dumb enough to make the movie.  Anyway, I made a response which is now pending:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Do you think this is some kind of fanciful conspiracy theory? Google the names of Richard Sternberg, Caroline Crocker, Guillermo Gonzalez, Dean Kenyon and Bill Dembski and see what you find. These distinguished scientists have suffered severe consequences for questioning Darwinian theory and there are hundreds, if not thousands, more. --

Naw, it isn't even a competent conspiracy theory.

I'm waiting for Ruloff and Stein to put out the film about how Holocaust deniers are suppressed and persecuted, along with JAD, homeopathy, geocentrists, and believers in UFO abductions.  Do you suppose that it is wrong for academia ever to prefer a well-substantiated position over one that is seriously lacking in substance, Ruloff?  How is keeping pseudoscientists from teaching religiously-based nonsense any worse than the fact that I don't get to be the preacher of a church?

Is MOND suppressed just because string theory has a much stronger position in academia?  Is Wicca persecuted by academia because the latter explains the motions of the heavens through physics instead of the wills of the gods?  Is religious persecution behind modern critiques of medieval metaphysics?  And is it even suppression at all in the general sense to tell a guy to quit pretending that Baylor has an "ID informatics lab" when it doesn't?

Of course the only real complaint these whiners have is that science and the rest of academia are doing what they're supposed to do, eliminating "hypotheses" that don't work, while teaching and using the ones that do work.  ID has been answered (despite its not having anything in its favor from the beginning), something that Ben Stein, Kevin Miller, and Ruloff don't discuss, and no reasonable responses have been forthcoming from these guys.  

ID has been considered by academics much better than many genuine scientific hypotheses have been, for the obvious reason, that ID has political clout.  Indeed, ID has to some extent distorted science already, by taking attention away from concepts that follow the scientific method, and diverting time and resources with cheesy arguments and attempts to change science into something that accommodates unevidenced magic.  Thus ID has managed to suppress science, while ID has open to it all of the venues that it belongs in, including the internet and the churches.

The complaint, in other words, is that science comes to the conclusions expected of it, eventually discarding whatever does not comport with scientific practices and evidence.  Their problem is that science works, and it passes judgment upon pseudosciences like ID.

Indeed, one should not forget that "the father of Intelligent Design" denied that HIV causes AIDS, no matter how abundantly the evidence indicates otherwise.  And of course HIV denial is frowned upon in the universities, even though HIV denial doesn't even exist as a Wedge for religion.  How much more ought we to oppose ID in the centers of learning than even HIV denial, considering that ID not only is completely fallacious as science, but exists expressly in order to oppose the highly successful methods of science?  

I do thank Ruloff for so completely exposing the religious nature of ID, however.  To be sure, it was evident to anyone who can think, but then Phillip Johnson explicitly stated it in the Wedge document.  Yet this whole complaint that we're "suppressing" a "science" because it is in fact religious, is helpful to those of us who wish to maintain the First Amendment and freedom--at least it is in the legal realm.

Believe me, a Holocaust denier would be much less welcome to Baylor than an IDist is.  And Ruloff doesn't raise a single objection to shunting out those egregious malingerers.  Why should he?  We have evidence that the Holocaust happened, and the deniers have no evidence that it did not.  Likewise, we have evidence that evolution happened according to mostly known non-teleological processes, and IDists have no evidence for the teleological processes that they claim were involved (which they claim even though they deny that we should look for evidence for teleology in organisms).  But supposedly we're suppressing the one, while Ruloff et al. don't care that we're "suppressing" the other one, and indeed, should complain if we didn't do so.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Henry J on Sep. 20 2007,23:06

In other words, they're being attacked by the educated segment of society!

Henry
Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 21 2007,08:39

DT, YEC:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-138087 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
55

DaveScot

09/21/2007

5:22 am
jerry

I certainly understand where you’re coming from. Recall I’m the one who wrote a post here nearly two years ago saying I was going to delete anything that attempted to dispute common ancestry and an old earth.

That said, I can’t say I’m convinced that the YEC contingent is wrong. We appear to live in a universe that is governed by immutable physical laws and everything is understandable by those laws. Certainly if we apply these laws backward in time we see an old universe and common descent. Appearances however can be deceptive. There’s nothing that proves the universe, the laws that govern it, and its apparent history weren’t created any time from a moment ago to billions of years ago. Consider that time and space now appear to be digital (pixelated). There is a Planck length and a Planck time. This is strikingly like how computer simulations (artificial realities) are constructed. A master clock ticks and at each clock tick a set of rules are applied and the model is updated from one state to the next. The programmer (or hardware designer) chooses the clock rate and rules that apply. He may change both the rules and the clock rate at his whim. He can also start the simulation running with any arbitrary set of initial conditions. He can also stop and start the model at any time. If we as conscious human beings are constructs inside such a model how would we be able to know if what we observe is real or the machinations of some entity outside the model? All we can do is look for inconsistencies (violations) of the rules that govern the model. So far I don’t think we’ve categorically observed any inconsistencies but since the apparent history of the model, viewed from inside the model, is manipulable by an outside agency we really have no way of knowing if the clock was stopped and the rules were changed and the state of the system changed to make the new rules appear to be the rules that were there all along.

ID is basically a tentative finding of an inconsistency. If RM+NS is the true source of organic evolution it is so statistically unlikely to have generated the patterns that we see that it warrants a conclusion that there’s an entity involved who either stacked the deck (set up the initial conditions and laws to produce a certain outcome), which is the deist position of esteemed minds like Einstein, or there’s an entity that intervened over the course of time to steer the course of events towards a desired outcome. I prefer the deist position - the deck was stacked one time and the immutable rules take over from there in a clockwork universe not because it must be that way but because it makes the universe rational and predictable.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: k.e on Sep. 21 2007,08:50



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That said, I can’t say I’m convinced that the YEC contingent is wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oops the little yellow ID clown car with the red wheels just reversed into the Big Tent back door ....again. All the YEC clowns clap and jump in the air.HONK

The audience waits for the next act.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 21 2007,09:24

Shock, horror, Demski comes out against Common Descent. Davetard who previously wrote, the retracted:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I will remind everyone again - please frame your arguments around science. If the ID movement doesn't get the issue framed around science it's going down and I do not like losing. The plain conclusion of scientific evidence supports descent with modification from a common ancestor. You are certainly welcome to have other opinions based on faith in something other than science but I'd ask that you go to a religious website with them if you must talk about it.

You certainly don't have to agree here with descent with modification from a common ancestor but I'm going to start clamping down on anyone positively arguing against it. It's simply counter-productive to our goals and reinforces the idea that ID is religion because nothing but religion argues against descent with modification from a common ancestor. What we are fighting is the idea that the modification was unguided. ID can fight that without ever leaving the battleground of plain scientific conclusions. If we try to argue against anything else we're are (sic) going to lose. Plain and simple. No buts about it. There's only one gaping vulnerability in the commonly accepted evolutionary narrative we can exploit successfully and that's the bit about it being unplanned.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



now agrees with him.

GOOD DOGGIE DAVE!
*scratches DT's ears*
DOES DAVEY WANT A CHEESY POOF? BEG...BEG... GOOD BOY!
Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 21 2007,09:32

Aw, worng thread.

Sternberger Story, Fix puh-lease?
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 21 2007,10:32

What a surprise, the stupid have to defame and lie where they can't hope to know anything (archiving again):



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--In reply to Glen’s claim: “The “father of Intelligent Design” and HIV denier to whom I was referring is Phillip Johnson. Is it at all surprising that Johnson has advocated more than one pseudoscience, not just ID?”

It is hard for me to understand how educated persons could be so misinformed and resort to character assassination such as this. Se the above post.--

It's bizarre that people like Jbagail condemn themselves in just about every post, by dishonestly projecting their own faults onto others.  Johnson's past opposition is well-known by those informed enough to comment on these matters, which obviously Jbagail is not.  Here's one example, for the woefully ignorant defamatory pro-ID anti-thinkers:

--Given the 10 years of total lack of progress on AIDS, the billions of dollars that have been wasted, the human heart-ache that this issue has caused so many Americans, it seems only sensible that we should re-examine the question of what really causes AIDS. At issue here are not only the lives of those diagnosed with AIDS who are being treated improperly, but also of those who are tormented by the fear of AIDS-for themselves and their children. We can't allow the scientific bureaucrats at the CDC and NIH to prevent this reappraisal from happening. *--

This was written by:  "By Kary B. Mullis, Phillip E. Johnson & Charles A. Thomas Jr."  The whole piece may be found here:

< http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/kmsdtrib.htm >

I should mention that not only do IDists threaten lives by condemning the primary organizing principle in biology, evolution by investigable means, but the HIV denial in which Johnson engaged even more directly threatened the lives of people, especially in Africa.

Fortunately, science has "suppressed" such nonsense here thus far, or in other words, it has discharged its duty to abandon useless ideas whenever and wherever they have proven to be useless.  Jbagail chooses to be dishonest about this, as well as most other related matters.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 23 2007,12:31

< http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/12965.html >
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Sep. 27 2007,06:26

The < NY Times > has a run at the controversy (how dishonest were the makers of "Expelled" when they approached scientists about filming interviews?). PZ gets his name in the paper; Ben Stein gets more free publicity for his wacko beliefs.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 27 2007,09:03

< http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin >


HT: Pharyngula.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 27 2007,09:06

From above..



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mr. Stein, a prolific author who has acted in movies like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and appeared on television programs including “Win Ben Stein’s Money” on Comedy Central, said in a telephone interview that he accepted the producers’ invitation to participate in the film not because he disavows the theory of evolution — he said there was a “very high likelihood” that Darwin was on to something — but because he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth.

He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called “From Darwin to Hitler.”


---------------------QUOTE-------------------




HITLER! Woo Hoo!

(I was hoping for "why are their still monkeys")
Posted by: improvius on Sep. 27 2007,09:36

I added myself to the "Expelled" mailing list a while ago.  This hit my inbox last night (I'm too lazy to rebuild the links):



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Hey there,

Dairek here. I'm the director of Student Outreach for Motive Entertainment (the promotions company working with Expelled).

Wanted to let you know of a HUGE event coming up. It's called "The God Delusion" debate. Richard Dawkins will be debating John Lennox. It's probably the biggest debate on this subject in years. It's at the University of Alabama Birmingham NEXT WED, Oct 3. We're going to hold an Expelled rally before the event happens.

SO, if you happen to live around Birmingham, then please go be a part of the Expelled rally. If you're not in the Birmingham area, then perhaps you'd consider writing an op-ed in your local paper about the debate and/or issue. Dawkins is featured quite heavily in Expelled and has become one of the leading "faces" of Atheism.

Make sure you stay tuned in for the latest updates, and add this email address to your “safe” inbox so we don’t get tossed into the junk e-mail pile.

AND don't forget to help us spread the word . . . Here’s a couple different ways to tell your friends: CLICK HERE and enter your friends’ e-mail addresses. They will be sent an introductory email to the film. CLICK HERE to send your friends an e-card about the film
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Henry J on Sep. 27 2007,12:04

Quote (Richardthughes @ Sep. 27 2007,09:06)
From above..



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[...] — he said there was a “very high likelihood” that Darwin was on to something — but because he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth.
[...]

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, a complete explanation of life of Earth would have to also include geology, astronomy physics, astrophysics, cosmology, climatology, etc., so in that sense evolution alone doesn't explain everything about life. Though that might not be what he meant?

Henry
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 29 2007,22:10

They finally have a new blog up at Ben's site, about as pathetic as the first one.  Well, I'm going to continue to archive, for I don't know what they're going to do with the blog in the end:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
--Actually, the authentic victims in this story are those scientists who have been “expelled” for the offense of merely acknowledging that intelligent design exists within nature.--

Does it ever occur to you that you need to back up your claims?  Or are you just too IDist to care about truth, and evidence?  

Yes, we've heard that extremely tiresome and extremely well-answered claim extremely many times before now.  The mere fact that you've never come up with the slightest bit of solid evidence for it indicates that you're not only uninterested in science, but also that you're uninterested in telling the truth.

You want to know what I think about the complaints over the interviews?  I think they're legit, but not very important.  What?  Someone's making  a film about religion and science, and it ended up having a viewpoint, particularly one in favor of theocracy?  What a shock!  The name change is almost to be expected with films, and <i>Crossroads</i> should have been considered to be a working title by the participants.

Greater honesty from theists might be expected, if these weren't intellectually dishonest proponents of ID.  But the ellipses in their answers, in their "science," and in their dealings with others should be expected when they're opposed to the modern science that was worked out mainly within Christian societies (hardly only by Christians, or even theists, however).

Fine, I've taken care of that, from my perspective.

Now back to the gross dishonesty of the film's producers and writers.  Here's Ruloff's defamation of what is, as far as anybody knows, an honest man and scientist whose work Ruloff couldn't hope to understand, Francis Collins:

--Mr. Ruloff also cited Dr. Francis S. Collins, a geneticist who directs the National Human Genome Research Institute and whose book, “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” (Simon & Schuster, 2006), explains how he came to embrace his Christian faith. Dr. Collins separates his religious beliefs from his scientific work only because “he is toeing the party line,” Mr. Ruloff said.

That’s “just ludicrous,” Dr. Collins said in a telephone interview.--

< http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin >


And this is supposed to be an honest film?  Not a chance.  Francis Collins, who is attacked by the likes of PZ Myers and other "new atheists" who are intent on faulting religion and not just pseudoscience, does his work of gene sequencing well within the evolutionary paradigm (how could anybody do otherwise and be intellectually honest?), writes books on how he finds faith and science compatible, and sticks up solidly in favor of modern evolutionary theory, and all we get from Ruloff is this slander of the good man.  

By the way, Francis Collins does speak out in favor of cosmological ID and for a mind behind human morality, neither of which is exactly welcome in the scientific community--and for good reason, I might add.  He apparently is willing to buck the "Establishment" in some areas (areas where his competency does not lie, I might add), yet Ruloff acts as if his agreement with modern evolutionary theory is just some slimy suck-up to the powers that be.  These IDists have no shame, much like Joe McCarthy who knew the "communists" without taking the trouble to bring forward any evidence, or even intelligent argumentation.

Of course, Ruloff probably knows about as much about the history of the acceptance of science among religious folk in the Catholic and mainline Protestant traditions as he knows about science itself.  Tell me, Ruloff, why Father Coyne writes in favor of science and against pseudoscience?  Why do Catholic biology departments all across the country oppose "Intelligent Design," when clearly they rely on their Church to shield them from the faux persecution trumped up in this film?  

Indeed, why do many biologists in fundamentalist schools chafe under the restrictions of their religious leaders?  Wouldn't they simply accept ID without concern, if there was anything to it?  I know about at least one of these, because I went to a religious college (Walla Walla University, was Walla Walla College when I attended) for my undergraduate degree.  A number of your better scientists there were frankly evolutionist, from biologists to physicists, for all of the reasons that we've laid out at this blog and elsewhere.

Indeed, if Ruloff, Miller, and Ben Stein were able to show any kind of illegitimate suppression of their unevidenced pseudoscience, they'd be answering the questions I asked in the other thread, namely, why do the taxonomy and phylogeny of prokaryotes and of eukaryotes differ considerably and according to what would be expected from the known "naturalistic" evolutionary mechanisms, if indeed they were "designed"?  And why were pterosaur, bird, and bat wings were all derived from legs, and not from first principles or from extant (in the case of birds and bats) wings?  To say that it makes design sense to make wings out of legs is merely ridiculous.

None of you can answer those questions.  None of you has the slightest evidence FOR design at all.  Yet you demand that we treat ID as science, thus revealing your autocratic tendencies and desires to force unscientific beliefs into the science of Newton, Galileo, and Einstein.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



One more:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As it happens, Ben Stein doesn't seem particularly impressed by the ID nonsense either.  Not that it really should matter, given that he neither has expertise in science, nor has sense enough to recognize the importance of keeping pseudoscience from being forced into the university science departments.  Nevertheless, this is what NY Times reports of Stein's response:

--...said in a telephone interview that he [Ben] accepted the producers’ invitation to participate in the film not because he disavows the theory of evolution — he said there was a “very high likelihood” that Darwin was on to something — but because he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth.

He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called “From Darwin to Hitler.--

< http://www.reason.com/blog/printer/122721.html >

Now this is a bizarre notion, though one pushed by IDists often enough.

Ben needs to study the history of Germany versus that of England and the United States.  Both of the latter have had and continue to have their faults, but they were the Enlightenment countries (the US in particular was founded on Enlightenment principles), and thus were not fertile ground for the nonsense of the Nazis (it is believed that occult beliefs played a large role in fostering Nazi anti-Semitism, for instance).  Germany was open to such ideas, for a number of reasons, naturally (WWI, depression, etc.), but especially because the Enlightenment hadn't really taken hold in Germany.

From Germany came Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger (actually, Kant, too, but Kant's pro-enlightenment notions had been quickly turned into Romantic thought by people like Hegel and Heidegger).  Of course great scientists came from Germany as well, but the overall attitude of Germany was Romantic, and favored "spirit" over theories about hard evidence.

Darwin, by contrast, was in the tradition of Hume, Newton, and a tradition that in both the judiciary and in science favored evidence over "feelings" and vague notions like ID or, indeed, the German Haeckel's magical notions.  Among the intellectuals of the Anglo world, Darwinism was taken up almost as a matter of course (most religious people in power did not oppose it), and despite a fair amount of Victorian notions in Darwin's writings, including racist ideas, evolutionary theory was part of far saner societies than what appeared in Germany and in Italy.

Evolutionary theory needed to move on from Darwin, in part because he included Victorian prejudices, and it most certainly did (one reason we don't like yahoos like Ruloff calling today's evolution "Darwinism"), for it was evidence-based science and thus became well-integrated with other science, like Mendelism.  Meanwhile, the non-Enlightenment societies of Germany and the USSR largely rejected the "materialistic" ideas of Mendel and of Darwin.  Did this itself make them the totalitarian nightmares that they were?  No, of course not, however, bad ideas in science frequently are associated with bad ideas in government, and Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR were no exceptions.

In spite of all their faults, the UK and the US remained beacons of Englightenment, as the rejectors of the Enlightenment brought us war and genocides.  

Stein really ought to know about all of this much better than he does, for he ought to know a little about Jews and the improvement of their lot as the Enlightenment took hold.  Medieval theocracies were cruel to Jews, and actually, to many many Christians as well.  The Enlightenment brought relief to most everybody, other than that we had to fight and oppose the anti-Enlightenment societies of Germany and the USSR.

So now what does Ben do?  He attacks the Enlightenment itself through this movie, claiming that those who have no evidence and only desires to impose their will onto science, have been persecuted.  You want Hitler, or at least theocratic dominance over what should be free science?  Then keep this up, Ben.

The Enlightenment is what demanded evidence before one is determined to be guilty, and the Enlightenment is what demands that science remain based in evidence and not in the wishes of Romantics and of atavistic theocrats.  As ID's Wedge Document points out, ID is really only a way of getting rid of Enlightenment ideas (it doesn't call them that, but it is what they are), and hence the way to attack both our Constitution and the science that America needs to compete.

If you don't know science, Ben, at least try boning up some on history.  Attacking the Enlightenment is the way to Hitler, as well as to other less odious but still objectionable impositions upon humanity.  Force science to accept "standards" that reject the need for legitimate evidence, and not only have you destroyed the First Amendment, you have destroyed the Declaration of Indepence as well, and all that gave rise to freedom of thought and of science.

There you go.  You're free, of course, to oppose the Allies and their anti-fascist standards, but if you succeed in your gambit, you had better not count on having freedom for much longer.  

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 02 2007,00:06

Another half-wit with just enough learning to get everything wrong shows up at the "Expelled" blog:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It's nice of the philosophically ignorant "Post-secular PhD" to tell us all about science and philosophy.  Of course it really has almost nothing to do with actual philosophy, science, or the bases for our judicial system.  Indeed, with his disregard for the "intersubjective" soundness of science, we could hardly do anything in science, and we may as well forget about "proving" anyone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Here's some of his "wisdom":

--[Science] almost always requires a deep commitment to a set of principles, laws, and practices in the absence of conclusive “proof” (i.e. faith);--

What a bizarre term for the well-honed understandings of mind worked out in philosophy and in science--faith.  Science, like the related forensics, exists in order to be able to decide matters on something other than faith, which was too much relied-upon in medieval times.

Anyone who's actually read what the more prolific pro-science posters have written, instead of just assuming something that isn't true based on his unwarranted faith like "PhD" did, would recognize that we do not claim that science is based upon "conclusive proof" (not completely true, since mathematical proofs are used, but these rely on "postulates" and "axioms" which cannot be proven).  We rely on the best evidence, and yes, we also rely on the best principles, laws, and practices which have been subjected to skepticism and scrutiny.  They are not "proved" as such, however they have been demonstrated, something that a scientist worth his salt would mention.

--and cannot operate without dogma.--

No, we cannot operate <b>with dogma.</b>  This is why I have no reason to believe the claims you make of being a scientist.  Everything is at least theoretically in doubt, although some principles and "laws" have been very well demonstrated in the areas where they can be tested.  If scientists often reveal their biases, it is completely wrong to say of science as a whole that it operates with dogma.  It uses whatever has proven to be sound after being subjected to tests and questioning, the only legitimate way in which to proceed.  Dogma would totally undermine science because it would destroy the necessary questions of our "intersubjective" agreements and evidentiary processes.

--Furthermore, how well a theory fits the data is often not the main reason for its acceptance or dismissal.--

How well the theory fits the data is indeed the main reason for its acceptance or dismissal, so long as "fit" is understood in scientific terms of causality (in classical science) and the principles that have been shown to work.

--Darwinian evolution took root despite a fundamental deficiency (the lack of any evidence for hereditary material).--

That wasn't a "fundamental deficiency," which you'd know if you were any kind of competent scientist.  First of all, there was indeed evidence for hereditary material, in that parents produced offspring much like themselves.  Darwin utilized the empirical processes of artificial selection as an analogy with natural selection.  The chemical, and what we now call the "genetic", bases for the known hereditary effects were not known, but that something was transmitted was indubitable.

--It took another century to discover the structure of DNA, but that didn’t stop scientists from holding to the theory.--

You totally shifted the issue at stake from what you first wrote to these non sequiturs.  You made the illegitimate claim that scientists accept theories not because of their fit with the data, but for other reasons.  Then you complain about the deficiencies of genetic knowledge (incompetently, I might add) in Darwin's day, as if that meant that "Darwinism" wasn't the best fit to the data.  That doesn't follow in the least.

The point of "Darwinism" (in that time the term was fairly appropriate, but I use scare quotes because we've moved so far beyond Darwin's original theory) was to fit the data as well as was possible at the time.  Which it did.  For your claim about "Darwinism" being accepted without it fitting the data best to have any kind of legitimacy, you'd have to show that there was another scientific theory which fit the data better.  And you seem even to be unaware of this necessity in science.

The fact is that "Darwinism" was a theory of change based upon obvious, yet poorly understood, processes of hereditary.  It fit the data because it explained life without resort to a teleology which cannot be shown in life the life we see, which has no apparent or demonstrable purpose.  "Darwinism" explains how organisms are adapted without any sort of rational planning in evidence (as we'd expect from "design"), and with "competing purposes" evident in organisms (hence no overall "purposes" beyond reproduction).  Evolutionary theory explains why Linnaeus and Aristotle felt compelled to treat organisms with homologies as if they were related--the reason being because they are!

In a way, "Darwinism" predicted that discrete hereditary information exists in organisms, for evolution by natural selection (plus other processes) couldn't occur (in life's context, that is) otherwise.  In that sense, and not in the sense of giving us any of the details, Mendel's findings were predicted by "Darwinism".  Instead of "PhD" being impressed that "Darwinism" would rely upon the kind of conservative yet "randomly" alterable molecule such as DNA turned out to be, he tries to claim that the theory's prescience was actually a liability.

Well, it wasn't, as anyone with a smattering of knowledge of the philosophy of science knows.  Many theories begin without having some of their core requirements fulfilled by observation, and later data fills these in.  Did Einstein's theory of relativity have the necessary evidence of light-bending by gravity when he proposed it?  Of course not, and the evidence that light is bent by gravity showed that his already explanatory theory was likely the proper one.  

Darwin actually did have a good deal more evidence in hand when he wrote <i>Origin of Species</i> than Einstein did.  Hence the acceptance of his theory did not need to wait on further observations (to tell the truth, Darwin's mechanism wasn't fully accepted until the 20th century, but it probably should have been, and was accepted in part by much of biology even earlier).  

DNA and its associated mechanisms (including repair) turned out to be exactly the kind of molecule needed for "Darwinian" evolution to work.  As such, it ought to be considered as vindication of the mechanisms of evolution elucidated by Darwin and others.  And thus, far from being a reason to fault those who were intelligent enough to recognize the importance of natural selection, it indicates that those who insisted on cause and effect processes in biology were correct, and that the people who relied on magic and "vitalism" were as wrong as all who prefer wish-fulfillment to the processes of science.  Or those who can't understand the proper relationship between evidence, science, and philosophy (philosophy must be based on evidence as well, ultimately, and not to dictate the equalities that some neo-scholastics assume).

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 02 2007,21:40

Can this guy actually think that he's clever?  Anyway, it's quite likely the same halfwit I tackled last night, trying to be "clever" where he can't be competent.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
<blockquote>2nd. this is in response to Glen Davidson who will no doubt pounce on my primitive remarks. hey, call me reckless.</blockquote>

Nah, ignorant and incompetent will do.

--i do apologize to everyone else for this because it is way off topic but could prove to be entertaining to some so get your popcorn and that stale diet dr. pepper and read on.--

Yeah, that's right, it's way off topic, and you're too incapable of any insight to actually address anything I wrote.  Hence a long ad hominem attack, none of it honest or substantive.

--Seriously though, you are a fantastic spokesperson for Darwinian evolution…and unresolved rage my man,--

I deal with the emotionally committed who can't make an intellectual case on their own level, at the level of emotion.  Of course you wouldn't understand me, you know nothing about me and are intent only on trying to defame whatever you cannot comprehend.

--but what a wealth of knowledge! WOW!--

Yes, quite unlike yourself, I don't ramble on stupidly about what I don't know.

--I’d love to have an evolution party with you sometime. We could talk Darwin and you could unpack the mysteries of the universe to me and chop a few heads off in the process. woo hoo!--

Wow, clever.  Who'd think to imply that we who defend the Enlightenment are axe murderers.  Oh, except for the rest of the herd who has no capacity for making substantive comments.

--you seem to get around the blog sites too so i’m sure we could go over your “Davidson’s Top 5 Slams” and boast about all the idiots you exposed.--

You'd be on it.  No, not really, you're pretty weak as substanceless maligners go.  I'd put you in the top 50, though, if I cared to document biting gnats.

--do you have them taped on your wall or just saved on your hard drive?--

Actually, I rarely start any of these brawls.  You missed that, didn't you?  True, I hit the "Prof", because he's claiming expertise in an area where he is so clearly lacking.  But I don't do ad homs, I just have to respond often enough to people like you who hate not being able to provide the sorts of evidence that we do.

--i know you believe you’re fine and you’re only upset at the stupidity of that scientist who must be a liar and an idiot savant who happens to help cure lethal diseases but seriously, man. you act like he attacked your belief system or something…weird.--

Oh yes, we know the game.  The creo or IDist attacks scientists, implying that they are liars for maintaining actual standards.  Then when we realize that the snake oil is convincing enough people and we raise the alarm, you attack us for actually responding to a boatload of defamatory comments and attempts to impose theocracy upon the nation.  Tragically, such an obvious and dishonest ploy works on enough people.

--What do you do, cowboy? something noble i’m sure. something that helps and doesn’t hurt which is why you have to take all your aggression out on people you’ll never meet.--

Here's the dolt who can do nothing but attack me for responding to the anti-Enlightenment push, ascribing his own ill tendencies to me.  The fact is that I haven't used particularly strong language, rather less strong than many on both sides have used, you're merely trying to put down what you find impossible to answer.

--what are you so afraid of boss? why do you have to belittle?--

Because you harm people.  Can you get that?  I fear those who would use power to overcome free inquiry, freedom of religion, and the freedom of speech.  In fact just now you are effecting a de facto attempt to curtail my freedom of speech (legal, but immoral), by making a whole lot of dishonest claims in your ad hominem attack.  If you were concerned about honest dialog, you'd engage me on the substance.

--that’s not exactly the best way to educate or inspire, but i’m sure you know that. you do want to educate and inspire right? that’s why you’re standing for something right? its not like you’re learning all this just to justify your rightness and be better than others or anything.--

What education do you bring to this thread?  I don't employ the slimy tactics that you do, I keep it honest.  And no, I do not try to educate people such as yourself, whose hatred of competence combines with your unwarranted egoism to try to put down whatever you can't counter with legitimate arguments.

I do educate.  But I also know how to fight those who will use whatever tactics they can to undermine the integrity of science.

--i mean that would be lame and you don’t have to time for that you have a difference to make. --

Apparently you're really addressing yourself, whatever the pronouns you misuse.

--after all, anyone arrogant enough to tell another scientist whom he doesn’t know from Adam (or grandaddy rock - presludge you know ;)), who obviously has well thought out arguments and ideas, that he isn’t “worth his salt” as a scientist and doesn’t have “a smattering of knowledge” about science or philosophy must be on the brink of an enormous breakthrough in science or medicine.--

Yeah, I knew it was "Prof" again, not willing to show himself, and completely unable to back up his erroneous claims. Sorry, I studied philosophy a great deal, and I have no business treating some ignorant claptrap as if they were "well-thought out" arguments.  They're not, they're pop philosophy, and the call of every honest scientist to actually look at the evidence remains the only proper response to such post-modernist nihilism.

--no? maybe just the head professor at a well respected college changing his community? oh, well i’m sure it’s something worth while.--

And it is a distraction from the issues you're trying to avoid.  You haven't even given your name.  Plus, the issues are laid bare on their own, and it is all too apparent that you wish to avoid the actual issues by bringing in irrelevancies--again because you lack the ability to deal with substance.

--by the way, thanks for proving that idiot “Phd”’s argument for him since he couldn’t do it on his own. you really hit those points home about science having to believe before it knows and all that.--

I guess when you run out of ad hominem attacks you resort to complete fictionalization of the exchange.  Well, you could hardly answer me, now could you?  After all, science is about questioning and skepticism, while your formulation is exactly the opposite, the falsehood that it is about dogma.

--don’t get me wrong. i had to work through all your hate toward your mom, society and that girl that dumped you in highschool that you never got over but seriously,--

Wow, that's really a new one.  Gee pop psychology when your pop philosophy fails you.  Make up a few lies, throw them out, hope that your flung feces work where your wits obviously do not.

--thanks. you really helped use that reverse psychology to drive the point home. did you do that on purpose?--

Even better, the old "reverse psychology" ploy.  Nice to have someone from the '70s visit me with his "profound insights".

--genius. congratulations again for defeating your own argument and actually supporting the other guys.--

Since you're apparently not too bright, I'll have to figure that you came up with that standard little feint by recognizing your own tactics here.  The whole mom and girlfriend thing, while standard empty rhetoric for witless drones, are more than likely to be your own story.

--nice work man.--

You'd mean that, if you were capable of understanding the issues.

--From Carnegie to Lincoln, its pretty common knowledge that the more you have to cut down someone else the less confident you are in yourself and your decisions.--

Gee, I bet you think that hate isn't the opposite of love, only apathy is, also.  Where'd you learn your "psychology", out of Playboys?  

Anyway, if your pop psychology is correct, it clearly cuts against you far more than myself, since I discussed issues and called the "Prof" as I saw him.  It really goes against the intelligence you claim when you suggest that somehow calling out an arrogant guy blabbing on about things he doesn't understand actually exhibits some kind of "need" to cut people down.  From Lincoln to Carnegie, competent people have used the proper words to describe the pompous and substanceless, people like yourself.

--You don’t have to be a scientist to know that. but you don’t care what other people think do you? least off all a lesser mortal like me. all i do is make people millionaires.--

The plaint of the truly pathetic.  'Why yes, I know how to make money, so my opinion about Darwin and DNA is worth something.'  Try that out on the truly stupid.  Come to think of it, I'd guess you do that a lot.  Well then, learn enough to differentiate between the stupid and those who see immediately through your ad hominem attacks.

--i don’t really know a lot about science. speaking of, got a client so have to go. u get clients Dr Glen?--

Gee, I wish I were a suckup to the bourgeoisie like you.  I thought you had no substance, but by God, you have clients (so you say).  That changes everything.

--oh, and before you call me out for belittling you and therefore defeating my whole “confidence” vamp. remember this. i did it with style.--

Thanks for telling me, since I thought that was a collection of inane pop psychology and lame repetitions by the truly uncreative.  Hm, so that's style.  How could I have been so wrong as to think that T.S. Eliot had style, when it is really the babblings of a dull troll are what really counts as style?

--that’s the difference. take notes, cowboy. ciao.--

Write that down.  

Gee, you're turning into JAD (John A. Davison, who attacks the person instead of the substance because he has none of the latter--like you "Galactic") right before our eyes, with the same clicheed patter, the desperate attempts to claim "style" or some such thing for crude and derivative attacks, and of course, a total lack of substance coupled with the projection of your own failings onto others.

I bet you're going to try to claim some triumph for this sad little attempt at a slam, since you reveal yourself in your tired little attacks.  I, naturally, don't do anything like that, since responding to someone like you is too easy.  The only things I remember are the opportunities I have for discussing science and the philosophy of science in depth, while these feces-flingers are answered and quickly forgotten (unless they haunt the forums with their raging impotence).

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 03 2007,13:44

This is actually some fairly interesting information, which someone named "Roger" found:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I ran across this information on the web (someone else did the work, I'm pointing out, but he only called himself "Roger"):

<blockquote>Domain Name: EXPELLEDTHEMOVIE.COM
  Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
  Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
  Referral URL: < http://domainhelp.opensrs.net >
  Name Server: NS1.FILMPR.COM
  Name Server: NS2.FILMPR.COM
  Status: ok
  Updated Date: 15-jun-2007
  Creation Date: 01-mar-2007
  Expiration Date: 01-mar-2008</blockquote>

< http://www.networksolutions.com/whois....vie.com >

So there you are, according to this apparently reliable site, "expelledthemovie.com" was registered in March, 2007.  PZ Myers was told that the movie would be <i>Crossroads</i> in April, 2007, as he wrote:

<blockquote>Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis.</blockquote>

< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....tar.php >

So how can the following be considered to be anything but misleading, on top of the misleading comments given to the interviewees?

<blockquote>The release references “Crossroads,” as a “tentative” title, if that’s OK? So just to set the record straight, the film was titled EXPELLED only after we began to see the disturbing pattern and shocking information that the footage reveals! So, thanks for the title guys, we couldn’t have done it without you! And we’re still considering using “Crossroads” for something else! Watch out.</blockquote>

Yes, it's true that they may have used <i>Crossroads</i> as a working or tentative title sometime prior to March 1, 2007, but clearly they knew by the time of PZ Myers' interview that they'd probably (or at the very least, very <i>possibly</i> would) go with "Expelled".  Otherwise, they wouldn't have registered the domain "expelledthemovie.com" then.

Now I'm not one who thinks the shenanigans of the producers of "Expelled" are anything to get too worked up about.  The pattern of dishonesty continued in this particular blog, however, hardly speaks well for them--although it's pretty much a constant factor in the promotion of ID, along with the steady whine about "persecution" coupled with dead silence whenever we request the evidence FOR "intelligent design" (as opposed to their attacks on MET).

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 04 2007,16:43

And another one, which will be broken up at "Expelled":  [oops, I meant to break it up, but didn't]



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The rather odd and disjointed composition of this particular blog entry has been commented upon by many.

Being a screed, however, it's not unexpected.  You know, so many of the standard put-downs of the opposition have to get in, so much persecution has to be claimed, and any of the requirements that the claims made on the blog as well as the claims made by IDists must be properly evidenced and argued must be shunted aside with a sort of tabloid rhetoric.

OK, but that's said, and it will be ignored on the other side because they (or most on that side who comment on these forums do, anyway) already "know" that I have to be wrong simply because I am on the other side.  So I'll leave that bit as an introduction that will receive the predictable reactions from the various factions, and will move on to some specific problems with what was written, beyond what I've (or anyone, IIRC) discussed in the past.  To be sure, the problems "go without saying," that is, they go without saying for the people who have learned about science and philosophy.  However, these problems should be mentioned for the sake of those who have either missed out through no fault of their own (elitism is far too rampant in this society), and for those who have simply not cared to learn prior to pontificating on these matters (I particularly mean those responsible for this film).

<blockquote>Actually, the <i>authentic</i> victims in this story are those scientists who have been “expelled” for the offense of merely <i>acknowledging</i> that intelligent <i>design</i> exists within nature.</blockquote>

The way italics are used above is odd.  However, one is probably justified to surmise that "acknowledging" is written and emphasized both to rhetorically (and without evidence) suggest that it is only sensible to claim that life is designed (despite the fact that this claim has never been established in a judicially or scientifically sound manner), and to try to void the normal scientific requirement that such claims need to be <b>evidenced</b>, not merely assumed and (supposedly) <i>acknowledged</i>.

In other words, rhetoric is used to bluster through the fact that ID has no evidence in its favor.  Call the IDists "victims" who are supposedly suppressed for "acknowledging" assumptions for which they are required in scientific practice to actually make an evidence-based case, and thereby you have successfully ignored the fact that ID doesn't meet the requirements for science--and for that reason alone do have their apologetics rejected, or, where that's not possible, ridiculed as being pseudoscience.

<blockquote>Our worldwide investigation over the last eighteen months revealed the <i>real</i> “miscasting.” </blockquote>

Your "investigation" consists in those committed to an <i>a priori</i> belief in a designer-God looking for reasons to attack those who maintain the proper and expected standards of science.  It is not an investigation so much as it is the use of your own confirmation bias as a way to fault those who disagree with you, and to affirm what you prejudicially assumed from the beginning.  A proper investigation would be made up of people who know the rules of evidence, not a right-wing actor/writer like Stein, a right-wing radio host like Miller, and a businessman such as Ruloff.  These people lack the perspective of judges, scientists, and others steeped in the processes of sorting out good ideas from bad ideas, rather they simplistically believe that just because science rules against ID that such judgments are tantamount to "suppression".

<blockquote>Namely, to the role of <i>“the unemployed,” or “discredited,”</i> that the cadre of elite antitheists assigns any scientist or educator dissenting from the party line.</blockquote>

Oh yes, the tired old refrain of the believers in discredited beliefs.  You get that from every purveyor of crackpot "science", from faulty physics "theorists", to UFO believers, to the few geocentrists still kicking around, to Rousseau with his herbal cures which are supposedly being kept quiet by the conspiracy of the medical establishment (Weil is also in this category), and on to the people who just know that the CIA, KGB, President Johnson, or some other favorite enemy "really" killed Kennedy.

In fact it is true that there are many beliefs that are properly discredited.  Does Ruloff want "phlogiston theory" being taught to his children?  Should the claim that Prometheus made man out of earth and water be taught to Miller's kids?  We have the First Amendment to keep blatantly religious beliefs from being promoted by the government, which is why we don't teach Greek myths, nor the Judeo-Christian philosopher's God as being the "intelligent designer" of life, in science classes.

The only legitimate tactic to use when we call ID a discredited pseudoscience is for you to actually produce evidence in favor of your "hypothesis" (no, the "Explanatory Filter" does not provide evidence, it only attempts to impose a false dilemma into science standards).  The people behind the movie and this blog cannot or will not explain why the "designer" supposedly designed prokaryotes differently than eukaryotes (in prokaryotes, different genes in the same organism "speciate" at different times, is one example of what I'm talking about) and in line with known prokaryotic evolutionary mechanisms, nor do they tell me why vertebrate wings were "designed" from leg structures instead of from first principles, or from previously existing wings.  Therefore, the only legitimate conclusion to which I can come is that the <i>Expelled</i> folk cannot produce the evidence required for us to consider their "hypothesis" scientifically.  On the other side, we do have explanations for these phenomena, yet ID wants equal billing in academia when it has no explanation for these or other biological phenomena.

<blockquote>The party line being the “explanation” that random mutation is responsible for the extrusion of <i>every living thing on earth,</i> and in <i>record</i> time.</blockquote>

See now, I'd like to know who wrote "the extrusion of every living thing on earth."  It isn't even proper use of the word "extrusion".  Plastic objects, spaghetti, and Play-Do are what can be extruded.  Extrude a monkey, and you have nothing but a rather disgusting paste with bits of bone in it.

But that's just a complaint that the writing here is bad.  It's the science mistakes that really matter.

Anybody who knows enough to properly be commenting on evolutionary theory either way should recognize at once what a collosal mistake it is to say that the accepted explanation for life's diversity is "random mutation", as suggested by the above quote.  Random mutation doesn't even come up in Darwin's writings, though he did dealt with the variations that do arise without assuming a telos (goal or purpose) which is not in evidence.  Evolutionary theory is based on the obvious fact that "unselected" variations could never produce what we see in life, but rather, some sort of "selection" is absolutely crucial.

It is much easier for the author of this blog piece to attack the strawman that ID sets up (from Dembski's to the Discovery Institute's blog, this strawman is a commonplace of ID misrepresentation of biology) than it would be to discuss the evidence regarding evolutionary mechanisms.

Not content in making one rather egregious language mistake, and perhaps the greatest scientific error one could make about evolutionary theory, the author has to claim that living things were "extruded" in "record time."

I wonder how in the world 3-4 billion years of evolution could be mistaken to be "record time"?  The fact is that life took an amazingly long time even to get beyond single cells and (relatively) simple colonies of these cells.  The Cambrian "explosion" was fast by evolutionary standards, probably for reasons of genetic plasticity along with a dramatic rise in oxygen, but of course its results were fully in-line with what we'd expect from evolutionary mechanisms--evolutionary changes within the expected range of evolutionary constraints, and a whole lot of "primitive" (certainly primitive by comparison with many crown species) ancestors (or close relatives of the actual ancestors) of later organisms.

What is stunning is that IDists suppose that their designer took 3-4 billion years to come up with what we have today.  This is completely out of the range of anything we have ever seen a designer actually do.  Of course we have also never seen designers constrained by the evolutionary limitations that we see in life, nor any designers whose rationality couldn't be elucidated from their work.  IDists cannot point to any rational design or planning of organisms, which is why they try to change the subject.

Lord Kelvin tried to claim that evolution was impossible within the 20 million years or so that he allowed for the existence of the earth, when most biologists were nearly certain that it would take several hundred million years.  So there is nothing odd in the fact that life took so long to evolve.

It is this film that is trying to claim that their "designer" made life in a "record" amount of "time," indeed, in a time so much longer than the scale of all known design processes that it is impossible to conceive of the mechanisms involved in any such "design" (classical science requires so-called "mechanisms", another reason ID isn't science).  That no doubt is why this blog isn't even upholding the ID fiction that ID is not religious, because clearly their designer is God-like in both being inscrutable and in being omnipotent (I know of no IDist who doesn't claim that the "designer" also made the universe).  Isn't it a trifle odd that ID's "design" phase just happens to be within the range required for non-teleological evolution, and also that what we see in organisms is what would be expected of non-teleological evolution?

The following quote is from a different context than the foregoiong (if you want to see the context, just scroll to the beginning blog piece), and is aimed specifically at issues that I will not discuss.  There seems to be little doubt that it is also meant to be a comment about evolutionary ideas in general, which I will address:

<blockquote>Random mutation never ceases to <i>amaze</i>, though. One just can’t <i>predict</i> what will happen!</blockquote>

Again we have the improper claim that evolutionary theory is about nothing other than "random mutation".  What I want to discuss now, however, is the equally false claim that evolution can't "predict" what will happen.

That would be true if evolution were only about random mutation, of course (actually, physics would still yield some predictions, but they'd be biologically uninteresting, for there'd be no biology), or if it were caused by some design process and design goals unknown to us.  However, evolutionary theory is founded upon predictions which have been borne out by the evidence, as any theory must be.

Within known evolutionary constraints, the "nested hierarchy" found in taxonomy is indeed one of the founding predictions of evolutionary theory.  Aristotle and Linnaeus came up with taxonomies (Linnaeus' was far more complete) which grouped organisms in ways that looked a lot like genealogies do, and no one (other than creos and IDists claiming exceptions where their theologies are threatened) claims that genealogical patterns exist by "design".  Darwin (and earlier thinkers like Maupertuis who had similar ideas, but not the needed mass of evidence) made the rather obvious (by now) observation that the evidence that shows organisms to appear as if they were related should be understood as meaning that they are related.

That wasn't a "prediction" in the way that many outside of science consider the term to mean, however it counts as a prediction in science because such patterns are entailed by the theory and its context.

What amounts more to "prediction" in the vernacular sense is that evolutionary theory predicts the range of what transitional fossils must embody.  That's how we know that archaeopteryx is transitional (in point of fact, it is not the ancestor of today's birds, but it is thought most likely from morphological considerations to be about three cladistic branchings off from the actual ancestor).  ID cannot provide the criteria for deciding transitional fossils at all, for there are no known constraints on the supposed designer (unless we simply take MET's constraints as if they are the "designer's", clearly an ad hoc solution).  Hence there is something odd about an IDist like Behe accepting the fact that evolution occurred from the evidence, when the evidence for evolution can only be evidence for evolution if it is constrained by known evolutionary processes, and not when they are unconstrained by dint of some super-intelligent "designer" working for unknown purposes and via unknown capabilities.

The finding of Tiktaalik (a transitional between fish and amphibian) is one of the best examples of predicting both transitional form and timing, since the researchers who went to the expected "time strata" to find evidence about the evolutionary development of Tiktaalik's shoulder girdle and other tetrapod locomotive anatomy (a mere transitional was not what they were after, as some of these transitionals, such as Ichthyostega, were already known) found just the <i>type of</i> transitional for which they were looking--in the predicted range of strata.  I'd also point out that timing is only statistically predictable in evolution, for we do not know all of the contingencies involved.  However, the predicted ranges for transitional fossils is rather narrower than are the predicted times for most transitions (not that there aren't substantial constraints on most temporal <i>ranges</i>).

And of course, as I've mentioned a number of times, and already in this post, prokaryotes are predicted to evolve differently from how eukaryotes are predicted to evolve.  Prokaryote (I mention parenthetically that some object to the term "prokaryote", since it really only means "not-eukaryote" or "non-eukaryote".  However, it is often useful to be able to easily write "non-eukaryote" by writing "prokaryote") taxonomy is difficult, due to the great number of lateral transfers between closely related lines (and yes, like I mentioned, it's interesting that "genes speciate" separately in the same "species" of prokaryote) and lack of true sexual reproduction.  Vertebrates appear not to undergo much lateral gene transfer, so produce the wonderful phylogenetic trees so beloved of the teachers of evolution.

Indeed, the evolutionary patterns are significantly different between eukaryotes (actually, lateral gene transfers to insects from Wolbachia appear to be much more common than were expected in the past, yet sexual reproduction in insects seems to largely maintain the eukaryote patterns of evolution in these as well) and prokaryotes, agreeing with the predictions of MET (modern evolutionary theory).

Look, I could go on about evolutionary predictions, but I think that these are the very biggest predictions which have to work out predictively according to known mechanisms--and this is already a very long response to a few short and erroneous statements.  What I've mentioned already are crucial tests for whether or not MET works within our present ability to comprehend cause and effect, and the predictions are overwhelmingly borne out by the evidence (inevitably there are questions at the margins, as in any science, while the expected patterns are unquestionable).

ID, by contrast, tries to sneek into science by emphasizing the remaining questions, and not by coming up with any kind of prediction or evidence that design has happened over the course of evolution.  Design ought to be detectable, indeed, for we have tests for "engineered" organisms.  And actually, one important question for IDists is why it is that we can detect our own "designs" in organisms (sometimes this is done from specific knowledge about genetic engineering of organisms, but one could also detect substantial tampering with genomes of, say, anthrax by comparing what designers can do with what is possible without any engineering)from the background genomes, since according to IDists the background is also designed.  This may be very important in the future, if terrorist organizations make designer diseases.  It would be impossible for us to detect designer diseases if "wild-type" organisms had been designed, assuming that the word "design" has any actual meaning to it.

Well, it isn't surprising that IDists take pains to avoid making predictions (except to claim that ID predicts IC or some such thing, which it doesn't--clearly design can be either IC or not-IC, and without knowing the capabilities of the "designer" one could never know if it could make anything that is "IC"), since life is so unlike any designs that we have ever observed being produced.  

By contrast, one can predict what will happen in evolution, or more precisely, one can predict the range of possibilities within a given evolutionary scenario.  If what we find in biology did not fit within that range, I'm sure that the IDists would happily point this out to us.  Failing that, they try to make much of the fact that biology is an ongoing science which, unsurprisingly, does not have all of the answers, while they continue to predict nothing whatsoever that is actually entailed by general design principles as we know them, nor by appeal to a specific designer with known specific capabilities and purposes which may differ from presently known designers.  

What the gang at <i>Expelled</i> wants is for us to devalue the explanations and predictions which evolutionary theory makes possible, and for science to capitulate to an unscientific theological idea which refuses to make the kinds of entailed predictions that every legitimate scientific hypothesis must make.  They want us to state that ID is the every bit the equal of the predictive scientific theory that biology researchers use every day, when it is useless for research purposes.  Such heavy-handed tactics didn't ultimately work in Galileo's day, so why should anti-empirical dictates succeed now?

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 06 2007,12:59

Another monotonous drone insists that we accept science's guilt prior to presentation of any evidence:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

October 6th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Glen Davidson, I wonder why you’re protesting so furiously, without firsthand knowledge of this movie’s content?

I wonder why you’re coming up with false claims about what I’m doing. I’m responding to a whole lot of unfounded attacks, essentially ad hominem fallacies, upon science and its practitioners, and have never pretended to be addressing the movie.

It seems odd to me that you’ve elected yourself the only “truly enlightened” intellectual here.

It seems to me that you have nothing worthwhile to bring against what I’ve written, hence you are out to malign someone who has done what you cannot, actually discuss the issues raised at this blog in an intellectual manner.

Do you realize that you’ve already posted 6 times in this thread alone — and the movie doesn’t come out for another 4 months?

Do you realize that you haven’t actually addressed any of the substance of what I’ve written? Not surprising, because pro-ID folk have a knack for ignoring the need for evidence, substantive reasoning, etc.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the promo material for this movie suggests that it’s about “closed minds”

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, its a rather simple fact that this particular blog entry is attacking and misrepresenting evolutionary ideas themselves, as well as bringing up a whole lot of canards about “persecution” without even a feint toward supplying any evidence that this is so.

— not so much a debate about the details of Creation — but a true disclosure of those too BIGOTED to consider any other possibilities, or deeper discussion.

Apparently your beef with me is that I don’t accept their completely unsupported assertions. You also seem to fail to recognize what I’ve in the main discussed, which was the lack of honesty in this blog, as well as how very wrong Ben Stein is to attack the Enlightenment. Especially since the Enlightenment-influenced societies were the ones who fought off Hitler and the rest of the largely anti-Enlightenment Nazis. I also bothered with the abysmal nonsense from “Prof” and the ad hominems of “Galactic” (supposing they are not the same person).

Is that the type of scientific discovery we should embrace?

Is your unquestioned belief in the veracity of these people anything I should embrace?

Should details that conflict with our belief system be hidden?

The details are hidden, should they in fact exist. I wouldn’t have thought that this vital fact would be missed by you, but apparently it was. Ruloff can present actual evidence for his claims, and I will be happy to consider it. These people haven’t done so, but apparently think we’re supposed to take it all on faith.

— even if empirical scientific data backs up someone’s claims?

Bring in the empirical data, why don’t you? That’s our complaint, that no one from your side ever does, least of all this blog.

Should those scientists be ridiculed or shunned for expanding our horizons to other possibilities?

They’ve been ridiculed for bypassing the processes that vet science and make it into a worthwhile endeavor. And we’re still waiting for any evidence in favor of ID, as I’ve mentioned.

Should the status quo be maintained — just to keep the money (grants,etc.) flowing into universities?

Should you drone on and on about a “conspiracy” for which you lack even a scintilla of evidence?

In case you haven’t come to grips with this reality, your knowledge of Darwinism is also a “belief system” — with preconceived biases,

Another mind-numbing repetitive talking point from someone who seems not even to recognize the need to back up his charges. The fact that IDists chant this illegitimate claim is no reason why we should adopt it.

that make the pieces fit (for you).

Gee, yes, that’s what theories are about, fitting the evidence together. I’d like to see ID do that, or for you whiners to come up with evidence for your conspiracy theory.

Your adamant opposition to Believers isn’t proving anything — in fact, you highlight quite well what this movie is about (e.g. you’re a bully).

The real bully just calls the guy who demans evidence a “bully”. Learn something about science, why don’t you, and quit insisting that you have the right to force your ideas into science without providing any kind of evidence in favor of it.

If someone knows deep in their heart that God exists, your pompous arguments are not going to make a difference.

Your bullying and name-calling isn’t going to do anything to persuade anyone with any intellectual honesty. Besides, if you were intellectually honest you wouldn’t imply that I’ve been arguing against God at all. It’s amazing just how lacking in honesty most (at least most who comment) on your side is.

Please wait for the movie.

Right, I’m supposed to wait for the movie, while Stein and the producers malign those on the science side without presenting any sort of evidence.

There’s plenty of time for mankind to solve this puzzle. For now, maybe we should just be talking about whether people are being open to honest, complete discussions?

Considering your lack of honesty, yes, I think that I’ve been aiming at the main issue, the lack of honesty on the part of ID and its proponents.

…or is “hatred” the new code word for “scientific knowledge”?

I guess that IDists like you think that hatred is a substitute for the scientific process and rational discussion.

Glen D
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
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Another, to be split up:



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<blockquote>Mr. Davidson—I find your comments disappointing.</blockquote>

I found your comments to be shrill, accusatory, and without substance.

<blockquote>I was hoping to have someone engage ideas with me in a thoughtful manner. I was trying to look at the way scientific knowledge is gained, the process by which it happens, not at any specific issue—</blockquote>

Then I think that you should have written your post in a thoughtful manner, and not with a lot of unwarranted accusations.

<blockquote>I’m sorry you didn’t quite catch that point and instead primarily went on a rant against pro-ID people (the pagans storming the gates)</blockquote>

It's a shame that you don't deal honestly with what I wrote, but instead have to set up a strawman instead.  I barely wrote about ID people, I addressed your points at post #54.

<blockquote>and wrote a passionate defense of evolution (as if it needed another one).</blockquote>

I did not write a passionate defense of evolution, I wrote about science and how evolutionary theory fits in with the normal acceptance procedures in science.  Rather than engaging with such substantive considerations, you simply accuse.

<blockquote>ID is just the current hot example by which to reflect on science as a field and epistemology. I never said I was pro-ID,</blockquote>

And I never said that you were pro-ID, so quit implying that I did.  Only in your imagination did I "rant" against ID, and it appears that you either could not or would not read what I wrote competently.

<blockquote>and in fact, I am not in the ID camp at all.</blockquote>

Non sequitur.  

<blockquote>My intention was not to challenge evolution or ID but to pose a wider challenge of a general depiction of science as evidenced by the language of the anti-ID posters.</blockquote>

Yes, and that is what I addressed, the lack of any meaningful knowledge about science and of the philosophy of science in your first post.

<blockquote>As someone who has spent my adult life as a scientist, I can hardly be seen as someone out to destroy it</blockquote>

Why not?  Behe's out to destroy it, in essence if not in intention.

<blockquote>—I’m sorry you only have 2 categories in your world: enemy and proselyte.</blockquote>

I'm sorry that you have only two ways of dealing with someone who engaged your claims with knowledge and intelligence, with accusation and with wholly untrue claims.

<blockquote>I can think of another arena where anyone who questions is the enemy and only those who uncritically accept the view of the faithful are accepted.</blockquote>

Apparently you're speaking of your world.  You haven't clue about myself, any more than you know how to discuss basic issues of science.

<blockquote>My previous post contained several controversial claims about how science operates, but they are not mine – they’re Kuhn’s.</blockquote>

Oh, I see, I'm supposed to believe you because you have adopted dogma from an authority.  No way I'm playing that game.

<blockquote>You are obviously familiar with his work, and have found it unconvincing.</blockquote>

Of course I find it unconvincing.  He's in an analytical tradition that I have never thought much of, nor do I find Popper to be very impressive.

<blockquote>If you have compelling rebuttals of Kuhn’s claims, please present them and stipulate whether they are your ideas or someone else’s so that I may read the original criticism.</blockquote>

The fact of the matter is that Kuhn wants us to suppose that "paradigms" can be, and are, irreducibly different from each other.  He writes:

<blockquote>I do, in short, really believe some--though by no means all--of the nonsense attributed to me.  The heavens of the Greeks were irreducibly different from ours.  The nature of the idfference is the same as that Taylor so brilliantly describes between the social practices of different cultures...  ...In neither can it be bridged by description in abrute data, behavioral category.

Thomas Kuhn.  <b>The Road Since Structure</b>.  Eds. James Conant & John Haugeland.  Chicago and London:  The University of Chicago Press, 2000.  p. 220</blockquote>

If one considers Aristarchus's heliocentric model, the Pythagorean cosmic model, and the sense that some ancients had that the sun is a burning fire (not true, but probably the best guess at the time), I fail to see the irreducible differences.  Copernicus appealed to Aristarchus as a predecessor, which almost certainly carried part of the weight of his argument.

Kuhn overemphasizes the breaks in science, too much ignoring the large amount of continuity in it.  Evolution builds upon artificial selection, genealogical knowledge, and especially upon the taxonomy of Linnaeus and later taxonomists.  General relativity and quantum mechanics both build upon Newtonian physics, and end up subsuming its claims into their own.

These are mostly my own arguments, though I they echo, or are echoed by, a physics teacher that I had who taught Kuhn and other philosophers of science.  He asked if I agreed with Kuhn, I said "No," and gave my reasons (continuity of methods, especially), and he concurred.  Others in the class were surprised, as they considered Kuhn to be the unquestioned voice of science philosophy as you seem to do.

<blockquote>Your comments are disturbing because they imply that the Philosophy of Science (as a field) trashed Kuhn’s ideas long ago, ran back and picked up the torch of the Enlightenment, and then proceeded as if 200+ years of thought never occurred.</blockquote>

No, you misunderstand that as much as anything.  Kuhn was only partly accepted by scientists.  Many scientists and philosophers disagreed with Kuhn, as one may see in the Kuhn quote above (he's there responding to claims that his ideas are nonsense).  He seems to have declined in popularity recently as well, at least in science and in philosophy.

<blockquote>If you’ve studied philosophy a “great deal,” then you should be warier about claiming mass agreement on such issues as Kuhn’s idiocy.</blockquote>

If you claim to be able to read and write well enough to be a scientist, you should not ascribe to me such dishonesties as the statement above.  I didn't write anything like that, and I suspect that even you know it.

<blockquote>My good friend and philosophy professor assures me there is no such universal agreement on that question.</blockquote>

Since that wasn't the question, so what?  Try to stay on topic, and actually respond to what I write instead of what you dream that I wrote.

What is more, I was not aware that the "dogma" to which you referred was Kuhn's terminology.  "Dogma" has an entirely different connotation in Kuhn's writing than it does in these discussions, and you terribly confuse the issues when you pretend that "dogma" means the same in this context as in Kuhn's writings, regardless of how much I disagree with Kuhn (he'd never confuse the terminology here like you did).

<blockquote>And I don’t think she would invite me to talk to her philosophy class about Kuhn’s critique of science if this were the case.</blockquote>

And I think that is totally irrelevant to the issues, which you continue not to discuss.

<blockquote>For the sake of this discussion and its ramifications for society as a whole, take off your combat helmet and try communicating with me instead if you have significant and thoughtful (and original) criticisms to contribute to this important discussion.</blockquote>

Sorry, your projection is the one to whom you are addressing those remarks.  I did not come in accusing people of exhibiting "breathtaking ignorance" like you did.  What you wanted to do was to trash a whole lot of people whom you don't know without any evidence, while proclaiming your superiority.

<blockquote>You will get no ad hominem attacks from me.</blockquote>

You began with ad hominem attacks.

<blockquote>I’m offering the chance to have a REAL discussion on this topic with a scientist who knows a little philosophy and cares a great deal about these issues.</blockquote>

It's certainly not easy to believe you after you've implied that I suggested that you're an IDist, when I never did any such thing, and that I "ranted" against IDists, when I barely even discussed them in my post (#54).  Then the implication that I had said that the field of science philosophy at large had concluded that Kuhn awas an idiot is another unwarranted ad hominem attack by implication.  I require far more honest responses than the one you've made here before I begin to treat them as anything but hostile polemicists.

<blockquote>I’m not interested in “he’s an idiot and I’m right b/c…” posts that merely attack the opposing side w/o engaging questions.</blockquote>

You're the one who didn't engage my arguments.  I responded to your claims, so I don't appreciate the false implication that I did otherwise.  Can you ever leave off the unfair and untrue attacks?

<blockquote>I (following Kuhn) never claimed that science does not use scientific methods.</blockquote>

I never said that you claimed that.  I pointed to the proper methods used in the adoption of Darwin's ideas, which you had denied.  Rather than engaging what I've written, however, you have done virtually nothing but attack strawmen of your own.

<blockquote>Rather, I question, as Kuhn did, what the nature of scientific methods is because my experience practicing science bears little resemblance to the naïve comparison-with-nature description that is invariably presented to the general public.</blockquote>

It's not a bad description of science for the general public.

I do mention philosophical issues often enough, and too often am accused of "writing long" or some other supposed sin.

<blockquote>To take just one example, why do I keep hearing from public defenders of science that falsifiability is a definitive boundary between science and non-science when it was shown long ago that, as such a definitive boundary, falsifiability fails and when my own experience as a scientist confirms that failure? </blockquote>

I mention falsifiability occasionally, but primarily as shorthand for issues that are far more complicated than that.  Most of the time when a hypothesis lacks falsifiability, it turns out not to be science in any normal sense of the term.  However, I prefer to bring up the need for evidence as the issue.  By the way, you sorely lack evidence for almost all of your attacks against me, for they are generally untrue.

Popper is the reason that "falsifiability" is such an issue in science today.  Peirce mentioned nearly the same thing, but he used several other criteria as well.  

<blockquote>Here’s another straightforward challenge for you, offered with the utmost sincerity. Kuhn claims in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” that the fit of data to a theory (“its problem-solving ability”) is often not the main reason for its acceptance or dismissal and cites several examples, including the contest between the Brahe and Copernican astronomical systems,</blockquote>

I don't know all of the particulars, of course, but I can tackle at least this one to some degree.

First off, it wasn't really until later that the Keplerian model largely won out.  Brahe's model, since it did fit the data probably as well as the Copernican model did, was a contender until Kepler fit the data much better with his elliptical orbits.  No doubt the Copernican model had more followers up until then, but one could not really decide between Brahe and Kepler based upon the data alone.

Secondly, there was good reason to prefer the Copernican model, because it actually explained many of the most prominent "epicyclic" phenomena (while not doing away with them), while Brahe's model was descriptive, not explanatory.  Usually when we say that the data need to "fit the model", we really don't mean that merely mapping the data out is what matters, rather that it fits and explains the data.  Ptolemy and Brahe fit the data, but they didn't do much in the way of making explanatory models.  Science makes explanatory models, not just maps of the phenomena from our perspective, hence "fitting the data" is stated in the context of "explanation", not just "fit" as people like Kuhn and Feyerabend suggest.

<blockquote>the oxygen/phlogiston debate, the fact that Copernicus destroyed a time-honored explanation of terrestrial motion without replacing it, and the fact that Newton and Laviosier did the same for an older explanation of gravity and the common properties of metals, respectively. You claim to disagree with his argument and reject his examples. For our benefit, please show how all of Kuhn’s examples are mistaken. </blockquote>

No, I picked one, and the onus is on you to actually make your case, instead of changing the subject away from what I actually wrote (and dishonestly claiming that I didn't address your faulty claims).  I know the Gish Gallop when I see it, and an unfair demand that you haven't even come close to fulfilling yourself, and no, I don't fall for anything no matter how intellectually dishonest it is.

<blockquote>As for your supposition that my delay in responding was due to unwillingness to engage you rather than inability due to time constraints,</blockquote>

As for as your penchant to make up stuff and accuse me of saying it, it is getting very old.

I didn't in the least say that you were unwilling to respond.  Where do you come up with such unwarranted accusations?

What I wrote in response to "Galactic" might be what you're twisting into your little fantasy, but of course what I was saying there was that "Galactic" is you.  I wouldn't be surprised it was, either, though such identifications are almost always necessarily tentative.

<blockquote> you have committed a cardinal sin of the “religious” and, in the popular language of the day, have claimed to know something you don’t know.</blockquote>

Why can't you even keep your attacks straight?  I didn't write what you claimed, and it is not honest for you to say that I did, let alone to try to build conclusions on your false claim.

<blockquote>Hitchens and Harris would be very disappointed in you. </blockquote>

I have the feeling that Hitchens and Harris wouldn't come up with the sorts of untrue attacks that you have.  Not that I particularly care what they think, but I'm amazed at how readily you make false charges against me.

<blockquote>Are we going to try to understand how science really works or mulishly continue to insist that it operates like it does not.</blockquote>

It looks like you're so intent on insisting that science works as it does not that you'll write any manner of untrue things regarding my own contribution.

<blockquote>Unless someone can engage me at a more sophisticated level this is my last post on this site.</blockquote>

Apparently you can't engage me at all.  I went through a number of your claims, and all you did was to make untrue claims about what I had written.  

Why don't you try actually including what I've written in your responses, so that you don't make as many errors and false charges as you did in your recent post?  Frankly, I'm stunned at how many untrue things you could get into a relatively short post.  It must be very embarrassing for you not to be able even to competently restate <b>what I actually wrote</b>, let alone have any ability to address my scientific and philosophical points.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
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Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 08 2007,20:07

Back to archiving:



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<blockquote>Prima Facia evidence for the plot, substance, and need for this movie is amply provided by Glen Davidson’s posts.

Indeed he is the poster boy for the hubris, egomania, and sophistry common to the evo community.</blockquote>

So, the puffed-up ignorant one can't make a coherent argument, and settles for dishonest ad hominems (formal fallacies) instead.  Why is this so much the usual for IDists?  Don't you have anything worthwhile to say at all?

<blockquote>Oh! And if Davidson or other evos chat back please refer to me as the other wireheads in the Fortune 500 who worked for me in my executive capacity did prior to my retirement… Mr. Eaton Sir is adequate.</blockquote>

I'm sure that Eaton-the-dullard will do well enough.  No doubt it's among the more charitable terms that someone so lacking in manners and intelligence has been called.  

As far as the rest of Eaton's pablum, it's splattered all over the web like anything else that requires a strong cleaning solution.  Now, if Eaton ever has anything intelligent to say, like actually answering the substantive posts that I made, rather than showing off his overweening ignorance, the change would do us all good.  Indeed, I'd like to receive one intelligent reply from an IDist, instead of loathsome and hateful fallacies which are the best that Eaton can manage.

I make intelligent comments, the IDists never once address what I write, instead only attacking me out of their envy of anyone they can't challenge.  And they pretend that it is we who are choking off debate, when we're the only ones actually engaging in debate.  It's a poor showing that pompous blowhards like Eaton make.

Glen D
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Another one:



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<blockquote>I am flabbergasted by the stupidity of evolutionists.</blockquote>

I'm sort of amazed, but hardly surprised, that you don't answer a single substantive issue raised by myself or others, but write the usual unthinking diatribe that people who can't think for themselves constantly churn out.  

<blockquote>They deride ID with the most closed and simple minded arguments, I feel sorry for such brainwashed people.</blockquote>

Let's see, not a single thing that you wrote in your entire post said anything that isn't seen all across the web from IDists who can't deal with the issues.  You just try to shut out the issues by dull repetition of the chants you picked up from Dembski and others who avoid actual debate about the issues.

By the way, if you actually felt sorry for anybody, rather than trying to make a less-than-honest attack on them, you'd be trying to reach them instead of trying to smear them with your lack of anything substantive to say.

<blockquote>It’s sad that people who can put a cogent essay together are dumb enough to swallow the “just-so” explanations, the logical and conceptual gymnastics that pass for “proof” of evolution.</blockquote>

"It's sad" that someone can lob bombs at those he despises without in the least being able to back up his charges.

<blockquote>Then on top of that reject ID out of hand with zombie-like slogans; Here’s a hint: Saying “it’s not science” is not a trump card.</blockquote>

Then why don't you engage the actual arguments?  Oh, that's right, you're IDist, and we never get anything of substance out of IDists.  At least I've never seen it.

<blockquote>I doubt evolutionists all go into history class and shout down the professor all period about what they are teaching isn’t science and so it should not be taught in a science class. </blockquote>

I bet anyone with an honest interest in the issues doesn't ignore the massive number of high-level engagements of ID's "arguments" on the net, while making more empty attacks, as you happen to do.

<blockquote>In any case, ID is not a science the same way a doorstop is not a science, apples and oranges; it is an abstract idea, and whether or not it is scientific depends on how one approaches the idea.</blockquote>

Tell us how to do science with ID.  That's what counts.  We have a working theory, or more correctly, a working set of theories.  You want us to give equal billing to something that has never been shown to work, with a theory that happens to guide and integrate biology today.

<blockquote>“I’m not a monkey’s nephew” and “duh, it’s so complicated it must have been designed” are not the pinnacles of pro-ID argument. </blockquote>

I'm afraid that we haven't seen anything higher level than that.  Sure, there's higher-level obfuscations of the basic vacuity of ID, such as Dembski's and Behe's attempts to ram a false dilemma into science--the notion that if evolutionary theory fails to account for life, then ID prevails.  Sorry, that's never been true.  The height of ID never comes close to reaching the standards of science and forensics, which is the requirement for actual evidence of investigable causes producing investigable effects.

<blockquote>The fact of the matter is that evolution *is* just a theory (by that I mean the non-scientific def. of ‘theory’), one chock full of holes.</blockquote>

One chock full of successes, and with fewer fundamental issues in question than theories of gravity have.

<blockquote>Face it, there is no definitive evidence!</blockquote>

Is there definitive evidence for language evolution in non-literate languages?  If so, there is much more evidence for biological evolution, for we have morphological evidence, DNA, fossil evidence, and recognizably different evidence of evolution between eukaryotes and prokaryotes.

<blockquote>Whenever I look at an online debate about evolution, the evolutionist side just puts a link to talkorigins about macroevolution.</blockquote>

I don't think that I ever have, mainly because most of Talkorigins isn't written very accessibly.  But that's beside the point, for unless you can actually answer adequately the evidence presented at Talkorigins, your complaint fails.  What is more important, none of you have begun to do the one thing needed to make ID science, which is to come up with evidence in favor of ID.

<blockquote>“Missing-link” fossils does not disprove ID!</blockquote>

The transitionals have all of the historical baggage expected in non-teleological evolution--and at the evolutionarily-predicted times for such sorts of "poor design" to be found.  Archaeopteryx has teeth and a bony tail, neither of which is helpful for flight.  Those have been known for quite some time, as well as the less well-developed keel than those in modern birds.  What is more new is that a "critical ligamentous structure" making modern birds more efficient fliers has been found to be absent in archaeopteryx ("A critical ligamentous mechanism in the evolution of bird flight"  David B. Baier, Stephen M. Gatesy & Farish A Jenkins Jr.  <b>Nature</b> pp. 307-310 v.445 18 January 2007).

<blockquote>Fossils, whose significance is a matter of debate, which is not a settled matter, even if they did fit into the evolutionary timeline perfectly, STILL would not disprove ID. What if the supposed designer, just started small and then kept tweaking with its creation?</blockquote>

You mean, what if the designer made organisms with exactly the sort of fossil evidence and genetic evidence that is expected from non-teleological evolution?  Well, such a being would be undetectable, for its effects would be indistinguishable from those of MET.  That's why we're not really interested in how carefully you guys tweak your "designer" specifically so that it cannot be falsified by the evidence.  You make "design" a meaningless concept by doing so.

<blockquote>Fossils just show that organisms changed gradually over time, they do not show that they changed only because of natural selection, etc. </blockquote>

It shows that the same "short-sighted" and inheritance-constrained changes that have occurred in the crown groups also exist in the earlier organisms.  Also, nearly all species that have ever lived have gone extinct, as you would expect from unguided evolution.  Exactly why a "designer" would make australopithecines, H. habilis, H. erectus, H. neanderthalis, and H. floresiensis only for them to go extinct in roughly the same pattern as you'd get from non-teleological evolution remains just one of those many unfathomable ideas of ID.  In fact, because you guys are so intent on denying any sort of criteria that could actually point toward "design", everything in ID remains obscure and unreachable by science.

What I'd like to ask is, why do IDists think that design and non-teleological evolution produce indistinguishable results?  Do they really think that genetic algorithms are used simply to mimic rational design processes?  Do they not understand that the substantially different results found in evolution vs. those found in known design processes are being exploited via genetic algorithms?

It was life that showed us another route than "intelligent design" to discover successful strategies, evolutionary processes utilizing a sort of "natural selection."  Now we have that capability within our repertoire of instrumentalities, and it is utilized precisely where the complexities are too great for our rational abilities.  Which is interesting, because, of course, life also is beyond our rational abilities thus far (I don't think that if Venter is successful that I'll have to say anything different).  Indeed, it is evolution that can deal with complexities beyond those understood by the fairly simple rationalities of the human mind (not true of all aspects of complexity, but important in many thus far, despite our computational enhancement of our rational capabilities).

The huge difference between design and biological evolution is that the former readily yields evidence for rational thinking in its processes in by far the most cases, while biological evolution lacks any evidence for rational planning (that is, while sometimes evolution and intelligence can come to similar "ends", any observaable differentiation leaves life (life that hasn't been manipulated by us, that is) on the non-rational side of the "production process")

<blockquote>It seems like only way to really show evolution is to show with a mathematical model that statistically it is possible for natural selection, etc., to cause an organism to become increasingly complex in the alloted time.</blockquote>

Real science pays attention to the predictions made by a theory, and accepts the theory that agrees best with those explanatory predictions until something better comes along.  One of the problems of ID is that it wishes to change the rules of science (more coherently than traditional creationism does, for the latter's attacks on science are generally piecemeal), which is the truly grave threat to science and society hypothetically posed by ID.

<blockquote>This has NEVER been shown, Mathematical models show quite the opposite, that even if creatures could evolve “naturally” the way they have, it would take orders of magnitude longer for that to happen.</blockquote>

Has language evolution been shown to be possible by computer simulations?  Of course not, it is too complex to be properly modeled at this time, as is biological evolution.  ID models don't count, by the way, since they assume very narrow target areas, much narrower than can be shown from the evidence (the evidence at least hints that they're quite wrong in their assumptions).

<blockquote>Now given that there is no evidence of evolution,</blockquote>

It is not given that there is no evidence of evolution.  You haven't begun to answer the three major predictions I listed for evolution in post #99, by which I definitely meant (and noted) non-teleological evolution.

<blockquote>that does not prove ID, but assuming that physics and the laws of the physical universe, statistics, logic, etc., have not dramatically changed during the “life” of the known universe, this intuitively suggests that a designer is behind the variety and complexity of organisms on earth.</blockquote>

Since you have absolutely no evidence in favor of "design" of organisms, whatever "intuition" you might have about it is insufficient to make ID worthy of consideration.

<blockquote>That is what makes ID worthwhile.</blockquote>

An intuition sans evidence makes ID worthwhile?  That is what is scary about IDists, no evidence and an "intuition" is supposed to be the equal of an abundantly evidenced and useful theory.

<blockquote>For all the picking-on ID strawmen, some of you guys need to pick on evolution a bit.</blockquote>

For all of the claims that you make, it would be nice if you could back up just one of them.  You know, with evidence.

<blockquote>There is a universe of ideas out there between evolution-explains-everything and bible-thumping.</blockquote>

Evolution hardly explains everything (a strawman fallacy on your part).  However, it is the only scientific theory explaining the inherently genealogical-like taxonomies found even prior to acceptance of evolutionary theory, the different modes of evolution between eukaryotes and prokaryotes, and why pterosaur, bat, and bird wings are all adaptations of legs, and not design either from first principles or from previously existing wings.  

<blockquote>The way things are run, evolution is not a science, where is the falsifiability?</blockquote>

In the taxonomical structures, first of all.  And I've mentioned plenty more, though you ignore whatever doesn't comply with your a priori assumptions.

<blockquote>Any evidence that does not fit into evolutionary theory is ignored.</blockquote>

I'd like to see a single statement of yours that can be substantiated, including that one.

<blockquote>Where are the repeatable experiments?</blockquote>

In the journals.  Like most of science, experiments have to extrapolated to areas which are practically or theoretically beyond experimentation, but of course the experiments have been done.

<blockquote>No, showing bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics or that they will evolve into a slightly different species does not prove that evolution is responsible for all of the variety and complexity of life.</blockquote>

I actually made that point at Pharyngula recently.  However, few of us suppose that antibiotic resistance is the whole of the evidence (rather, evolutionary theory ties humans and bacteria together ecologically, where ID would require malaria (<i>Plasmodium falciparum</i>) to have been designed, apparently with the purpose of infecting humans), rather we point to the predictions of evolution which have been tested but not falsified in the testing.  Indeed, I wrote a good deal on this very forum about a number of these issues, but have received nothing other than dull repetitions of ID talking points in reply, along with rather pointed hatred from several of these supposed "Christians".  Well, what's new?  

If you had science, you'd be telling us how ID provides cause and effect explanations of what we see, and how to do science with these required explanations.  Lacking any science, you have a lot of untrue statements about evolution and those of us who care about science.  You completely ignore the arguments and evidence brought forward in order to falsely claim that we have not done so.  And so ID goes, never providing the requisite evidence, always putting out vast array of unsubstantiated tripe.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Oct. 09 2007,09:42

Ben is not a dumb guy, I wonder if this is a pure play for cash. You guys don't think he's actually going to read any of the comments on his "blog" do you?  This is pure street theatre to generate buzz.  

His link for volunteers is pretty funny, funnier is that he's probably getting tons of creotards signing up for active duty.  

Onward Christian soldiers, and don't forget to leave your tithe in the War Chest on your way to the battlefield!

This sucks.  Now I can't stand Ben Stein and I'll never watch him again.

Chris
Posted by: snoeman on Oct. 09 2007,23:18

Glen wrote:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Of course I find it unconvincing.  He's in an analytical tradition that I have never thought much of, nor do I find Popper to be very impressive.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen - If I may ask, what is it that you don't find impressive about Popper? (I'm asking out of curiosity, not because I think he's impressive.)
Posted by: Richardthughes on Oct. 09 2007,23:24

Also, he wore a couple of hats (the DaveScot of his day?). Not impressive in *any* discipline, or just in one regard?
Posted by: improvius on Oct. 22 2007,15:34

For anyone still interested, Stein will be on O'Reilly Factor tonight (10/22) plugging Expelled.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Oct. 22 2007,16:00

Quote (improvius @ Oct. 22 2007,15:34)
For anyone still interested, Stein will be on O'Reilly Factor tonight (10/22) plugging Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Comedy Central and Fox News.

All science so far! ID media machine.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Oct. 24 2007,10:10

< Bill O’Reilly joins the liberal Darwinist media >

I assume everyone has read this glorious tidbit at PT by now.

Yes both Bill and Ben portrayed ID as creationism and an attempt to fill the gaps with god.  The DI frowned on this ouf course and pointed out both of them are wrong.

I wonder how Ben will take to being corrected by a bunch of lying creationist zealots.  It's hard to imagine Ben agreeing to partake in the dishonest and sneaky tactices used by the DI.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.  Will Ben take orders from the DI or instead continue to call a spade a spade (creationism for the gaps)?
Posted by: Altabin on Oct. 26 2007,08:55

< Oh, oh, oh >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

MOVIE CONTEST
Ever sat in class and had your professor straight up challenge your intelligence for suggesting even the possibility of an intelligent design in the universe?
Tired of being labeled merely for questioning aspects of the Darwinian theory of evolution?? Ever been scoffed at or ridiculed in front of your peers?
Well, here’s your opportunity to tell your story on our Website AND possibly be in the movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”! Tell the world some of the outrageous things your professors say about your questions.
You and your story just might be chosen by our producers to be in the film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”! Let your voice be heard!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sounds that they're a little desperate for content - four months away from the scheduled release date.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 26 2007,15:12

It sounds like "Penthouse Letters" for the fundamentalist set, an opportunity to write a bunch of paranoia porn.

Since the whole thing is a work of fiction, I think that they have opened the doors for contributions. I'm sure some of you can come up with better complex persecution tales for those with a well-developed persecution complex.

Of course, you probably can't post the actual submissions here, but you might drop a note here to say if you have an offering in submission.
Posted by: J-Dog on Oct. 26 2007,15:28

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 26 2007,15:12)
It sounds like "Penthouse Letters" for the fundamentalist set, an opportunity to write a bunch of paranoia porn.

Since the whole thing is a work of fiction, I think that they have opened the doors for contributions. I'm sure some of you can come up with better complex persecution tales for those with a well-developed persecution complex.

Of course, you probably can't post the actual submissions here, but you might drop a note here to say if you have an offering in submission.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think I recall that there was a professor that actually has two doctorates, that was horribly abused by a graduate student recently for daring to speak about Intelligent Design.  And to make it worse, the abuser was a girl, even though the bible says women should stay at home and make babies.

Is this the kind of story that they want might want maybe?
Posted by: Altabin on Oct. 26 2007,15:45

Quote (J-Dog @ Oct. 26 2007,22:28)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 26 2007,15:12)
It sounds like "Penthouse Letters" for the fundamentalist set, an opportunity to write a bunch of paranoia porn.

Since the whole thing is a work of fiction, I think that they have opened the doors for contributions. I'm sure some of you can come up with better complex persecution tales for those with a well-developed persecution complex.

Of course, you probably can't post the actual submissions here, but you might drop a note here to say if you have an offering in submission.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think I recall that there was a professor that actually has two doctorates, that was horribly abused by a graduate student recently for daring to speak about Intelligent Design.  And to make it worse, the abuser was a girl, even though the bible says women should stay at home and make babies.

Is this the kind of story that they want might want maybe?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Throw in a hot-tub and some Reddy-Wip and that's a winner!

Even better if you could fit Kristine into it as well...
Posted by: VMartin on Nov. 01 2007,02:11

In his latest article "Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?" Ben Stein is criticised by Glen Davidson who wrote there seven successive long posts! I've put there
my answer listing antidarwian scientists.

I am not sure there is so strong relation between darwinism and capitalism as Ben Stein claim, but the idea of "natural selection" is something really extraordinary and new. Ancient people living in connection with nature never observed it. But it is strongly supported from armchair intellectulas sitting at Universities in industrialised countries, scientists who wouldn't survive a day in countryard.


< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/blog/ >


John Davison comments there sometimes and his posts are very briskly and good.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Nov. 01 2007,03:54

Quote (VMartin @ Nov. 01 2007,02:11)
In his latest article "Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?" Ben Stein is criticised by Glen Davidson who wrote there seven successive long posts! I've put there
my answer listing antidarwian scientists.

I am not sure there is so strong relation between darwinism and capitalism as Ben Stein claim, but the idea of "natural selection" is something really extraordinary and new. Ancient people living in connection with nature never observed it. But it is strongly supported from armchair intellectulas sitting at Universities in industrialised countries, scientists who wouldn't survive a day in countryard.


< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/blog/ >


John Davison comments there sometimes and his posts are very briskly and good.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Amazing insight, as usual VMartin.

We hang upon your every word.

Even when you say things like "I am not so sure" I still believe you are 100% correct.

So, if ancient people living in nature never understood selection, how did the wolf get domesticated?
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Nov. 01 2007,06:10

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Nov. 01 2007,03:54)
So, if ancient people living in nature never understood selection, how did the wolf get domesticated?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Briskly, I imagine. :D
Posted by: blipey on Nov. 01 2007,10:08

Very briskly.  Does that mean that tea had some part in the domestication of the wolf?
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 01 2007,11:29

Quote (blipey @ Nov. 01 2007,10:08)
Very briskly.  Does that mean that tea had some part in the domestication of the wolf?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes.  And the "T" stands for Trouble!  It rhymes with D, and that stands for Dembski, so we got Trouble.

Ahhh.  Nothing like an opportunity to get a Broadway Show tune into a post.  And 2 Bonus Points for linking Dembksi and the con-man character in Music Man I think.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Nov. 02 2007,10:14

Meet Bart Davis.  Wonder if it will get posted.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have been a creationist for many years after realizing that the bible was true and that man-made science could not explain the bigger questions, like Why are We Here?  and What are We?  And I realized that the bible gave the best explanations for these questions.  That is all fine and good...

Until I entered a university and enrolled in a biology department.  I was told by professor and TA after professor and TA that my views were stupid and were not accepted by the scientific community.  Although I expect to be rejected by men and be unpopular for carrying the cause of Christ it still stung.  

When I offered to defend my views using the bible, I was told that it does not apply.  These darwinists want to stamp out all dissent and try to discredit the Word of God because they hate the idea that God created them.  The bible tells all about this.  When I told them that their 'evidence' was just rocks and ideas based on things that they could measure then they laughed at me and I lost my composure.

Now I am an engineer and doing very well for myself.  I try to stay out of the debate but in my Sunday School class I have free reign to teach children in the way that they should be brought up, so when they have to face the forces of the world they will be prepared to be ridiculed and hated for standing up for Jesus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 02 2007,10:27

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Nov. 02 2007,10:14)
Meet Bart Davis.  Wonder if it will get posted.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have been a creationist for many years after realizing that the bible was true and that man-made science could not explain the bigger questions, like Why are We Here?  and What are We?  And I realized that the bible gave the best explanations for these questions.  That is all fine and good...

Until I entered a university and enrolled in a biology department.  I was told by professor and TA after professor and TA that my views were stupid and were not accepted by the scientific community.  Although I expect to be rejected by men and be unpopular for carrying the cause of Christ it still stung.  

When I offered to defend my views using the bible, I was told that it does not apply.  These darwinists want to stamp out all dissent and try to discredit the Word of God because they hate the idea that God created them.  The bible tells all about this.  When I told them that their 'evidence' was just rocks and ideas based on things that they could measure then they laughed at me and I lost my composure.

Now I am an engineer and doing very well for myself.  I try to stay out of the debate but in my Sunday School class I have free reign to teach children in the way that they should be brought up, so when they have to face the forces of the world they will be prepared to be ridiculed and hated for standing up for Jesus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is quality tard, nice work.  One suggestion - throw in the term "intelligent design" at least once so the reader sees ID and creationism/bible/god/jeebus/etc are all from the same play book.

My entries are heavy on the bible, creationism and creation science with at least one mention of ID.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Nov. 02 2007,16:48

I wonder if the post that I have attempted to re-post below is being either blocked or smothered (posting it late, when few would read it) by the people at Expelled because javascript is Ruloff, Miller, or Stein.  There's no saying for sure, of course, but javascript obviously hates me for getting in there quickly to fisk Stein's obnoxious nonsense, and since Kevin Miller did respond (rather disastrously, since I picked him apart) to me once, I wonder if they're protecting one of their stupid writers or characters from criticism.  Just saying.

Here's the re-post, since I fear that I might have to be archiving what I write there again:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

November 2nd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Not a new one, but I don’t know why the following comment hasn’t been posted. I don’t mean to continue to treat with people whose only motivation is to attack those they hate with religious bigotry, however I should be allowed to respond to the dishonest quotemines and vapid unsupported accusations of those without any conscience or competence to discuss science. So here’s the re-post:

Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

November 2nd, 2007 at 10:27 am
Javascript quotemines, in the way that only pseudoscientists and rabid fools do:

Garrison Seeber Says:
November 1st, 2007 at 3:26 pm
“only further emphasizes the Neanderthal mentality of your suppressive beliefs”
Validate that claim…
………………
Well, let’s see… this might be difficult but I’ll give it a shot.

Unfortunately, you’re too dumb to know what validation means. It does not mean quotemining. I use harsh words, but I also back them up, while you only tell lies and attack.

Below are validating quotes from our buddy Glen, the self proclaiming intellectual, that clearly exhibit his use of Neanderthal tactics in his attempts to bully others on the blog seeking only to exercise their constitutional rights to freedom of speech.

Sorry, unintelligent one, I was not the one who came in here with nothing but hatred and lies. I made arguments, I backed up, or “validated” (too bad you don’t know what words mean, buffoon), what I wrote. Not so much to those who had nothing related to substance, liek the dishonest Javascript, but that’s because yours were free-form lies.

Follow with me if you will:
……………
GLEN QUOTES:
- As pathetic as your knowledge of science is…

As we’ve shown previously, and as I demonstrated there as well. Try to learn to read above third-grade level.

- you lack intellectual integrity…

Another quotemine. I’d shown where he had not dealt with matters in an intellectually honest fashion. Rather than arguing pointedly with what I’ve written, you just whine and lie, again.

- your knowledge of science is abysmal

As is obvious to anyone who knows science, and has been amply demonstrated in these comments. Just because you ignore every bit of substance that I’ve written to back up my claims does not alleviate you of your responsibility to deal with them with intellectual honesty. Neither does your lack of intellectual honesty alleviate your responsibilities.

- you simply act as if science is as mindless as your sponsors are

And I’m sure that if you had anything intelligent to say, you’d be arguing against what I wrote, instead of quote-mining my supporting evidence out of it, with your typical dishonest tactics.

- this is part of your sleazy tactics.

Another sleazy quotemine from one who doesn’t even know what intellectual integrity means. Indeed, it was a part of his sleazy tactics, as I demonstrated, and which argumentation you ignore as you have from the beginning.

- A rather simplistic analysis…

OK, it was an extremely simplistic analysis. Sorry that I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

- Ben’s pathetic fallacy of argumentum ad hominem.

Which fallacy you compound, as you quotemine and attack without paying any attention to the facts and arguments.

- That’s the best you can do, Ben?

Still better than the dishonesty of your attacks, javascript.

- you’re digging your own grave there, Ben.

I know that it’s nothing new, but yes, another dishonest quotemine, as javascript pointedly ignores what I actually wrote, how this fit into my arguments and conclusions.

- So what’s your point?

Here’s how an honest person would have quoted:

So what’s your point? Are we supposed to throw out English science, since it was based in a non-politically correct economic system? Here’s Ben saying that Western culture must (selectively) go, due to its many sins. Ben the PC man. Very good, Ben, you’re now part of the ranks of the nihilists and bigots who fault civilization’s advances just because much of the past evil was retained for so long (and into the present, one might (or might not) argue).

Since my response was to his faulting of “Darwinism” based on the inadequate grounds that it comes from a time of imperialism, I dare say that the honest quote demonstrate my point. Which is why you dishonestly left that out.

- Ben, you’re now part of the ranks of the nihilists and bigots

See the foregoing quote for the context that javascript is not honest enough to include.

- Your understanding of evolution is as deficient as your understanding of history, Stein.

And apparently so is yours, javascript, or you’d deal with the facts and arguments I brought up instead of quote-mining.

- One does not write of “Darwinist means,” unless one is a science illiterate, as Ben is.

That’s right. He’s shown himself to be illiterate in science right there, and by continuing to write of “Darwinism” as if it depended upon the writings of one man.

- It isn’t a lacuna, ignorant one…

Were he not ignorant, the issue of abiogenesis would not have come up. And if you weren’t ignorant, you’d recognize that I made an important point. I am not as nice as I was previously, by the way, mostly because Ben has ignored where he has been corrected in the past.

- someone so bereft of intellectual honesty as Ben is would even attempt to supply evidence for his scurrilous charges.

Yes, and why don’t you try to supply evidence for your scurrilous charges, intellectually dishonest javascript?

- IDists simply hate the Enlightenment…

Yes, they attack it at its very foundation, at its requirement for demonstrable evidence. Another issue you can’t deal with, though apparently there are none you can address, java.

- bigoted theists…

A particularly disgusting quotemine from java. I very carefully pointed out that many theists are nothing like the bigoted and dishonest IDists, but he quotemines it as he wishes to misrepresent it.

- More tendentious nonsense.

And of course I justified that remark. You’ve justified none of your attacks.

- Ben has no truthful criticisms to make…

Here’s the context that this extremely dishonest person wishes to be ignored:

More tendentious nonsense. Darwinism and its successors have never ever sought to explain everything. Darwin sought to integrate biology with Newtonian-type science, and largely succeeded. But I guess Ben has no truthful criticisms to make of MET, so he resorts to what IDists always end up using, untrue assertions.

Since I was addressing the fact that “Darwinism” has never once claimed to explain everything, yes, it was tendentious, and I have yet to see Ben provide a truthful criticism of MET. Note how dishonestly javascript edited out the qualifiers I included.

I have to wonder if you’re one of the writers of Expelled, javascript. You’re really so dishonest and bigoted that it’s hard not to believe you could be.

- I’d like to know where you got such a disingenuous idea as that

This is where that came from:

But it’s difficult to believe it will. Theories that presume to explain everything without much evidence rarely do.

I’d like to know where you got such a disingenuous idea as that “Darwinism” presumes to explain everything.

I’d still like to know where such a disingenuous idea came from. From you, javascript?

- evil liars, most likely the sorts of anti-science anti-intellectual persons

More quote-mining, of course, and yes, I demonstrate that you who lie constantly are of that kind.

- Not all of us are as pitiful as you anti-science ranters.

Ben was claiming that we’re “pitiful” and (in essence) that therefore we need to be open to unproven nonsense like ID. But indeed, we who know science know a good deal more about the issues than people like Stein and javascript.

- the usual arrogance of the ignorant

Indeed, it was the usual arrogance of the ignorant, which you continue.

- if you weren’t a slimy little worm, and actually knew something, I’m sure you could have written something intelligent.

And instead of making up for your dishonest attack, you pile on more quoteming dishonesty.

- your anti-intellectual rant ad nauseam

Since you have done nothing but stupidly rant, I rather suspect that this has been well-validated.

……………..

Now maybe it’s just me but that sounds more like a Neanderthal then it does a civilized Intellectual that I think Glen would have us believe that he is.

Why yes it does, and since it is your dishonest quotemining and vicious unsupported attack that compiled it in such a tendentious fashion, it looks like you have shown that you were just projecting.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

There is no reason to either block or smother the above post. Just because it may very well be one of the writers, producers, or main characters whose dishonest claims have been refuted is no excuse to either smother or expel this post.

Am I supposed to stand by while Ruloff, Miller, or Stein (I increasingly suspect one of them or others associated with the movie, since what seems to really bring out the hatred is that I refuted the blog at the top of the comment list) dishonestly quotemines and accuses without evidence or justification? Sure, I’m well past the point where I’m going to be nice when lies are constantly being told about us in a bid to enforce religion on our society, but unlike javascript, I actually make arguments, do not dishonestly quotemine, and I stay away from fallacious attacks on the person.

It will certainly be a sorry day if you protect “one of your own” from a response to his unwarranted and unsupported attack on the person, without the slightest hint of being capable of answering what I actually wrote (hence the quotemining).

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Nov. 03 2007,11:27

It appears that the fascists running the Expelled blog did expel the comments I wrote above.  What a shock, considering how tendentious and dishonest everything they've written has been.

I'm going to assume that javascript is one of the bully boys associated with that movie.  Nothing I wrote there hasn't been written about others at that blog, but apparently when I demonstrate the dishonesty of javascript, it's no longer permitted.

Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Nov. 03 2007,15:09

I'm starting to seriously doubt the Expelled bunch's commitment to allowing comments to run without censorship, though they did fairly well in the past.  Btw, as others have apparently found, Dawkins' forum sucks too.  Regardless, I'm now archiving the fisking I did of Ben's latest blog (there are a couple of repeats of posts):

(OK, I'll actually put the posts here when I can get through)

I'm finally getting around to putting in what I wanted to archive, though it looks like what they posted is going to stay there for some time.  As for the bit above about Dawkins' forum, I'm not sure that it doesn't suck, but at least they didn't totally wipe out the post that made me say they suck.  They moved it and took their time in telling me about it.  

Anyway, to save these from possible future censoring:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says:

October 31st, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Let’s make this short and sweet. It would be taken for granted by any serious historian that any ideology or worldview would partake of the culture in which it grew up and would also be largely influenced by the personality of the writer of the theory.

Actually, you could make it shorter and sweeter by actually, you know, bringing in evidence. As pathetic as your knowledge of science is, Ben, even you must have some notion that it isn’t “Darwinism” that is being taught today, it is a combination of ideas that have been, and continue to be, tested against the evidence.

I suppose that as long as you lack intellectual integrity, however, you will equate modern evolutionary theory with “Darwinism,” not despite the dishonesty of it, but because of the dishonesty of it. Again, I know that your knowledge of science is abysmal, but you could try to tell the truth, and you could try to deal with a theory that has had many contributions made to it through time and across cultures. However, you don’t, you simply act as if science is as mindless as your sponsors are, beholden to authority rather than to the evidence. It’s much easier, of course, for you to attack strawmen dishonestly set up, than it is to actually deal with biological science, so this is part of your sleazy tactics.

No less a genius than the evil Karl Marx noted that even after capitalism succumbed to Communism, society would still be imbued with the class artifacts and cultural values of the system that preceded it.

Oooh, great authority there. Likely it’s true, but then Marx predicted that religion would fade away as well. Has it?

Much smarter analysts than I have noted that the whole system of Marxism, especially its sharp attacks on capitalists as a class, was motivated by Karl Marx’s envy of the much wealthier industrialist/capitalist members of the Marx family.

A rather simplistic analysis, but it probably played a role in it. So what? Adam Smith wrote in support of his class, and Machiavelli was an apologist for rulers to whom he hoped to suck up. One judges ideas on their merits, not on personalities. Which makes this whole attack on “Darwinism” Ben’s pathetic fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. That’s the best you can do, Ben?

In other words, major theories do not arise out of thin air. They come from the era in which they arose and are influenced greatly by the personality and background of the writer.

Already you’re digging your own grave there, Ben. Evolutionary thought comes from across time and culture, and its origin (if we understand Darwin as the origin–there were others) happens to also be the country of Newton and the Enlightenment. Yes, it is understandable that Darwin would integrate biology into causal science in the country that largely gave rise to causal science. That’s highly preferable to the acausal non-science that you’re supporting now, Ben.

To be continued below:

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

Glen Davidson Says:

October 31st, 2007 at 6:42 pm
continuing from my post above:

(In law, this theory is known as “legal realism”. Judges make up their minds on the basis of their prejudices and then rationalize their decisions by pretending to be bound by prior case law. One might call what happens with ideologies “political realism.” Persons make up their ideologies based on their times and their life situations.)

Yes, funny that, judges care about causation, and you do too in the area of history, Ben. Yet you’re pushing magic as an appropriate alternative to your causal methods in the biological realm, and you have absolutely no basis from which to do this.

Darwinism, the notion that the history of organisms was the story of the survival of the fittest and most hardy, and that organisms evolve because they are stronger and more dominant than others, is a perfect example of the age from which it came: the age of Imperialism.

Very selective there, Stein. You know very well that Newton’s was an age of slavery, plunder, colonialism, and religious bigotry. Yet you praise Newton and his science, while you rubbish Darwin’s science by association. That’s not intellectually honest in the least.

What is more, Darwinism as such fits your own political posture rather well, Ben, as you favor the haves over the have-nots.

When Darwin wrote, it was received wisdom that the white, northern European man was destined to rule the world. This could have been rationalized as greed–i.e., Europeans simply taking the resources of nations and tribes less well organized than they were.

Sure, and this differs from Newton’s time, how? IOW, do you have a point that doesn’t undercut what you’ve written heretofore?

Anyway, as it happens, the capitalism of Victorian Britain is somewhat analogous to Darwinism (and is not actually very akin to traditional society, as we evolved to be more cooperative than Ben’s politics prescribes), and it may indeed have helped to give the right idea to Darwin. What of that? One has to get ideas from somewhere, the only real issue being the one that Ben avoids, the issue of evidence that so strongly supports evolutionary theory, and does not support the creationistic views that Ben and Ruloff wish to impose on science.

It could have been worked out as a form of amusement of the upper classes and a place for them to realize their martial fantasies. (Was it Shaw who called Imperialism “…outdoor relief for the upper classes?”)

So what’s your point? Are we supposed to throw out English science, since it was based in a non-politically correct economic system? Here’s Ben saying that Western culture must (selectively) go, due to its many sins. Ben the PC man. Very good, Ben, you’re now part of the ranks of the nihilists and bigots who fault civilization’s advances just because much of the past evil was retained for so long (and into the present, one might (or might not) argue).

But it fell to a true Imperialist,

Arguably, Stein is rather more an imperialist than upper-class Darwin was. Darwin didn’t much trouble with politics, he was one of the privileged Brits who dabbled in the sciences because it was very interesting and socially rewarded, not because it yielded any great imperial or capitalist prizes. Indeed, a good deal of science was done that way, while Ben selectively condemns evolutionary science simply because he’s bigoted against it.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

Glen Davidson Says:

October 31st, 2007 at 6:46 pm
continuing from my post above:

[Darwin was] from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was “owned” (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism.

Colonialism was pursued in part (or at least excused by this concept) to stop the slave trade in Africa. You know, the slave trade, which America persisted in even as America came up with better ideas about government, and which Britain engaged in both at that time and during Newton’s time. Once again I note how tendentious Ben’s rendering of history is, and how really lacking in honesty it is.

More to the point, however, is that “Darwinism” didn’t cause Imperialism (which Ben tacitly allows), nor was most of the propaganda in favor of it after Darwin actually based on evolutionary ideas. God and country were the main pillars upon which imperialism was based, with God supposedly ordaining the white races to impose their rule and (again supposedly) better the world. Learn some history, Ben.

By explaining that Imperialism worked from the level of the most modest organic life up to man, and that in every organic situation, the strong dominated the weak and eventually wiped them out,

Your understanding of evolution is as deficient as your understanding of history, Stein. Modern evolutionary theory is definitely not about that, and even Darwin understood the intra-species and inter-species cooperation in an imperfect sense. After all, he had to deal with the objections involving altruism and mutualism, meaning that while his theory may have been analogous with British imperialism, it also took many exceptions to it. Try to explain that, Ben.

Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature.

It’s rather funny how Ben the Social Darwinist keeps railing against Imperialism, when of course “Darwinism” tended to be used more as a prop for capitalism than for imperialism (mostly people in the UK weren’t focused on the latter, but were on the former). But in his tendentious rendering of history, the attack must be on imperialism, and not on his precious capitalism, though neither one came from “Darwinism” at all (it was used to justify both, but it’s far from what actually produced both of them).

In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself. He was the ultimate pitchman for Imperialism.

Really? You mean that Darwin was the main propagandist for the imperialism of religious Britain? Then why is your despicable film portraying evolutionists as being opposed to religion, when by your claims the religionists of Britain were happily using “Darwinism” to support imperialism? Of course they weren’t really, they were operating on religious fictions of the ordination of their Empire, and of the “white man’s burden.” If Darwinism was used as well it hardly matters, because few were really motivated by such an abstract biological concept, while many were motivated by racialism and nationalism.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

Glen Davidson Says:

October 31st, 2007 at 6:50 pm
continuing from my post above:

Now, we know that Imperialism had a short life span. Imperialism was a system that took no account of the realities of the human condition.

Much like Stein’s politics do not.

Human beings do not like to have their countries owned by people far away in ermine robes. They like to be in charge of themselves.

Do they now? Then why did intellectuals of the UK’s former colony, the US, take up Darwinism without much fuss? Didn’t they understand it as propaganda in favor of imperialism?

Of course they didn’t, and neither does God-soaked Mexico, which happens to maintain a historical animus against imperialism and colonialism. Why would that be, Ben? Do you think that it might just be that Newtonian physics and “Darwinian” biology just happen not to be imperialistic in and of themselves, nor atheistic in and of themselves?

Imperialism had a short but hideous history–of repression and murder.

And also of ridiculous people who equate science with imperialism, without any true justification for it. I think that we have little reason to expect anything honest in this film, given the appalling dishonesty of its main characters on this blog.

But its day is done.

Well, not according to those who try to impose their views onto science. You know, Islamic fundamentalists, and IDists, the sorts of people who won’t allow science to progress according to its own standards and mutual agreements.

Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology.

Wow, I guess that’s true–if you totally ignore the substantial developments since then, as, of course, Ben does. So is much of Newtonian physics alive (like evolution, significantly added to and superseded in some areas), from an even darker and more brutal time.

And geology from that time and place also serves as the basis for geology today in many aspects.

Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media.

Species aren’t created, they evolve. And yes, we have huge amounts of evidence that species have evolved through Darwinian (and the other processes of evolution) means. One does not write of “Darwinist means,” unless one is a science illiterate, as Ben is.

Behe, btw, accepts evolution by natural selection, with an unevidenced role for the “designer” as one who supplies the right mutations. So Ben is using his ad hominem fallacy against “Darwinism”, while one of his precious IDists largely accepts Darwin’s contribution to evolution, disagreeing sans merit with MET vis-a-vis the source of variation and of new information.

And yes, Ben has failed to answer the three questions I have posed, which is how to explain the Linnaean taxonomic system with its apparent genealogical structure, why the mostly sexual eukaryotes evolve quite differently from asexual prokaryotes (and in the manner predicted by MET), and why it is that vertebrate wings are derived from legs, when no known designer would make wings out of legs. I think it’s safe to conclude that he has no answer, while all of these provide evidence for MET, or what Ben tendentiously labels “Darwinism”.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

Glen Davidson Says:

October 31st, 2007 at 6:55 pm
continuing from my post above:

Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.

It isn’t a lacuna, ignorant one, because other processes than evolutionary mechanisms come into play during the origins of life. Darwin even allowed at one time that the Creator may have made life, while Darwin himself was simply explaining the patterns that we see in life, including the speciation of finches on the Galapagos Islands.

Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism,

No, those were your buddies, who distorted a scientific concept into excuses for ravaging and despoiling peoples, including their own countrymen.

a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.

I wouldn’t suppose that someone so bereft of intellectual honesty as Ben is would even attempt to supply evidence for his scurrilous charges. He blames the science of evolution for the decidedly unscientific and unsupportable beliefs of Hitler. Well, why not violate Godwin’s law, when you yourself can’t support a single one of your statements, Ben?

The true fact of history is that the Enlightenment spawned Darwin’s thought in the birthplace of the Enlightenment, England (Newton, above all exemplifies such Enlightenment). The Enlightenment was anathema in much of Germany, and especially to the faction which took over Germany in the 1930s (the Nazis were also not in favor of Darwin, for the most part). The Enlightenment countries, which unquestionably had many faults, were the ones who had both the science and the decency to defeat the fascists. Ben disparages the Enlightenment types who promote science and decency, and who defeated the rank evil of Hitler.

Now, a few scientists are questioning Darwinism on many fronts.

Yes, and they always have. The IDists, of course, are not “questioning Darwinism”, they’re using labels, like Ben does, to suggest that evolutionary theory depends on a man and moment in history, when in fact MET is a cross-cultural, cross-religion phenomenon, accepted by religionists and atheists, and by East and West. IDists simply hate the Enlightenment, tell lies about science being “materialistic”, and try to impose their anti-Enlightenment beliefs upon free societies.

I wonder how long Darwinism’s life span will be.

Until bigoted theists (and, fortunately, many theists are totally unlike Ben and his cohorts) destroy it along with the rest of science. And it’s not “Darwinism” (not in the US–in the UK that term is conflated with MET much more than here), that’s just dishonest propaganda.

Marxism, another theory which, in true Victorian style, sought to explain everything,

More tendentious nonsense. Darwinism and its successors have never ever sought to explain everything. Darwin sought to integrate biology with Newtonian-type science, and largely succeeded. But I guess Ben has no truthful criticisms to make of MET, so he resorts to what IDists always end up using, untrue assertions.

[Marxism] is dead everywhere but on university campuses and in the minds of psychotic dictators.

Yes, see, if you really understood history, you’d know why non-Enlightenment, non-scientific Marxism had to perish of its own contradictions, while evolutionary theory remains indispensible for doing biology.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

Glen Davidson Says:

October 31st, 2007 at 7:05 pm
I’m trying to post this section of my reply again, since it doesn’t show up in the preview.

Continuing from my post above:

Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.

It isn’t a lacuna, ignorant one, because other processes than evolutionary mechanisms come into play during the origins of life. Darwin even allowed at one time that the Creator may have made life, while Darwin was simply explaining the patterns that we see in life, including the speciation of finches on the Galapagos Islands.

Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism,

No, those were your buddies, who distorted a scientific concept into excuses for ravaging and despoiling peoples, including their own countrymen.

a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.

I wouldn’t suppose that someone so bereft of intellectual honesty as Ben is would even attempt to supply evidence for his scurrilous charges. He blames the science of evolution for the decidedly unscientific and unsupportable beliefs of Hitler. Why not violate
Godwin’s law, when you yourself can’t support a single one of your statements, Ben?

The true fact of history is that the Enlightenment spawned Darwin’s thought in the birthplace of the Enlightenment, England (Newton, above all exemplifies this). The Enlightenment was anathema to much of Germany, and especially to the faction which took over Germany in the 1930s (the Nazis were also not in favor of Darwin, for the most part). The Enlightenment countries, which had many faults indeed, were the ones who had both the science and the decency to defeat the fascists, and Ben despises the Enlightenment types who
promote science and decency.

Now, a few scientists are questioning Darwinism on many fronts.

Yes, and they always have. The IDists, of course, are not “questioning Darwinism” (though they’re attacking it), they’re using labels like Ben does to suggest that evolutionary theory depends on a man and moment in history, when in fact MET is a cross-cultural, cross-religion phenomenon, accepted by religionists and atheists, and by East and West. IDists simply hate the Enlightenment, tell lies about science being “materialistic”, and try to impose their anti-Enlightenment beliefs upon free societies.

I wonder how long Darwinism’s life span will be.

Until bigoted theists (and many theists are totally unlike Ben and his cohorts) destroy it along with the rest of science. And it’s not “Darwinism” (not in the US–in the UK that term is conflated with MET much more than here). That’s just dishonest propaganda.

Marxism, another theory which, in true Victorian style, sought to explain everything,

More tendentious nonsense. Darwinism and its successors have never ever sought to explain everything (not even Marxism did, in fact, though it went well beyond reasonable grounds). Darwin sought to integrate biology with Newtonian-type science, and largely succeeded. But I guess Ben has no truthful criticisms to make of MET, so he resorts to what IDists always end up using, untrue assertions.

[Marxism] is dead everywhere but on university campuses and in the minds of psychotic dictators.

Yes, see, if you really understood history, you’d know why non-Enlightenment, non-scientific Marxism had to perish of its own contradictions, while evolutionary theory remains indispensible for doing biology.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

Glen Davidson Says:

October 31st, 2007 at 7:06 pm
continuing from my post above:

Maybe Darwinism will be different. Maybe it will last.

It survived the efforts of Marxists to stamp it out in the Soviet Union. You know why? Because it’s science. If you had the slightest notion of what science is, Stein, you’d cease trying to impose your version of Social Darwinism upon science.

But it’s difficult to believe it will. Theories that presume to explain everything without much evidence rarely do.

I’d like to know where you got such a disingenuous idea as that “Darwinism” presumes to explain everything. Or where you got the notion that MET is without much evidence. I’d guess from evil liars, most likely the sorts of anti-science anti-intellectual persons that you claim were “persecuted,” when in fact they’ve merely been held to account for their own tendentious nonsense.

Theories that outlive their era of conception and cannot be verified rarely last unless they are faith based.

That’s why Lysenkoism and ID have never been able to last in science, and why both have attempted (Lysenkoism succeeded) to use government to impose themselves into a science whose rules and methods end up excluding them based on their lack of evidence. Indeed, evolutionary thought has lasted where other ideas have fallen by the wayside, although many specific ideas about evolution have been brought up only to be ultimately rejected by the science (like Haeckel’s ideas were).

And Darwinism has been such a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies, maybe we would be better off without it as a dominant force.

It isn’t a “dominant force”, it is just the primary theory in biology. What is more, it isn’t “Darwinism”, for Darwin’s writings did contain a fair amount of Victorian baggage which needed to be discarded (expelled, something science does to bad ideas), and did not know about many of the details of evolution (like neutral evolutionary concepts), and has been substantially modified in light of the evidence.

Maybe we would have a new theory:

Maybe you need to learn what the present theory is, and even to know what must be in scientific theories, like actual explanations of phenomena–which ID lacks.

We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex.

Not all of us are as pitiful as you anti-science ranters.

And life is more like “imaginably complex,” for we use evolutionary algorithms precisely where our human design processes fail due to complexity, yet where evolutionary processes succeed. Evolution is something like a computational program, one that is massively parallel.

We are still trying to figure it out.

Yes, we are still trying to figure it out, which is why we’re unwilling to give up the only theory that reduces conceptual complexity, evolutionary theory. ID only wants us to abandon the predictive theory, in preference of dealing with everything as if it were only contingency (or where it understands data according to MET, yet denies MET’s causal mechanisms which predict those data).

We need every bit of input we can get.

Actually, we do not. We do not need the input of Ptolemy to understand the complexity of the heavens, we need people who understand science developments to input their knowledge and creativity. That’s why we have standards in science, among other reasons.

Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

I saw absolutely no humility in Stein’s propaganda against “Darwinism”. Only the usual arrogance of the ignorant, as they insist that bad ideas are as deserving of consideration as the ideas which have guided biological research for at least a hundred years.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

Glen Davidson Says:

October 31st, 2007 at 7:18 pm
This blog is good at allowing comments, but bad in making us wait to see if we got through. I’m going to try again to post one section (it should come after my first post), again because I don’t see it on the preview. If it is a repeat, it should be easy to ignore.

Continuing from my first post on this blog thread:

(In law, this theory is known as “legal realism”. Judges make up their minds on the basis of their prejudices and then rationalize their decisions by pretending to be bound by prior case law. One might call what happens with ideologies “political realism.” Persons make up their ideologies based on their times and their life situations.)

Yes, funny that, judges care about causation (well, that’s not actually Ben’s point, but what is his point? That the justice systems doesn’t work, or does it work dispense justice most of the time?), and you do too in the area of history, Ben.

Yet you’re pushing magic as an appropriate alternative to your causal methods in the biological realm, and you have absolutely no basis from which to do this.

Darwinism, the notion that the history of organisms was the story of the survival of the fittest and most hardy, and that organisms evolve because they are stronger and more dominant than others, is a perfect example of the age from which it came: the age of Imperialism.

Very selective there, Stein. You know very well that Newton’s was an age of slavery, plunder, colonialism, and religious bigotry. Yet you praise Newton and his science, while you rubbish Darwin’s science by association. That’s not honest in the least.

Anyway, at least capitalize properly. It’d be “Age of Imperialism” if you’re capitalizing “imperialism”, not “age of Imperialism.”

What is more, Darwinism as such fits your own political posture rather well, Ben, as you favor the haves over the have-nots.

When Darwin wrote, it was received wisdom that the white, northern European man was destined to rule the world. This could have been rationalized as greed–i.e., Europeans simply taking the resources of nations and tribes less well organized than they were.

Sure, and this differs from Newton’s time, how (I know it does differ, but how does it differ in a better manner?)? IOW, do you have a point that doesn’t undercut what you’ve written heretofore?

Anyway, as it happens, the capitalism of Victorian Britain is somewhat analogous to Darwinism (and is not actually very akin to traditional society, as we evolved to be more cooperative than Ben’s politics prescribes), and it may indeed have helped to give the right idea to Darwin. What of that? One has to get ideas from somewhere, the only real issue being the one that Ben avoids, the issue of evidence that so strongly supports evolutionary theory, and does not support the creationistic views that Ben and Ruloff wish to impose on science.

It could have been worked out as a form of amusement of the upper classes and a place for them to realize their martial fantasies. (Was it Shaw who called Imperialism “…outdoor relief for the upper classes?”)

So what’s your point? Are we supposed to throw out English science, since it was based in a non-politically correct economic system? Here’s Ben saying that Western culture must (selectively) go, due to its many sins. Very good, Ben, you’re now part of the ranks of the
nihilists and bigots who fault civilization’s advances just because much of the past evil was retained for so long (and into the present, one might (or might not) argue).

But it fell to a true Imperialist,

Arguably, Stein is rather more an imperialist than upper-class Darwin was. Darwin didn’t much trouble with politics, he was one of the privileged Brits who dabbled in the sciences because it was very interesting and socially rewarded, not because it yielded any great
imperial or capitalist prizes. Indeed, a good deal of science was done that way, while Ben selectively condemns evolutionary science simply because he’s bigoted against it.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: VMartin on Nov. 04 2007,12:23

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Nov. 01 2007,03:54)
 
Quote (VMartin @ Nov. 01 2007,02:11)
In his latest article "Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?" Ben Stein is criticised by Glen Davidson who wrote there seven successive long posts! I've put there
my answer listing antidarwian scientists.

I am not sure there is so strong relation between darwinism and capitalism as Ben Stein claim, but the idea of "natural selection" is something really extraordinary and new. Ancient people living in connection with nature never observed it. But it is strongly supported from armchair intellectulas sitting at Universities in industrialised countries, scientists who wouldn't survive a day in countryard.


< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/blog/ >


John Davison comments there sometimes and his posts are very briskly and good.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Amazing insight, as usual VMartin.

We hang upon your every word.

Even when you say things like "I am not so sure" I still believe you are 100% correct.

So, if ancient people living in nature never understood selection, how did the wolf get domesticated?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So you obviously do not see difference between artificial and natural selection and you suppose it was natural selection that is responsible for domesticating wolfs.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Nov. 04 2007,13:22

and the difference is?  

are you still struggling to understand what heredity is?

tell us about the morphic fields marty.
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 05 2007,14:11

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Nov. 03 2007,15:09)
I'm starting to seriously doubt the Expelled bunch's commitment to allowing comments to run without censorship, though they did fairly well in the past.  Btw, as others have apparently found, Dawkins' forum sucks too.  Regardless, I'm now archiving the fisking I did of Ben's latest blog (there are a couple of repeats of posts):

(OK, I'll actually put the posts here when I can get through)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They are totally censoring what is allowed.  I submitted my hear-rendering saga of the ID-Believing Double PhD publicly riduculed by a girl graduate student last week, and it is STILL not up, although they did send me an email that they received by story.

The email thanked Bill  for his story.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 05 2007,15:58

I think the last time they added any sob stories was the 30th.

I keep hoping someone will submit some short sob videos we can watch too.
Posted by: JohnW on Nov. 05 2007,16:14

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Nov. 05 2007,13:58)
I think the last time they added any sob stories was the 30th.

I keep hoping someone will submit some short sob videos we can watch too.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If word got out that someone was soliciting stories of "mistreatment" by the International Science Conspiracy, and offering to put said stories in a movie, every wack-job on the Web would have sent them something this weekend.  

Even among the 16 responses which got through before the Expelled inbox melted down, about a third are from the tinfoil-hat brigade.  The rest are variants of "Darwinists made me fale english" or "they were so mean to me when I tried to preach the word in biology class."

We're not seeing anything at all from advocates of Dembskian, dont-mention-god ID.

<edited - inadvertently submitted before finishing>
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 05 2007,18:11

I pray to the intelligent designer that they start including the poor me victim stories again.  Several of them are howlers indeed.  Some of the ones I submitted will be very funny if they ever get published.
Posted by: JohnW on Nov. 08 2007,14:13

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Nov. 05 2007,16:11)
I pray to the intelligent designer that they start including the poor me victim stories again.  Several of them are howlers indeed.  Some of the ones I submitted will be very funny if they ever get published.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


O frabjous day!  < More sob stories! >

And it looks like many of them aren't exactly what they had in mind:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Like any Raelian I recognize that the human race is the product of the Intelligent Designers who igners who we have been in contact with for decades. Everytime I tried to get the intelligent design promoters (William Dembski) and others at www.uncommondescent.com to at least consider the Intelligent Designer hwas discovered years ago I was ridiculed. They never once asked me for evidence or even considered the evidence. They ended up banning me and ALL my comments from their blog. Science is about discovery and evidence, no just towing the intelligent design party line.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< link >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Today I was expelled from the Uncommon Descent blog. All I was trying to do was talk about intelligent design in an intelligent way. I'm a Christian and a religion professor. Can you believe the sort of censorship this site is engaging in?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< link > - goodonyer, ReligionProf!

Plus a < visitor >  from an alternate reality, where wheels are square, trout are allowed to vote, and:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I was allowed only 30 seconds to speak (I saved a written copy of my speech), but was able to point out that the top scientists in the world have all but thrown out the current theory of evolution. Only lower-level professors still teach it, and they ridicule those who think otherwise.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on Nov. 08 2007,14:32

EF This:

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=73 >

Parody or slimey Sal?
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on Nov. 08 2007,15:25

Quote (Richardthughes @ Nov. 08 2007,14:32)
EF This:

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=73 >

Parody or slimey Sal?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Slimey Sal.  The writing style, like Dense O'Leary's, is (and should be) inimitable.

Note the fluffing up of credentials -

The research at the lab would have overturned the false and misleading computer simulations used by Darwinists to win a major court case against ID proponents (Dover).
3 degrees in scientific disciplines
Present during an interview by prestigious journal
for a major story
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on Nov. 08 2007,15:28

Ridiculed because of attacking Naturism

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=95 >
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Nov. 08 2007,15:30

Quote (Richardthughes @ Nov. 08 2007,14:32)
EF This:

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=73 >

Parody or slimey Sal?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The research at the lab would have overturned the false and misleading computer simulations used by Darwinists to win a major court case against ID proponents (Dover). I would have drawn a small salary and had my tuition paid to get a Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering. All told, the offer amounted to about $40,000.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Well, it's not so far off what he could have written. I bet he believes that's what happened. It's no wonder Sal and his Ilk don't do research - they know the answer before they even start. If he knew the simulations were "false" before any research at the "lab", presumably they are still false for the same reasons now and can be proven so easily by Sal by sharing how he knows. Presuming he indeed said those words.

And anyway, how could Sal resist the glare of the camera, it's in his blood. Shameless self publicist. A chance to be on the big screen? Sal would sell his soul. And the devil would come off the worst there.
Posted by: JohnW on Nov. 08 2007,15:43



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Informatics Lab was shut down in August by the Darwinists at Baylor when it was evident the scientific research would put certain Darwinist organizations around the country out of business and into disrepute.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Conspiracy and delusions of grandeur in a single sentence.  If this isn't Sal, it's a very gifted mimic.
Posted by: JohnW on Nov. 08 2007,15:49

Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ Nov. 08 2007,13:28)
Ridiculed because of attacking Naturism

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=95 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quite apart from the vocabulary issues, this one is fall-off-your-chair funny.  Too ridiculous for the Bigfoot loonies...
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 08 2007,22:00

Ahem,,,,Uh...



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled For Promoting ID
Added by: Chris, on 2007-11-01 18:15:52
Like any Raelian I recognize that the human race is the product of the Intelligent Designers who igners who we have been in contact with for decades. Everytime I tried to get the intelligent design promoters (William Dembski) and others at www.uncommondescent.com to at least consider the Intelligent Designer hwas discovered years ago I was ridiculed. They never once asked me for evidence or even considered the evidence. They ended up banning me and ALL my comments from their blog. Science is about discovery and evidence, no just towing the intelligent design party line.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Who is this < Chris > guy?  And why is his typing so shitty?

Chris
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 08 2007,22:02



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled from Uncommon Descent
Added by: James, on 2007-11-01 20:02:19
Today I was expelled from the Uncommon Descent blog. All I was trying to do was talk about intelligent design in an intelligent way. I'm a Christian and a religion professor. Can you believe the sort of censorship this site is engaging in?

[URL=http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2007/11/banned-from-uncommon-descent.html [/url]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Read it < here >
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 08 2007,22:06

Guys like hereoisreal should tell their story of being banned by intelligent design blog UD because they were open about their belief in God and Christ.

Dave tard censors anything religious at UD.  Why does UD censor faithful, honest christians I ask you?
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 09 2007,07:56

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Nov. 08 2007,22:00)
Ahem,,,,Uh...

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled For Promoting ID
Added by: Chris, on 2007-11-01 18:15:52
Like any Raelian I recognize that the human race is the product of the Intelligent Designers who igners who we have been in contact with for decades. Everytime I tried to get the intelligent design promoters (William Dembski) and others at www.uncommondescent.com to at least consider the Intelligent Designer hwas discovered years ago I was ridiculed. They never once asked me for evidence or even considered the evidence. They ended up banning me and ALL my comments from their blog. Science is about discovery and evidence, no just towing the intelligent design party line.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Who is this < Chris > guy?  And why is his typing so shitty?

Chris
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Congratulations!  A real live Raelian - impressive!
I'd be more impressed if you wound up with Katie Holmes though.  And of course, posted pictures.

But seriously congrats - at least you made the cut.  The post from "Bill" being abused by a girl grad student didn't make it.
Posted by: Henry J on Nov. 09 2007,09:19

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Nov. 08 2007,21:06)
Guys like hereoisreal should tell their story of being banned by intelligent design blog UD because they were open about their belief in God and Christ.

Dave tard censors anything religious at UD.  Why does UD censor faithful, honest christians I ask you?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"It's not about right.

It's not about wrong.

It's about power."
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 13 2007,12:29



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dear Friend of EXPELLED,

More exciting news regarding Ben Stein and EXPELLED ~ No Intelligence Allowed.
He's on NATIONAL NEWS TODAY.
Please tune in to The Glen Beck Television Program TODAY, Tuesday, November 13th at 3:15pm (EST). Please see details below.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH

3:15 – 3:30pm (EST)
Television interview
National
CNN Headline News
“The Glenn Beck TV Show”


Thanks!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on Nov. 13 2007,12:43

Y'know I've been thinking about how funny it would be if Stein milked all this press from UD, the DI, and all the other creationists, then pulled a fast one and put out a quality, accurate film.

If it got through to 1% of the people sent by the Tard pushers to view it...
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 13 2007,13:36

I wonder if Ben plans to watch the Nova special tonight.  I'd love to be a fly on the wall at ben's house if he does.
Posted by: JohnW on Nov. 13 2007,16:49

< Three more sob stories >.  Including the notorious < Forrest Mims > - not hired to write a science column for, well, not accepting science.

The second tale of woe is more, um, < interesting >...


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
When I began fighting evolutionism as a public school teacher, a powerful former Board of Education member tried to stir up the community against me. She made false claims to a Jewish Professor whose daughter was in my class. She secretly went to my principal in an attempt to get me fired.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwinists=Jewish Conspiracy?  But weren't they Nazis last week?

Sob story #3: < Darwinists made me fale skool >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I remember during my high school biology class, being made to answer questions that had no correct answer. Here's how the question would go: What is the age of the earth? A) 110 million years B) 21 million years C) 2.4 billion years D) 65 billion years

So what would I put for my answer? I would circle the answer they wanted and then write in the margin something like: You think it is this answer, but I do not agree with that. The correct answer is not displayed here.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


She's right though - the correct answer is not displayed here.
Posted by: ck1 on Nov. 13 2007,18:21

Speaking of martyrs to the cause, what ever happened to Bryan Leonard, the high school science teacher who testified at the Kansas Kangaroo Kourt while in a Ph.D. program at, I think, Ohio State.  His dissertation defense was held up because his defense committee was improperly constructed (plus they were all creationist sympathizers) and because he failed to get proper approval for using human subjects.

Sounds like a perfect candidate for this movie.  Is he in it?
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Nov. 15 2007,15:05

It's not terribly interesting, but I thought Stein's prattle on Glenn Beck's program is worth a few quotes and a link:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
STEIN: Well this was for a documentary which as you say is called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." We were studying what our kids were taught about evolution, what they were taught about how life originated.

What we found is that if you question evolution, you have a good chance of losing tenure. You have a good chance of getting fired, losing a grant, you`re out of there.

And yet evolution and Darwinism do not explain an awful lot about life. Darwin said nothing about how life originated and Darwin had no idea how complicated the cell was. Darwin was never able to point to any clear evidence of any species that originated by evolution and there hasn`t been much progress in Darwinism since then. But we found that if you even question the established church of Darwinism, bang, you`re gone.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uh, yeah Ben, who the hell lost tenure?

Damn, Darwin didn't explain the origin of life?  What did he think he was doing, explaining evolution, or something?

Darwin didn't point to any clear evidence of species appearing by evolution, of course, since the finches look like they were designed by engineers.  Not much progress in "Darwinism," either, or at least no progress in teaching Stein anything.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
BECK: What about first cause or intelligent?

STEIN: Well, first cause is not -- it`s lightning striking a mud puddle. See, this is what the evolutionists say and by the way, they may be right. I`m not a scientist, they could be right. Evolutionists struck a mud puddle and out of that mud puddle came a fully-equipped Boeing 747.

Because a human cell, or plant cell or frog cell has hundreds of thousands of very complicated, moving parts all of which have to work together in exact synchronization with each other to build the cell, repair the cell and reproduce the cell.

Darwin thought it was just Jello inside the cell. No, very complicated. How that happened by lightning striking a mud puddle is a very good question. And if you ask that question, you better start looking for another job or have rich parents or something.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I think Stein's running off of old Frankenstein movies there.  At least the mud puddle differs somewhat, but the lightning bolt is still there.

Bizarre, though, that Darwin thought lightning in a mud puddle made a jello-filled cell.  Is this a new design process for making gelatinous desserts?

Anyway, that's most of what Stein said that he no doubt considers to be substantive about evolution on the Beck show.  But here's the link for anyone wanting context (it's maybe around 2/3 of the way down):

< http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0711/13/gb.01.html >

Glen D
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Nov. 15 2007,17:32

Thanks Glen, I wondered if anyone watched this.  

Someone should send Ben a copy of the Nova program.  Maybe I will.
Posted by: JohnW on Nov. 29 2007,16:00

< Another handful > of courageous ID researchers silenced by the establishment creationists asked to stop preaching in high school biology classes.

Perhaps we should contact Chris Comer.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Nov. 30 2007,22:05

Luskin writes:




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
“This is a clear First Amendment case,” said Discovery attorney for public policy and legal affairs Casey Luskin
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How is Gonzalez a first amendment case?  That's freedom of political speech if I recall correctly.  

Isn't Luskin a Lawyer?  Did he go to Law School?  Did he pass the Bar?

Is Luskin a Total Idiot?

So, the DI is going to have a press conference where they say that Gonzalez's right to free speech (political) was...what.  What was done?

ISU bounced GG because he is a horse's ass.  Check chapter 5 of the ISU Tenure Handbook: Horse's asses may be bounced for cause.

Next.
Posted by: dhogaza on Dec. 01 2007,00:12



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
sn't Luskin a Lawyer?  Did he go to Law School?  Did he pass the Bar?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Apparently, yes.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Is Luskin a Total Idiot?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, of course not, when you understand he's not interested in truth, but rather fighting the "culture war" in K-12 schools, hoping to blunt or even stop the teaching of science to kids in public schools.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Dec. 06 2007,13:30

Do we see a trend toward productivity, or away from it?

Ethan Rop put together this < nice graphic of Guillermo Gonzalez's productivity >:


Posted by: J-Dog on Dec. 07 2007,07:50

John Lynch's Chart is prettier - and more visually compelling.  I say we should take full advantage of the vision that we have evolved.

< http://scienceblogs.com/strange....tio.php >

< >
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Dec. 07 2007,07:54

Maybe that dry spell should be called the "Privileged Planet Minimum".
Posted by: J-Dog on Dec. 07 2007,08:05

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Dec. 07 2007,07:54)
Maybe that dry spell should be called the "Privileged Planet Minimum".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HA!  Excellent - Touche!
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Dec. 08 2007,07:15

< Iowa State Daily article on emails in Gonzalez case >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Gonzalez said he feels "not everything is on the up and up; not everything is kosher," and he felt pressure from inside the department "even before the petition was circulated in 2005, and all the more so after the petition." Concerning the e-mails, he said he was "surprised about what people were saying behind my back."

"Absolutely, I can say in unequivocal terms, that ID was a factor [for denying tenure]," Gonzalez said. "I guess I was being naive. I thought I was being judged on my full record."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uh, dude, you put "Privileged Planet" in your tenure dossier. IDC was part of your "full record".

Translation: 'Hey, I've shot myself in the foot! It's all your fault!'



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

John R. Clem, senior physicist at Ames Laboratory, wrote in 2005 that he was concerned about the possible creation of a "hostile work environment" by circulating an official statement and wanted also to "withdraw [his] name from any public statement."

Clem wrote that Gonzalez's statements were an "embarrassment" to the department and wished to instill in other members that Gonzalez's statements were just the "highly publicized views of one untenured member" of the faculty.

"I feel that publication of such a statement might become the most important piece of evidence in a successful court case to guarantee tenure to the person whose scientific credibility we should attempt to discredit," Clem wrote. "I think the best policy is just grin and bear it for the next couple of years."

Clem said he feels the e-mails being brought to light by the Discovery Institute are misrepresentations of the full story, as they are "on a fishing expedition to raise publicity for their cause" by "extracting the most negative comments" made by faculty to the press, thus facilitating their case against Iowa State.

"We had a very delicate situation [at the time], and we tried to handle it as delicately as possible," Clem said. "[The Discovery Institute] still came at us with guns blazing. It didn't do any good."

Clem said the decision to deny tenure to Gonzalez was "absolutely not" based on ID.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Prof. Clem, one can't be too surprised that the Discovery Institute went with their primary competency.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Dec. 08 2007,10:40

Upon actually reviewing the < emails > in question, I don't think they represent a threat to ISU's decision on Gonzalez. Indeed, there are passages that work powerfully against the DI's position.

Examples include Steve Kawaler's prescient remarks:
                         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
11/21/05:

Simply put, next year's tenure review will be very closely scrutinized by the public and the press - and we must do whatever we can to make it a fair process. An unprecedented step such as a statement, signed by members of the department doing the tenure review that the science being done by the candidate is no good, works directly against our need to ensure, and display, a fair tenure review.

11/22/05:

Believe me I understand the frustration batted about here. But we should expect that the DI (or whoever comes to Guillermo's aid) will be subpoenaing our records and anything else they can get (including copies of the e-mails that are being exchanged between all of us.). So, with that in mind, keeping the process as fair as possible should be utmost.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This earlier sympathetic remark is also interesting. From Anne Willson on 2/17/04:
                       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Yes, I am aware of this [Gonzalez' intention to publish P.P.] and not exactly thrilled. I talked with him last year about perhaps waiting with the public bit until he gets past the tenure review, but I gather he feels strongly enough to be willing to take the risk.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


All of the exchange concerns the dilemma that Gonzalez created for himself, and for his faculty, by being so public with his advocacy of ID at the moment that his tenure review was approaching. Prominent is concern over damage to faculty recruitment that his actions had created, and how to limit that damage (including consideration of a public statement). Gonzalez himself rendered his ID advocacy impossible to ignore; as Wes notes above he referenced P.P. in his tenure dossier, and department faculty also grappled in this exchange with the fact that he made taped public presentations in which he argued that ID should be regarded as sound science, placing his ID advocacy squarely in the domain of their assessment of his quality as a scientist. As indicated above, also prominent among the concerns discussed was the need to preserve a tenure review that was fair to Gonzalez, as well as the desire to avoid creating a work environment that was hostile to him. As above, he was cautioned that it was unwise of him to create those problems at that time, but he went forward anyway.

I'm working on a catchy aphorism that concerns planting stuff that one later harvests, but can't quite get it right.
Posted by: someotherguy on Dec. 08 2007,11:20

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Dec. 08 2007,10:40)
Upon actually reviewing the < emails > in question, I don't think they represent a threat to ISU's decision on Gonzalez. Indeed, there are passages that work powerfully against the DI's position:

Examples include Steve Kawaler's prescient remarks:
                       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
11/21/05:

Simply put, next year's tenure review will be very closely scrutinized by the public and the press - and we must do whatever we can to make it a fair process. An unprecedented step such as a statement, signed by memores of the department doing the tenure review that the science being done by the candidate is no good, wors directly against our need to ensure, and display, a fair tenure review.

11/22/05:

Believe me I understand the frustration batted about here. But we should expect that the DI (or whoever comes to Guillermo's aid) will be subpoenaing our records and anything else they can get (including copies of the e-mails that are being exchanged between all of us.). So, with that in mind, keeping the process as fair as possible should be utmost.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This earlier sympathetic remark is also interesting. From Anne Willson on 2/17/04:
                     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Yes, I am aware of this [Gonzalez' intention to publish P.P.] and not exactly thrilled. I talked with him last year about perhaps waiting with the public bit until he gets past the tenure review, but I gather he feels strongly enough to be willing to take the risk.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


All of the exchange concerns the dilemma that Gonzalez created for himself, and for his faculty, by being so public with his advocacy of ID at the moment that his tenure review was approaching. Prominent is concern over damage to faculty recruitment that his actions had created, and how to limit that damage (including consideration of a public statement). Gonzalez himself rendered his ID advocacy impossible to ignore; as Wes notes above he referenced P.P. in his tenure dossier, and department faculty also grappled in this exchange with the fact that he made taped public presentations in which he argued that ID should be regarded as sound science, placing his ID advocacy squarely in the domain of their assessment of his quality as a scientist. As indicated above, also prominent among the concerns discussed was the need to preserve a tenure review that was fair to Gonzalez, as well as the desire to avoid creating a work environment that was hostile to him. As above, he was cautioned that it was unwise of him to create those problems at that time, but he went forward anyway.

I'm working on a catchy aphorism that concerns planting stuff that one later harvests, but can't quite get it right.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Could somebody do a post on this at Panda's Thumb?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Dec. 08 2007,11:37

Mike Dunford is working up something. Expect it on Monday.
Posted by: Annyday on Dec. 08 2007,15:51

Very interesting. I can't help but wish the pdf was more complete, but the interdepartmental politics make a lot more sense now.

It's also kind of funny how a number of evidently sympathetic faculty, seeing the oncoming train that was the inevitable Gonzalez lawsuit, voiced worries about lawsuits that are being taken as justification for those lawsuits.
Posted by: olegt on Dec. 08 2007,18:15

Quote (Richardthughes @ Nov. 08 2007,14:32)
EF This:

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=73 >

Parody or slimey Sal?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The story is consistent with what Sal wrote in September at UD:
< My retreat from the public view…. >
< Of Groups and Labs at Baylor >
Posted by: Annyday on Dec. 08 2007,20:01

"The research at the lab would have overturned the false and misleading computer simulations used by Darwinists to win a major court case against ID proponents (Dover)."

????

Excuse my ignorance, but what computer simulations is he speaking of and how would he propose to overturn them? Also, what research was he doing that's so special he can't do it on DI money, if it was going to change the world? I'd expect the DI to cough up a cool million at least if a few years on MATLAB were enough to assure their victory.

Further: Why am I so stupid that I continually think it's worth subjecting this crap to logical scrutiny?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Dec. 09 2007,12:12

Rob Pennock's testimony in KvD included discussion of Avida [The court reporter doesn't know how to spell "Avida"].

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

[86]Q. Have you done any scientific research on the subject of evolution?

[87]A. Yes. Some of my current research is on testing evolutionary hypotheses making use of evolving computer organisms.

[88]Q. Can you describe in general terms what that research is?

[89]A. Sure. The idea is to make use of a system that essentially is an evolutionary system whereby the Darwinian mechanism is implemented in the computer and using that to form experiments to test evolutionary hypotheses. Essentially one is able to watch evolution happen and in replicable controlled experiments test particular evolutionary hypotheses.

[90]Q. Has this research been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal?

[91]A. Yes, in Nature.

[92]Q. Matt, could you pull up Exhibit P-330? Is this the first page of that article in Nature?

[93]A. Yes, that's right.

[94]Q. And Ken Miller plugged Nature repeatedly in his testimony, but I'll give you the chance as well. Is Nature one of the more prestigious scientific journals?

[95]A. Nature, together with Science and PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science are really considered the top three journals within science.

[96]Q. And obviously peer reviewed?

[97]A. Peer reviewed journals, that's right.

[98]Q. You didn't write this article by yourself?

[99]A. This was a collaborative project. My collaborators in this case were two of my colleagues at Michigan State, Richard Lenski, who is an evolutionary biologist. He's most known for his work on experimental evolution using bacteria. He's had lines of bacteria evolving for the last fifteen years that allows one to do experiments to test evolutionary hypotheses in that kind of system.

He got very excited about this new system that allows one to test evolutionary hypotheses in a way where things are even faster. Charles Ofria is another colleague at Michigan State. He's in the department of computer science, and he together with Christoph Adami, the last name there, are the two originators of the platform known at Evita.  Adami is a theoretical physicist. He's most known currently for his work solving a problem that Steven Hawkings was trying to work on regarding black holes, but he works in this area as well. He at the time was at Tech.

[100]Q. At where?

[101]A. At Tech Research Institute out in California.

[102]Q. I'm going to ask you the same question here that I have asked you in our private meetings, which is these are computer organisms.  They're not biological organisms. What can they possibly show about biological evolution?

[103]A. They show us how the Darwinian mechanism works. The key thing about them is that it's a model where you have the laws that Darwin discovered, the mechanism of random variation that's heritable, that then can be naturally selected, can be seen, manipulated, experimented with in just the same way, it works in just the same way that it works in the biological case. These organisms, computer viruses if you will, evolve. And so one can set up experiments to watch them evolve and test hypotheses about how the Darwinian mechanism works.

[104]Q. Now, these organisms, computer organisms, they didn't arise by themselves, correct? There was a programmer involved?

[105]A. Yes. That would have been Charles Ofria particularly, writing we called the Ancestor Program. The Ancestor is simply a self-replicator, an organism that has instructions to allow it to replicate itself, but otherwise is just a series of blank instructions. That's the basic part that, was hand coded.

[106]Q. So with that, you know, fact of a human designer, a programmer, how can this teach us anything about evolution in the natural world?

[107]A. Our investigations are not about the origin of life. Like Darwin we're not really interested in that particular question. We're interested in as Darwin said the origin of species, the origin of complexity, the origin of adaptations, and what we're able to do in this system is examine essentially what Darwin examined. We're not investigating how life began itself. We're investigating how once that happens, things evolve, evolve complex traits.

[108]Q. So just to make sure I understand, this research wouldn't be valuable in any way to coming up with a natural explanation for how the first biological life arose?

[109]A. No. It's not at all aimed at that.

[110]Q. Does the designer, the programmer, play any role in the development of these computer organisms, like their evolution after that?

[111]A. The wonderful thing about this is that we can essentially sit back and watch evolution happen. We'll set up an environment, set up a system, put in place the Ancestor, put in place the original organism, and then within the experimental set-up, depending on what one wants to investigate you'll set it up differently, but essentially at that point we're not going to go in and hand code anything. We're not going to manipulate the code. What happens at the end, if they've evolve some new functional trait, that something that happens by virtue of the Darwinian mechanism. They randomly evolve, they randomly vary, that variation is inherited, and the natural selection then does its work.

[112]Q. What advantages does this computer model have over doing research on the subject of evolution with biological organisms?

[113]A. It has the advantage of speed primarily, and precision. It allows us to do what you really can do with natural organisms.  Lenski's work with E. coli lets one do experimental evolution so one can test hypotheses in that way. It's taken fifteen years, E. coli are pretty fast replicators, but even so, four generations or so a day still is a long time, and your graduate students would never get out and get jobs if you had to wait for that whole process to go through, and what this does is let one watch it happen much more quickly, and then set up very controlled circumstances so that you can really do replications. A controlled experiment is now possible in a way that allows very precise comparison of groups and then statistically significant results.

[114]MR. ROTHSCHILD: Your Honor, at this time I'd like to move qualify Dr. Pennock as an expert in the philosophy of science, in the history of science, in intelligent design, the subject of intelligent design, and in his research on the evolution of computer generated organisms.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

[193]Q. Are irreducible complexity and specified complexity associated with particular individuals in the intelligent design movement?

[194]A. Irreducible complexity is most associated with Michael Behe.  Specified complexity is most associated with William Dembski. These are interrelated concepts though. Specified complexity is the more general form. Dembski directly though says that irreducible complexity is a type of, a case of specified complexity.

[195]Q. Does your work on computer organisms address these arguments of irreducible complexity and specified complexity?

[196]A. Yes, it does.

[197]Q. Can you just describe for us briefly how it does that?

[198]A. Sure. The claims that are made with regard to these two concepts are as follows. Systems that exhibit or that purportedly exhibit irreducible complexity or specified complexity, actually at this point let me just focus on irreducible complexity, because since it's an example of specified complexity, any conclusion that we can get with regard to irreducible complexity would also deal with specified complexity. So we can just focus on that.

So the claim is any system, Behe's example is a mouse trap, so it doesn't have to be a specifically biological system, just a very general argument, any system that is irreducibly complex, thus to say has interacting parts that are well matched to introduce a function, such that if you remove any of those parts, it breaks, stops functioning, doesn't produce that basic function, is an irreducibly complex system, and such systems the claim is couldn't have been evolved through a Darwinian mechanism.

What our system shows is that's just wrong. We can observe digital organisms evolving by the Darwinian mechanism, starting with an organism that cannot produce some effect, cannot fulfill a function, doesn't have this possibility, and later on evolve to the point where it can, some complex trait that we can then examine. The nice thing about this system is it lets one look at it very precisely, we can look inside and see does it fulfill the definition?

In fact, it does. We can test to see, remove the parts, does it break?  In fact, it does. And we can say here at the end we have an irreducibly complex system, a little organism this can produce this complex function. But the nice thing about the system is that we can look back and see in fact it did evolve. We can watch it happen. So it's a direct refutation of that challenge to evolution.

[199]Q. Is that point addressed, put forward in the Nature paper?

[200]A. It's not. The Nature paper itself is meant just to be a test of a general evolutionary hypothesis, examining how it is that complex features arise. Darwin had specific things to say about that. What we were doing was simply looking into that, testing it in a way. It just turns out that it also applies to this case.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Cross-examination:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

[205]Q. I want to ask you a few questions about your work in the computer science area and Evita. You testified that in your opinion that Evita is an artificial life system designed to test evolutionary hypotheses, correct?

[206]A. That's correct.

[207]Q. And that's the scope of your testimony here today. You said the same thing, correct?

[208]A. That's correct.

[209]Q. And you said today and I believe in your opinion that it's designed to instantiate Darwin's law, correct?

[210]A. That's correct. By instantiate, just so that I this kind of explain this sort of philosophical term, the difference here is between a simulation of something and an actual instance of it. That's to say a realization of it. In the Evita system we're not simulating evolution. Evolution is actually happening. It's the very mechanisms of evolution itself as Darwin discovered them. The organisms actually do self replicate. They do randomly vary the code changes. The mutations happen at random. There is competition and actual natural selection. So these are not being simulated. Those processes are actually happening. So that's the sense in which it's an instance of evolution, not just a simulation.

[211]Q. And to make sure I understand, it seems you're saying that the instantiation makes it a more perfect model of Darwinian law of natural selection, is that correct?

[212]A. What I'm saying is it's an actual example of it, that what we have in the system our organisms, Evitians, have the very properties that the Darwinian mechanism discusses. So it's not a simulation of replication. They are actually self replicating. It's not a simulation of a random mutation. That's what's going on with the code. It's not a simulation of natural selection. They do compete and are naturally selected, without intervention, without design.

[213]Q. And Mr. Rothschild asked you and I believe you testified that the program doesn't address the question of origins, but rather the process of Darwin's law, it's working out in the computer program organisms, correct?

[214]A. It doesn't deal with the origins of life. It deals with the evolution of complexity of adaptations. So origins can sometimes be used in both ways. So what's relevant here is it's not about the origin of life. It's about the origin of complex traits.

[215]Q. And I believe you said that the overall purpose of the project is to test how evolution actually works, is that correct?

[216]A. That's right. What we're able to do in the system is put forward an evolutionary hypothesis and then set up a controlled experiment and let the system evolve with replications, as many are as needed, and in some cases you might have fifty different populations replicating in a controlled situation, fifty in an experimental situation, so that you can then watch what happens in each case and observe evolution, the Darwinian process, do its stuff.

[217]Q. Now, if someone looked at a computer program, I think you have said that it was written by a particular individual called the, what did you call it, the genesis program or the --

[218]A. No, the Ancestor.

[219]Q. Ancestor program, forgive me. They would look at that and immediately know that was done by a computer programmer, correct?

[220]A. Not necessarily at all. In fact, one can look at these things and not know which things were coded by a programmer and which things were evolved. We know because we put them in there this was the one that we coded, but if one were to just look at them, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell at all.

[221]Q. So is it your testimony that if someone happened to cross that computer program, they wouldn't know that someone had designed it?

[222]A. That's right. You would not be able to pick out the ones that were evolved from those that Charles Ofria hand coded as the Ancestor.  As I said, what the Ancestor does is simply replicate it. It's a very basic program. Most of it is just blank code, and as the organisms evolve it can actually turn out that they lose the ability to replicate. Some mutations are harmful.

Many are. Most are, or neutral. It might make no difference. Some mutations can actually make them better replicators, and if it turns out that random mutations replicates better than another organism, that means that in the competition, in the digital environment, those will be naturally selected. So what you'll have over time is the evolution of for example faster replicators. That is they figure out a way to replicate faster than the original programmer programmed in.

Or it could turn out that they'll be worse, and those will then lose out in the competition. So what you see is the evolutionary process, random mutations to the code, being naturally selected for and generation after generation organisms evolving, in this case better replication ability. Or, and this is the other thing that's characteristic about Evita, it can evolve the ability to perform complex logical operations, and in this case again it's not something that was programmed in at all.

The original Ancestor could do none of that, but what one sees at the end are organisms that have evolved these complex abilities. The code has changed. It's acquired an ability that it did not have before. And that's what we're able to see, something we know that was designed at the beginning but couldn't do any of this stuff to something at the end that has evolved so it's quite complex.

The set of instructions has to be executed in a specific order to produce a particular function. That's something we can look at and say how did it do it, and often they're very clever, they evolve things where the programmer would think why, I would never have thought even to do it that way. And that's what allows this to be a nice model for examining how evolution can produce complex functional adaptations.

[223]Q. Sure.

[224]A. If you have it, and the other thing about it is -- sorry, I get excited about this. We can trace, we can keep track of the full evolutionary history. So we have a complete fossil record if you will.  So after we've see that it's evolved something we can look back and look, it's a mutation by random mutation of how that evolved.

[225]Q. Sure, and forgive me if my question was imprecise. I didn't want to cut you off, but my question is a little different than one you've answered at least as I see it, not technical, which is this.  I'm not asking about the difference between the organisms you're looking at. I'm saying if someone came across that computer program, the Ancestor program, wouldn't they believe it was designed?

[226]A. And my answer is that you really can't say that. You might believe it and you'd be wrong. You can't tell the difference between the one that was encoded and one that was evolved later on.

[227]Q. So it's your testimony that someone could believe the computer program was not designed?

[228]A. You're asking a psychological question about what someone could believe, is that right? In that case they could believe all sorts of things, but the question has to do with can you look at them and tell this was one that was designed, and the answer there is no, not necessarily.

[229]Q. Let's use your definition and let's constrict causality to the natural world and I'll ask you the question again. If someone like myself wandered down to Michigan State University and came across your computer system generating this pattern that you have described in great detail which is designed to substantiate Darwinian mechanism, is it your testimony or do you have an opinion concerning whether someone like me would think that was designed or not?

[230]A. Someone might think it was. You might look at it and you might say wow, that looks pretty complicated, how could that have happened.  You might think this is so amazingly functional and interrelated, it's irreducibly complex, it had to have been designed by someone, and you'd be wrong.

[231]Q. So I would be wrong if I inferred that that computer program has been designed by a computer programmer?

[232]A. That's right. You'd be wrong about that. The ones that emerged at the end of the evolutionary process have specific code that lets them do specific adaptive functions, and that was not programmed in.

[233]Q. Would I be wrong if I inferred that the computer program had been created by a supernatural force?

[234]A. If you were to conclude this just as a theological position or as a scientific position?

[235]Q. If I were to conclude it in any way.

[236]A. So again, and this is a nice example to sort of show the difference between thinking about this as a scientist under methodological naturalism versus the intelligent design notion of opening our minds to the possibility, what I have said here is that the organisms at the end weren't designed. We didn't have a hand in doing that. They evolved. Someone who says well, we have to consider the possibility of supernatural interventions might say well, you know, God was in there or some supernatural designer was in there changing the bits inside the computer.

Well, you know, we don't know if that's true, and no scientist can ever know if that's true. That's not a testable proposition. So in that sense we can never rule that out. That's part of what it means to be a methodological naturalist. So we're neutral with regard to that.  Our conclusion that there was no design is one based upon methodological naturalism, namely we're assuming that this is working through ordinary laws, that there aren't any interventions that breaking laws. We know that we didn't do it, and that's what we can say as scientists. If God or some supernatural being is in there fiddling with the gates, the logic gates such that there really was design, we don't have any way of testing that.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I have no idea how they would propose to "overturn" the demonstrable claims Pennock made in KvD with respect to Avida. I think they must be delusional on that point. I guess we'll see whether the EIL improves any on the already-poor track record that the virtual lab has established.


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Dec. 09 2007,12:40

Of course, the decision does not cite Avida (or "Evita"), nor does it use "digital", or "computer". Nor do I see a more indirect reference to Pennock's testimony concerning Avida in the decision.

Anybody from the EIL could easily prove me wrong if I am wrong: quote from the KvD decision to establish the point.
Posted by: Rob on Dec. 14 2007,10:07

Quote (Annyday @ Dec. 08 2007,20:01)
Excuse my ignorance, but what computer simulations is he speaking of and how would he propose to overturn them?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They've mentioned Tom Schneider's ev and Devolab's Avida.  They overturn these programs by showing that they contain "active information", which, translated into non-obfuscatory language, means that the evolutionary algorithms involved are more effective than blind search.  Needless to say, scientists everywhere are shocked! shocked! by that revelation.

I've asked Sal twice what exactly the EIL is accomplishing with its framework, and he ignored the question both times.  Dembski claims that the EIL will put Devolab out of business, but I doubt we'll ever see him betting a bottle of Coke, much less single malt scotch, on that claim.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Also, what research was he doing that's so special he can't do it on DI money, if it was going to change the world?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I know your question is rhetorical, but I'll spell out the obvious answer:  Baylor's kibosh on the EIL funding (a whopping $30k for two years) makes for a great persecution story and a handy excuse for the EIL producing nothing of value.
Posted by: Ben Franklin on Dec. 14 2007,13:31

I was posting on the expelled site, but my posts were considered "pathetic", so I figured that this was the place to come.

Let’s take a closer look at those who wrote in to the Shout Out section on the expelled website claiming to have been “expelled”.

Of the 43 postings (only 42 now, cos’s entry seems to have mysteriously vanished), there are 6 claiming to have been fired, or forced to resign. I think this is relevant, and will be discussed later.

Sixteen posts claim to have been denied something: Tenure (3), tuition/scholarship (2), membership at church (1), participating at a website (5) (note- 80% of those were banned from ID sites), a potential future as an academician (1), a potential future as a football player (1), publication (2) (note- both were later published), and that a library refused a subscription to an unnamed journal (1).

Eleven posts claim to have been not expelled, but mocked.  These are some of my favorites.  Sorry, but anyone who considers Kent Hovind a scientist deserves all the mocking one can muster.

Nine additional posts were from creationists who didn’t claim to have been fired, or denied something, but they just seem pi$$ed off that their creationist claims weren’t taken seriously enough for them, i.e. “my creation club challenged the high school science teachers to a debate and they refused.” And “everytime I talk about Creation Science my teacher makes me feel stupid”.  Is this mocking? OK, it probably is.

One post was just a letter cautioning ID proponents to remain anonymous.
.

Here are some of my thoughts, and I would certainly entertain civil arguments and debate regarding them-

A great part of the problem we face here is - why does “Expelled” and the ID movement in general, while trying to make the case that “’Big Science’ has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom”, not distanced itself from the dumb, old, completely disproved ideas of literal biblical creation and a 6,000 year old earth?   Does anyone think that Michael Behe will abandon all his research because Ken Ham says “You can’t prove anything, YOU WEREN’T THERE!”?

Simply put, that move would alienate way too much of the populist base the ID movement is trying to rouse into social and political action.  Take for example, Don McLeroy, new chairman of the Texas State Board of Education.  As is evidenced by this sermon that he delivered at his church about ID:

< http://www.grace-bible.org/downloa....mer.mp3 >

This man is clearly an inerrant bible literalist, who believes in a 6,000 year old earth, which was created in 6 - 24 hour days, and covered by a global flood, from which Noah, his kin and the animals on the ark were the only survivors, and from whom all animal life on this planet came to exist.  Now, under it’s “big tent” philosophy, the ID movement is OK with having young earth creationists as supporters, and young earth creationists, for some reason that I don’t quite understand, are OK with the ID movement as well.

But will Don McLeroy be satisfied with Texas schools teaching science classes containing information that Michael Behe has publicly stated he adheres to – namely common descent and a 4.5 billion year old earth?  I don’t think so.

I don’t think creationists like McLeroy will be happy until the book of Genesis is substituted for the textbooks currently in use in Texas science classrooms.

So, I don’t think that it’s possible for the ID movement to ever achieve the slightest legitimacy within the scientific or academic communities until it at least separates the science wheat from the creationist chaff, which, I am sure it is loathe to do because, as stated previously, it would alienate too many of its major financial contributors, and its most powerful and politically influential supporters.  

Now, let’s revisit the “expelled”.  The first thing that concerns me is that we are only hearing one side of the story, and in cases like these there are always at least two sides to be heard, although I feel confident in saying, based on pre-release info and interviews that when Expelled is released, the movie will also be decidedly one-sided.    

But, six individuals have posted that they either lost their jobs, or were forced to resign because of intolerance.  Of those, one was a musician for a church, who was asked to leave because he taught a song whose lyrics questioned some church doctrine.  If true, this is certainly intolerant of the church, but clearly, it has been upheld, that some organizations, even when using Federal funds, may discriminate in their hiring decisions.

Another was a Sunday school teacher who claims he was forced to resign because he didn’t want to keep to the church’s “vague” lesson plan on creation.  If true, then, again, intolerant of the church, but certainly within their purview to have taught what they desired to have taught.

The remaining four are Jerald, Ross, Jerry and Christopher.

Jerry claims he was fired because of his anti- Darwinist views at a Spring Arbor University, which is an evangelical Protestant school.  He indicates that he was fired due to his doubts about Darwinism even though the President and Vice President of the school were openly creationist, although he does state in his post that he also experienced antagonism from “dogmatic Darwinists” at the previous University he taught at, Bowing Green State University in Ohio.  Jerry taught psychology, not any field remotely related to evolution.  It seems to me that something is missing from this story.  How pi$$ed off could he have gotten the faculty of the biology department for them to have them call for his ouster?  How does it serve “big science” to have him expelled?

Christopher was a teaching assistant who claims he was “let go for what he held to be true”.  He also states “I also invited others (creationists) to come and speak with me about the issue during my Teaching Assistant time. … not a smart thing to do”.  What is the moral here?  Whatever you believe, when you are paid to do a job, if you don’t do the job, your employment is, as it should be, in jeopardy!

Jerald and Ross both claim to have been fired for their non-Darwinian views.  If their stories are true and complete, it would seem they were treated unfairly.

Where does this leave us?  Is there discrimination in our society?  Undoubtedly,yes.  Is there some discrimination amongst scientists and academicians? Again, yes.  Are some scientists (and bloggers) hard-headed and unwilling to accept new concepts and ideas?  Sure.  But is this the major conspiracy Expelled claims it to be?  Decidedly, NO.  Just as the Discovery Institute’s constant assertion that evolution is a theory in crisis, so too the claim that ID proponents are being silenced is vastly overblown.

What can the ID movement do to gain credibility?  First, state clearly what ID is, and what it is not.  If the scientific heavy hitters of ID (Behe, Dembski, Denton, etc) all feel comfortable with an old earth, (I’m not aware of any of them who don’t) and some of them endorse elements of common descent, and speciation, let that be brought forth.

Second, come up with some valid research that isn’t 20 years outdated (Denton), or completely invalidated (irreducible complexity), and submit it for unbiased peer review.

But, as I contend that the ID movement is first and foremost a political and Dominionist Christian protagonist, the real science will always take a distant back seat.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Dec. 14 2007,14:47



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Jerry claims he was fired because of his anti- Darwinist views at a Spring Arbor University, which is an evangelical Protestant school.  He indicates that he was fired due to his doubts about Darwinism even though the President and Vice President of the school were openly creationist, although he does state in his post that he also experienced antagonism from “dogmatic Darwinists” at the previous University he taught at, Bowing Green State University in Ohio.  Jerry taught psychology, not any field remotely related to evolution.  It seems to me that something is missing from this story.  How pi$$ed off could he have gotten the faculty of the biology department for them to have them call for his ouster?  How does it serve “big science” to have him expelled?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I think that is sufficiently specific to actually make an < identification >.
Posted by: Kristine on Dec. 14 2007,15:08

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 22 2007,13:41)
< Ben Stein Calls for No Censorship; Volunteers; Has Open Comments >

How long will that last?

Remember to copy any pearls you write back here.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Aye aye, cap'in. ;)

First off, someone wrote this comment:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Why would a designer fuse two choromosomes that appear in a number of species into a single chromosome in another and forget to remove the end-markers, making it look like a fusion of chromosomes instead of a single long one?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Fisherwoman:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
God fuzed them that way because His ways are not our ways.

Open your heart and stop resisting the truth. There have been too many people hurt by Darwinising. It’s time that kids like me stopped being treated like we’re idiots for trying to minister in class. Have you read about the Cambrian Explosion? How did that create galaxies so quickly? Why was it perfectly smooth? How could that be by chance? In the beginning, nothing exploded! Give me a break, evolution gave us a hurricane (Katrina) shaped like an aborted fetus just by coincidence? We need the truth!

God bless Ben Stein. I pray that Jesus will sustain him through the ordeal he will go through after the movei is released.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Being "moderated" in three, two, one...
Posted by: Lou FCD on Dec. 14 2007,15:32

Oh Jesus H. Christ.

Javison is now < using Gilbert and Sullivan > to support his insanity.

Is that even legal?

ETA:  I started to let JanieBelle rile him up a little, but on second thought, he's so far gone it just wouldn't be right.


Posted by: stevestory on Dec. 14 2007,15:37

Quote (Kristine @ Dec. 14 2007,16:08)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It’s time that kids like me stopped being treated like we’re idiots for trying to minister in class. Have you read about the Cambrian Explosion? How did that create galaxies so quickly?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


that's a troll, I hope?
Posted by: carlsonjok on Dec. 14 2007,15:41

Quote (Lou FCD @ Dec. 14 2007,15:32)
Oh Jesus H. Christ.

Javison is now < using Gilbert and Sullivan > to support his insanity.

Is that even legal?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Absolutely.  Music is the new front in the evolution wars.  But, don't blame poor old JAD. He didn't start it.  It started at the now defunct one-blog-a-day, in what is still one of my favorite moments of the culture war.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
wÒÓ† Says:

Holy cow, this thread’s not dead?

Mr. Davison, would you care to comment on the work of Hammer, M.C. et al?

Some scientists say it’s legit. Too legit to quit, in fact.

Frankly, I doubt you can touch this.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on Dec. 14 2007,15:50

Quote (stevestory @ Dec. 14 2007,16:37)
Quote (Kristine @ Dec. 14 2007,16:08)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It’s time that kids like me stopped being treated like we’re idiots for trying to minister in class. Have you read about the Cambrian Explosion? How did that create galaxies so quickly?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


that's a troll, I hope?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Unless I'm quite mistaken, that troll shimmies.
Posted by: Kristine on Dec. 14 2007,17:01

Quote (Lou FCD @ Dec. 14 2007,14:50)
 
Quote (stevestory @ Dec. 14 2007,16:37)
 
Quote (Kristine @ Dec. 14 2007,16:08)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It’s time that kids like me stopped being treated like we’re idiots for trying to minister in class. Have you read about the Cambrian Explosion? How did that create galaxies so quickly?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


that's a troll, I hope?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Unless I'm quite mistaken, that troll shimmies.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gaaa! They kept it! Oh, crap.

*Ducks*

Yes, a shimmying troll. That was my first and only (and last) attempt at sockpuppetry, folks. It doth maketh me to feel a teensy bit like I needeth a shower. Sorry, Wes. That's most likely not what you meant by "pearls." ;)
Posted by: Jasper on Dec. 14 2007,17:12

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Dec. 14 2007,15:47)
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Jerry claims he was fired because of his anti- Darwinist views at a Spring Arbor University, which is an evangelical Protestant school.  He indicates that he was fired due to his doubts about Darwinism even though the President and Vice President of the school were openly creationist, although he does state in his post that he also experienced antagonism from “dogmatic Darwinists” at the previous University he taught at, Bowing Green State University in Ohio.  Jerry taught psychology, not any field remotely related to evolution.  It seems to me that something is missing from this story.  How pi$$ed off could he have gotten the faculty of the biology department for them to have them call for his ouster?  How does it serve “big science” to have him expelled?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think that is sufficiently specific to actually make an < identification >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, that guy has major persecution issues.  Check out this < account > of a presentation by Jerry Bergman at Wichita State University.

Here's a snip:
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
During the same conversation I mentioned to Bergman how absolutely insane his CV is (which I posted < here >, verbatim except for the contact information for Bergman), and I told him I made an Excel spreadsheet of time versus place that goes, at times, as many as 7 columns out (meaning he was working or attending school at 7 different places), and that’s with 3 pages of information that I couldn’t place because he provided no dates for them.

When I brought this up, Bergman again exploded in his persecution claims saying that websites publish things like that to discredit him and so I had to mention, after a bit of a pause, “Actually, I got it from Dave [Lehman].”

And so, I asked Lehman, “Dave, what are you doing to Bergman? Why are you persecuting Bergman?”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Annyday on Dec. 14 2007,19:28

I was wondering why his CV was so bloated. Personally, I think one or perhaps three advanced degrees is enough, but I'm happy for people who want to keep getting degrees forever and/or lying about some of them.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Dec. 14 2007,19:37

are you fekking kidding me?  FIVE masters degrees and TWO PhD's?  That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.  lately.  OK not really.  But Why?  Jesus.
Posted by: Henry J on Dec. 14 2007,21:22



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Unless I'm quite mistaken, that troll shimmies.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Just so long as that doesn't lead to dancing...

:p

Henry
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Jan. 15 2008,11:00

< Here's > how "Expelled" intends to pack theaters with kids who can't say "no" to the oppressive system controlling them.  Some excerpts:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: What’s the best way to get our school families to come out to the movies?

A: In speaking with Christian Schools, we’ve found that hosting a school-wide “mandatory” field trip is the best way to maximize your school’s earning potential. Send a field trip home with your middle school and high school students, have each child pay for their own ticket, then collect the stubs at the door once you get to the movie theater. With this model, you also will be able to benefit from the ticket stubs purchased by parents who choose to come as well.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ah, yes, the freedom fighters want to force as many kids as they can to be a captive audience.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: Do we have to go to the movie on a particular day to be a part of the fundraising program?

A: Not at all. HOWEVER, it is important for a movie to have a stellar showing at the box office on opening weekend. Therefore, we will only be able to accept stubs submitted within two (2) weeks of the movie releasing in your area.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oh yeah, it's all about the freedom.  It's a damn good thing they're not as manipulative as the materialistic-atheist-evolutionist conspiracy.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: Will someone from our administration be able to screen the entire movie prior to the movie’s release?

A: There will be opportunities for screenings in certain markets across the country, but not in every market. Please email us at expelledchallenge@groundforcenetwork.com if you’re interested in being a part of a pre-release screening, and we’ll let you know of the availabilities in your area.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Actually, some of us should see if we could get into some of these screenings, though somehow I doubt they're going to be nearly as open as those put out by the vast evolutionary conspiracy (well, we can be, since we control everything).

And, as you see below, it's really all about the freedom to do science:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: Who has endorsed the movie?

A:
Ken Smitherman, President, Association of Christian Schools International: Ben Stein has done an outstanding job of pulling together a cross section of interviews that point out the blatant discrimination against many in the scientific community who would embrace “intelligent design” or even more specific aspects of the reality of God… We highly recommend the movie to anybody. It is not only informative and challenging—it is fun to watch.

Michael Medved, nationally syndicated radio host: This is an enormously important project and I am so proud of the fact that Ben Stein, who is a national treasure, is part of it. People know that there is a dictatorial impulse at work in the land to shut down even the most elementary questioning of this unquestionable belief in random evolution and the American people don’t like being told by their ‘betters’ what they are supposed to believe.

Dr J.I. Packer, theologian: Propaganda molds minds in a very direct way and that is the logjam in this situation, which the Ben Stein movie, by being entertaining, seeks to break through. I wish it well – I hope under God it will have a great effect just at that point.

Peter Furler, lead singer, The Newsboys: Something we all need to ask ourselves in life is “What am I here for?” You know, if we are just “lucky mud” then these questions don’t mean much at all. But there is a God and he did create us. So if the Ben Stein movie is asking these questions, and if somebody is keeping us from finding out the great answers to the great questions - then maybe they are more than just questions. Maybe they are questions with eternal consequences.

Luis Palau, President, Luis Palau Association: It's no surprise to those of us trying to communicate the Good News that God is now excluded from most scientific discourse on campuses and in the media. We are seeing the consequences of locking matters of faith out of our classrooms. We applaud Ben Stein for casting light on today's challenges to academic freedom.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Jan. 15 2008,11:37

I guess I should link to the page with the "challenge" as well, though I assume one can get to it from the "FAQ":

< http://www.getexpelled.com/schools.php >

This is added in edit, because I'd like to point out that it's quite a lot of money that they are using to get Xian schools to force kids to fill the theater seats:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
0-99 ticket stubs submitted = $5 per ticket stub

100-299 ticket stubs submitted = $1,000 donated to your school

300-499 ticket stubs submitted = $2,500 donated to your school

500 ticket stubs submitted = $5,000 donated to your school
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



They're going to point to the numbers and claim the movie is popular, when they're paying as much as $10/ticket, and $5/ticket minimum, to have the schools force the kids to their dishonest "flick".

Glen D
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 15 2008,14:34

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Dec. 14 2007,18:37)
are you fekking kidding me?  FIVE masters degrees and TWO PhD's?  That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.  lately.  OK not really.  But Why?  Jesus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, to be fair, there is a pro-evolutionary theory attorney with a science background commenting on blogs and claiming something similar (at least three Bachelors and a few Masters) for himself, too. (This is the one who started a blog about moi.) He's rather belligerent and usually that's his parting shot when someone has displeased him (like me). We're not completely without a**hole snobs on our side. ;)

But yes, my response was like yours - big whoopie, get a life. Okay, so I had my Bohemian existence then settled down for a Masters while he was earning three degrees in three years. Never try to impress a wolf with how many hoops a dog can jump through! :D

But I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ben Stein's knobby knees. Sheesh. Isn't it bad enough, Prince Charles running around in a kilt (although to be fair, his knees distract from the ears), without Stein infantilizing himself? I'd like to see him doing the pogo-dance in a megachurch.
Posted by: Mister DNA on Jan. 15 2008,14:50

Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 15 2008,14:34)
But I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ben Stein's knobby knees. Sheesh. Isn't it bad enough, Prince Charles running around in a kilt (although to be fair, his knees distract from the ears), without Stein infantilizing himself? I'd like to see him doing the pogo-dance in a megachurch.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My oldest brother is conservative to the point that he writes letters to editor proclaiming Reagan's virtues as president, but he has enough sense to realize that the ID horse ain't never gonna run. "We shouldn't even be having this discussion" is his take on it.

I told him about the Expelled site and when he saw that picture of Ben Stein, he almost cried.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Jan. 15 2008,15:17

I have not been able to get back to the sites that I linked at Expelled.  Since I fear that they may be reacting to exposure, I went to Google's Cache to copy what was at www.getexpelled.com/schools.php to here.  Here's the text of that whole page:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Welcome to the
Expelled Challenge web site

where we can help Christian schools raise up to $10,000 while educating their students, parents, and staff of the controversy that is surrounding the Intelligent Design and evolution debate. This is an extremely important project for those of us who believe our world was designed by a creator and not an act of random chance.

What is the Expelled Challenge?
To engage Christian schools to get as many students, parents, and faculty from your school out to see Ben Stein’s new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (opening in theaters April 2008).

Here are some suggestions as to how to do that:
Organize a school field trip and invite parents to attend as well.
Offer extra credit to your students to go on their own time.
What is the reward?
Generous donations can be awarded to schools according to the number of movie ticket stubs they turn in. By accepting this challenge, your school could be awarded a donation up to $10,000, just for bringing your kids to see this film!

Your school will be awarded a donation based upon the number of ticket stubs you turn in (see submission instructions in FAQ section). That structure is as follows:

0-99 ticket stubs submitted = $5 per ticket stub
100-299 ticket stubs submitted = $1,000 donated to your school

300-499 ticket stubs submitted = $2,500 donated to your school

500 ticket stubs submitted = $5,000 donated to your school

Each school across the nation will be competing for the top honor of submitting the most ticket stubs with that school having their $5,000 donation matched for a total donation of $10,000!

Please click on the link at the bottom of this page to register your school to take the Expelled Challenge and tell us how many ticket stubs you think your school will submit. Registering is very important as only schools who register will be eligible for donated funds. Also, funds are limited and will be given in the order in which the schools are registered. Deadline for registering is March 28, 2008.

Please review our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for more information or send us an email at: [EMAIL=expelledchallege@groundforcenetwork.com.]expelledchallege@groundforcenetwork.com.[/EMAIL]

Click Here to REGISTER NOW!


Contact Us|Privacy Policy|Terms of Use
EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed and the EXPELLED titles, logos and images are trademarks of Premise Media Corporation and are used with permission. The views expressed herein do not represent those of the Premise Media Corportation or the filmmakers, but are rather the views of various organizations who have created these resources.  

© 2007 Motive Entertainment.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Jan. 15 2008,15:21

And here's the full text of the "FAQs" page:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Welcome to the Expelled Challenge FAQ page

FAQs
Q: When does the movie release?

A: April, 2008


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: What’s the best way to get our school families to come out to the movies?

A: In speaking with Christian Schools, we’ve found that hosting a school-wide “mandatory” field trip is the best way to maximize your school’s earning potential. Send a field trip home with your middle school and high school students, have each child pay for their own ticket, then collect the stubs at the door once you get to the movie theater. With this model, you also will be able to benefit from the ticket stubs purchased by parents who choose to come as well.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: What if we don’t want to coordinate an organized school field trip? Can we still participate in the fundraising aspects of the program?

A: Absolutely! You can simply ask your school families to bring back the ticket stubs (similar to the way the General Mills “Box Tops for Education” program works). You can then turn those ticket stubs into Ground Force Network, PO Box 1055, Rockwall, TX 75087 and your school will receive credit for the number of ticket stubs you turn in!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Do we have to go to the movie on a particular day to be a part of the fundraising program?

A: Not at all. HOWEVER, it is important for a movie to have a stellar showing at the box office on opening weekend. Therefore, we will only be able to accept stubs submitted within two (2) weeks of the movie releasing in your area.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Should I book a theater for my school?

A: You can. But it’s not necessary. A simple phone call to your local theater will be all that you need to do. Tell them that you want to bring a group of students on a particular day and they will likely arrange a special showing of the movie just for your group.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Is this movie appropriate for my elementary school students?

A: That is your call, but probably not. Due to the subject matter, it may be difficult to keep the attention of younger students.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Will someone from our administration be able to screen the entire movie prior to the movie’s release?

A: There will be opportunities for screenings in certain markets across the country, but not in every market. Please email us at expelledchallenge@groundforcenetwork.com if you’re interested in being a part of a pre-release screening, and we’ll let you know of the availabilities in your area.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Who has endorsed the movie?

A:
Ken Smitherman, President, Association of Christian Schools International: Ben Stein has done an outstanding job of pulling together a cross section of interviews that point out the blatant discrimination against many in the scientific community who would embrace “intelligent design” or even more specific aspects of the reality of God… We highly recommend the movie to anybody. It is not only informative and challenging—it is fun to watch.

Michael Medved, nationally syndicated radio host: This is an enormously important project and I am so proud of the fact that Ben Stein, who is a national treasure, is part of it. People know that there is a dictatorial impulse at work in the land to shut down even the most elementary questioning of this unquestionable belief in random evolution and the American people don’t like being told by their ‘betters’ what they are supposed to believe.

Dr J.I. Packer, theologian: Propaganda molds minds in a very direct way and that is the logjam in this situation, which the Ben Stein movie, by being entertaining, seeks to break through. I wish it well – I hope under God it will have a great effect just at that point.

Peter Furler, lead singer, The Newsboys: Something we all need to ask ourselves in life is “What am I here for?” You know, if we are just “lucky mud” then these questions don’t mean much at all. But there is a God and he did create us. So if the Ben Stein movie is asking these questions, and if somebody is keeping us from finding out the great answers to the great questions - then maybe they are more than just questions. Maybe they are questions with eternal consequences.

Luis Palau, President, Luis Palau Association: It's no surprise to those of us trying to communicate the Good News that God is now excluded from most scientific discourse on campuses and in the media. We are seeing the consequences of locking matters of faith out of our classrooms. We applaud Ben Stein for casting light on today's challenges to academic freedom.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: How do I turn in my ticket stubs and is there a deadline?

A: Send the ticket stubs you’ve collected, along with the name of your school, to the following address: Ground Force Network, PO Box 1055, Rockwall, TX 75087. Ticket stubs need to be submitted within 2 weeks of the movie release date in your area.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: How soon will my school receive a check from the Foundation?

A: Within 60 days of the movie’s release.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: How are the funds for the donations being provided?

A: Being that this film is viewed as history changing, funds have been provided by the Faith and Arts Community Endeavor project, specifically for Christian schools, organizations, and groups to encourage them to see the film and engage these Important issues.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Will all schools who submit their ticket stubs be given a donation?

A: The goal of the project is to help Christian groups be able to see the film. Funds for the Expelled Challenge will only be distributed to those who register through the Expelled Challenge website you were just on and on a first come, first served basis in the order in which they were registered. Bottom line, funds are limited – register as soon as you can!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Is there a minimum number of ticket stubs required to be eligible for a donation?

A: Absolutely not! Obviously, the more stubs you submit, the more of a donation you can receive, but any number of stubs can be submitted and funds will be donated based upon the tiered structure provided on the Expelled Challenge website.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: What is the movie rated?

A: PG


Contact Us|Privacy Policy|Terms of Use
EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed and the EXPELLED titles, logos and images are trademarks of Premise Media Corporation and are used with permission. The views expressed herein do not represent those of the Premise Media Corportation or the filmmakers, but are rather the views of various organizations who have created these resources.  

© 2007 Motive Entertainment.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Edited to add that I have been able to get back to these two sites that I just archived.  Even so, I feel better having archived the pages, since I don't trust those people one little bit.

Glen D
Posted by: Richardthughes on Jan. 15 2008,23:58

WOW. Have you sent these to Pharyngula?
Posted by: dheddle on Jan. 16 2008,12:14



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: How are the funds for the donations being provided?

A: Being that this film is viewed as history changing,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That seems like an unexpected admission. It reminds me of something I saw on a bulletin board at my university: "Attention Students: Revised History Schedule." You have to admire the honesty.

(Sorry if someone else already pointed that out.)
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Jan. 16 2008,13:20



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Bottom line, funds are limited – register as soon as you can!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Or in other words, they've only got $5000 to start with and almost everybody is going to be disappointed.

Seems like alot of trouble to go to (organised school trips) and find out that there's no money left for you after sending in all those ticket stubs.

Why don't they just say how much cash there is to go round?

Has any other film tried to get people to go see it by paying them? Hardly says good things about the expected draw does it?
Posted by: Mister DNA on Jan. 16 2008,13:37

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Jan. 16 2008,13:20)
Has any other film tried to get people to go see it by paying them? Hardly says good things about the expected draw does it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It looks like Expelled is going to wind up being Overwhelming Evidence: The Movie.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Jan. 16 2008,14:25

Except with more kids viewing it.

I mean greater than 3.

Bob
Posted by: Jim_Wynne on Jan. 16 2008,14:34

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Jan. 16 2008,13:20)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Bottom line, funds are limited – register as soon as you can!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Or in other words, they've only got $5000 to start with and almost everybody is going to be disappointed.

Seems like alot of trouble to go to (organised school trips) and find out that there's no money left for you after sending in all those ticket stubs.

Why don't they just say how much cash there is to go round?

Has any other film tried to get people to go see it by paying them? Hardly says good things about the expected draw does it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Reminds me of the old drama critic line--the best way to get people in the theater is to show the movie in the street.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Jan. 16 2008,14:44

The drum beat is picking up in the fundagelical world.

Don tinfoil hat before clicking < here. >
Posted by: Mister DNA on Jan. 16 2008,14:51

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Jan. 16 2008,14:44)
The drum beat is picking up in the fundagelical world.

Don tinfoil hat before clicking < here. >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm becoming a big fan of < Outkast >'s work:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Do you understand the difference between “truth” and “The Truth”?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



priceless.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Jan. 16 2008,15:08

Wow, MtDNA, have you been following him long, or is this your first meeting?

He is a piece of work.  There are some intelligent albeit, IMO misguided, folks on that fundie web page.

Some of my other favorites are Solon (he is now Peter Leavitt), Xion (a YECer that claims to be a scientist but once admitted he grinds eyeglasses), SavedByGrace (a pastor who is also a materials engineer, sometimes claims to be a scientist, is a YECer and presuppositionalist) and I probably forget some other good'uns.

Good place to tard mine.
Posted by: Mister DNA on Jan. 16 2008,15:19

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Jan. 16 2008,15:08)
Wow, MtDNA, have you been following him long, or is this your first meeting?

He is a piece of work.  There are some intelligent albeit, IMO misguided, folks on that fundie web page.

Some of my other favorites are Solon (he is now Peter Leavitt), Xion (a YECer that claims to be a scientist but once admitted he grinds eyeglasses), SavedByGrace (a pastor who is also a materials engineer, sometimes claims to be a scientist, is a YECer and presuppositionalist) and I probably forget some other good'uns.

Good place to tard mine.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's my second meeting - both thanks to you. I added the Outkast quote you posted in the "Top Tard Quotes" thread to the < RTQG >, and after seeing his work on the Expelled thread, I'm gonna have to bookmark that site for future Tard mining excursions.

btw, that site is operated by the Moonies, isn't it?
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 16 2008,15:27

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Jan. 15 2008,14:17)
I have not been able to get back to the sites that I linked at Expelled.  Since I fear that they may be reacting to exposure, I went to Google's Cache to copy what was at www.getexpelled.com/schools.php to here.  Here's the text of that whole page:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Welcome to the
Expelled Challenge web site

where we can help Christian schools raise up to $10,000 while educating their students, parents, and staff of the controversy that is surrounding the Intelligent Design and evolution debate. This is an extremely important project for those of us who believe our world was designed by a creator and not an act of random chance.

What is the Expelled Challenge?
To engage Christian schools to get as many students, parents, and faculty from your school out to see Ben Stein’s new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (opening in theaters April 2008).

Here are some suggestions as to how to do that:
Organize a school field trip and invite parents to attend as well.
Offer extra credit to your students to go on their own time.
What is the reward?
Generous donations can be awarded to schools according to the number of movie ticket stubs they turn in. By accepting this challenge, your school could be awarded a donation up to $10,000, just for bringing your kids to see this film!

Your school will be awarded a donation based upon the number of ticket stubs you turn in (see submission instructions in FAQ section). That structure is as follows:

0-99 ticket stubs submitted = $5 per ticket stub
100-299 ticket stubs submitted = $1,000 donated to your school

300-499 ticket stubs submitted = $2,500 donated to your school

500 ticket stubs submitted = $5,000 donated to your school

Each school across the nation will be competing for the top honor of submitting the most ticket stubs with that school having their $5,000 donation matched for a total donation of $10,000!

Please click on the link at the bottom of this page to register your school to take the Expelled Challenge and tell us how many ticket stubs you think your school will submit. Registering is very important as only schools who register will be eligible for donated funds. Also, funds are limited and will be given in the order in which the schools are registered. Deadline for registering is March 28, 2008.

Please review our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for more information or send us an email at: [EMAIL=expelledchallege@groundforcenetwork.com.]expelledchallege@groundforcenetwork.com.[/EMAIL]

Click Here to REGISTER NOW!


Contact Us|Privacy Policy|Terms of Use
EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed and the EXPELLED titles, logos and images are trademarks of Premise Media Corporation and are used with permission. The views expressed herein do not represent those of the Premise Media Corportation or the filmmakers, but are rather the views of various organizations who have created these resources.  

© 2007 Motive Entertainment.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Nice job >, Glen! :)
Posted by: improvius on Jan. 16 2008,17:24

"Faith and Arts Community Endeavor project"?

WTF.

Googling this turns up exactly one hit - the Expelled page.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Jan. 16 2008,20:48



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
btw, that site is operated by the Moonies, isn't it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I don't know.  Do tell?  Luuuuuuuuuuuuuv to hear that'un.
Posted by: Mister DNA on Jan. 16 2008,21:03

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Jan. 16 2008,20:48)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
btw, that site is operated by the Moonies, isn't it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I don't know.  Do tell?  Luuuuuuuuuuuuuv to hear that'un.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Never mind... I was confusing World Magazine with < World and I Journal >, which is published by Moon's Washington Times. Sorry about that.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Jan. 17 2008,00:37

Latest email propaganda from our boy Ben:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dear Chris

Motive Entertainment launches EXPELLED resources website for leaders, prepares for second national outreach tour
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (Jan. 16, 2007) - With momentum building toward the Spring 2008 release of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allow ed, Motive Entertainment announces the launch of a dynamic website for students, teachers, pastors, youth leaders and organizations. The site - www.GetEXPELLED.com - is packed full of useful tools and resources to promote the ideas surrounding this history-changing film:
Learn about new scientific evidence that invalidates Darwin's claims.
Hear from scientists who are being SILENCED for those discoveries.
Learn how to DEFEND BELIEF in God based on SCIENTIFIC evidence.
Learn what can and cannot be taught in schools and how that is CHANGING nationwide.
See a SNEAK PEEK of exclusive video clips from the upcoming movie.
Learn how you can get FREE GROUP TICKETS to see EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed in theaters.
Learn how YOU can be in the movie.

ABOUT THE FILM:
In this film, author, former presidential speechwriter, economist, lawyer and actor Ben Stein exposes the frightening "atheist agenda." The film also reveals how teachers, students and scientists are being "expelled" and persecuted for questioning Darwinism despite the mounting evidence that debunks Darwinism and shows proof of a Designer ("God") in the universe!

This highly controversial documentary is receiving major media buzz (including the front page of the New York Times). In the movie, Stein travels the world, asking top scientific minds whether Darwinism is still a "theory" or if it's become a "law" which no one is allowed to question.

NATIONWIDE TOUR:
The second leg of the EXPELLED Nationwide Tour is underway. You can request that the EXPELLED team visit your city, university, college o r church. For details and to RSVP, visit < http://www.GetEXPELLED.com/events.php. >
In December, the EXPELLED team traveled the country, making 13 stops from Texas to Tennessee after kicking off the bus tour in Dayton, Tenn. More than 1,500 passionate EXPELLED fans attended events in seven states, proving that science and truth are still hot topics across the country. Click here to read more in the Tour Blog.

ENTER TO WIN:

Win FREE Movie Tickets
Register for updates and sign up for your chance to win FREE movie tickets to see EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed in theaters Spring 2008. Click here to enter.

Win $ 500 Cash
Getexpelled.com has officially launched Th e EXPELLED Games, an awesome opportunity for you to do what you love, vocalize your support for the movement, and maybe even earn $500! Sing your song, write your piece, speak your mind. LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD! Click here for more info.

Win a Chance to Be in the Movie
SHOUT OUT and let your voice be heard! Tell us about your own Expelled experience and possibly win the chance to be in the movie! Click here for more info.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I want to enter to WIN!!  I want free movie tickets, cash, what's behind door number 3 and the chick standing next to it.

I love how Ben isn't pussy footing around with any space alien crap, he's all about the Designer is God!
Posted by: Bob O'H on Jan. 17 2008,00:54

Errm, did anyone realise that they had a < nationwide tour > in Nov/Dec last year?

Anyone?
Posted by: Nomad on Jan. 17 2008,02:27

Okay guys, I'm looking for opinions on this.  Should I go see this if it ever makes it to a theater near me?

Yeah.. I know they'll happily take my money and claim that I'm evidence that the movie was received well.  But besides my morbid curiosity to see what's in this docufantasy, I want to check out the rest of the audience.  I want to try to figure out who's going to see it.  Might I find myself in a theater that's sparsely populated (I don't expect a packed house in any event) by other people who are there for a laugh?

I don't see myself doing this, I'm just not outgoing enough.. but I like the idea of making up a sort of post movie poll and asking people what they thought when they leave the theater.


On another note.. WOW, Stein really did not get the memo about zipping it with regards to religion.  I was checking out the expelled tour description.  It announces that, at the tour, you can:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Learn how to DEFEND your BELIEF in God based on scientific evidence
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I REALLY wish this travelling sideshow had ended up near me.  Granted it would most likely have gone to a church, and I avoid churches if at all possible.. they just make me feel uneasy, all that mindless devotion creeps me out.  But it would have been fun to be able to correct them if they were to.. accidentally.. state an untruth.
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 17 2008,09:23

Quote (Nomad @ Jan. 17 2008,01:27)
Okay guys, I'm looking for opinions on this.  Should I go see this if it ever makes it to a theater near me?

Yeah.. I know they'll happily take my money and claim that I'm evidence that the movie was received well.  But besides my morbid curiosity to see what's in this docufantasy, I want to check out the rest of the audience.  I want to try to figure out who's going to see it.  Might I find myself in a theater that's sparsely populated (I don't expect a packed house in any event) by other people who are there for a laugh?

I don't see myself doing this, I'm just not outgoing enough.. but I like the idea of making up a sort of post movie poll and asking people what they thought when they leave the theater.


On another note.. WOW, Stein really did not get the memo about zipping it with regards to religion.  I was checking out the expelled tour description.  It announces that, at the tour, you can:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Learn how to DEFEND your BELIEF in God based on scientific evidence
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I REALLY wish this travelling sideshow had ended up near me.  Granted it would most likely have gone to a church, and I avoid churches if at all possible.. they just make me feel uneasy, all that mindless devotion creeps me out.  But it would have been fun to be able to correct them if they were to.. accidentally.. state an untruth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is the most bizarre thing I've seen yet.

It reminds me of something that Vine Deloria, Jr. said (yes, I know, but he was spot-on when he wrote about American culture), that American "Christianity" is largely Americans actually worshipping America - a kind of Americanity, as it were - and that in this worship, Americans jump on every new fad - hula hoops, judo, new therapies, social causes, etc. - to jolt some more novelty into this religion that they think is judeo-christian but is in reality football plus popular culture, tent revivalism, can-doism, with a little Jesus thrown in.
Posted by: improvius on Jan. 17 2008,09:25

I won't see it.  As far as I can tell, I'm already familiar with the main cases and arguments that it presents.  I don't want to add a penny to their box office.  And watching 90 minutes of lies would ultimately just leave me pissed off.

I cannot think of a sane reason to see this film.
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 17 2008,09:49

Quote (Nomad @ Jan. 17 2008,02:27)
Okay guys, I'm looking for opinions on this.  Should I go see this if it ever makes it to a theater near me?

Yeah.. I know they'll happily take my money and claim that I'm evidence that the movie was received well.  But besides my morbid curiosity to see what's in this docufantasy, I want to check out the rest of the audience.  I want to try to figure out who's going to see it.  Might I find myself in a theater that's sparsely populated (I don't expect a packed house in any event) by other people who are there for a laugh?

I don't see myself doing this, I'm just not outgoing enough.. but I like the idea of making up a sort of post movie poll and asking people what they thought when they leave the theater.


On another note.. WOW, Stein really did not get the memo about zipping it with regards to religion.  I was checking out the expelled tour description.  It announces that, at the tour, you can:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Learn how to DEFEND your BELIEF in God based on scientific evidence
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I REALLY wish this travelling sideshow had ended up near me.  Granted it would most likely have gone to a church, and I avoid churches if at all possible.. they just make me feel uneasy, all that mindless devotion creeps me out.  But it would have been fun to be able to correct them if they were to.. accidentally.. state an untruth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Praise Jesus Nomad!  Go to see the movie, laugh out loud when Behe and Dembski are on-screen, and yell out BS at the appropriate moments!  It could turn out to be like Rocky Horror Picture Show was for my generation - just watch out for where everybody throws up, as that could get a little messy.

Please remember to

1.) Take your camera - you took great shots at the Darwin Exhibit
2.)  Get the large popcorn, with extra butter
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Jan. 17 2008,10:24

I can't wait to see it.  I don't mind Ben getting my $5.  That's not much when you think of the quality tard you'll get to witness on the big screen.

I predict the crowd seeing it will resemble a freak fest of tardery.  Yeah I'm a weirdo, I'll pay $5 to watch a freak fest live and in technicolor.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Jan. 17 2008,11:25

Thanks Kristine.  And Richard, I didn't send anything to Pharyngula as such (stuck a bit in the comments is all), as it didn't occur to me.

I found Stein rambling on in typical incoherent bozo mode, < here >.

Mr. Christopher framed it well with his post.  The most striking bit from Stein was this one:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think we say it can respond to changes in the world around them and that neo-Darwinians say it can only do that by random chance - it only happens by random chance. We say the cell may have the possibility of doing itself in an intelligent way that there may be some intelligence in the cell itself so that's probably a big difference between the two of us. We, on this side, think at least there's a possibility. We believe there's some possibility the cell could have an intelligence of its own.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



[Emphases added]

Now compare this to his accusation against real scientists:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
and the Darwinists have no theory whatsoever about the origin of life, none whatsoever, except the most hazy, the kind of preposterous, New Age hypothesis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yeah, sorry that we didn't think about pre-cells or chemicals having some kind of intelligence.  That would be real science.

Not to mention that he has no clue about the speculations and experiments of the abiogenesis researchers.

Then there's this doltish claim:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Science should always be in the business of attempting to disprove itself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



After that he projects that we're trying to rationalize, when he can't begin to support ID or to come up with any meaningful criticisms of "Darwinism".

A bit of irony:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Well, I would say it's creationism by someone. For me, I've always believed that there was a God. I've always believed that God created the heavens and earth - so, for me it's not a huge leap from there to intelligent design
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Why no, it's just not that big a leap after all.  Sorry that I said it was (or did I?).

Here's the guy "questioning" Stein:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There is a segment in the film, where it's made clear that intelligent design can open up new areas of inquiry that could improve the human condition. One involves a neurosurgeon, Michael Egnor, and another scientist, Jon Wells, who indicate that given how the cells are put together, with eye toward intelligent design, and with the idea that animal cells have tiny turbines - or if viewed as tiny turbines - he was able to formulate a theory that said in the event these things malfunction and don't properly shut down and could break apart, this is the first step on the way to cancer.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



There you are Egnor, who's as clueless as a mole watching a shuttle launch (at least in this subject), and Jon Wells with his tired turbine BS, which was neither really predicated upon ID, nor did it turn out to be correct.  Apparently it's in the movie, though, at least so far.  Stein's actually more sensible about this bit than the interviewer is:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And I was just overwhelmed by the fact, at least as I am told, that Darwinists have never observed natural species being originated ... There's not even a clear definition of what a species is
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



You could probably overwhelm this ignoramus with the fact that a 10 km. asteroid has never been seen to hit earth and cause the devastation that "new age" scientists say would occur, and that stars have never been seen forming.

And of course the prediction of MET that species would not be a clear and simple category, due to evolution, becomes in this IDiot's mind an argument against scientists.

Seems, too, that we've progressed from being Nazis to being Marxists:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think there is this kind of Marxist establishment in this country that has been overthrown in other countries, but not overthrown here. There is a very powerful Marxist establishment within the intelligentsia that does not allow questioning of its premises.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 17 2008,11:38

Oh, Marxists. That’s worse! :)

To expand this discussion into Ben Stein’s celestial spheres, I see that he is now advocating a bailout of Wall Street (because the economy sucks so bad) after calling for the Justice Department to investigate Wall Street (because the economy is hunky-dory).

You gotta admit, for someone who doesn’t think evolution happens this man sure knows how to adapt! :D

Nomad, Improvius, and Mr. Christopher – I recomment UTorrent. Then you don’t pay a thing and can take this stuff (like Jesus Camp) in little bites.
Posted by: JohnW on Jan. 17 2008,11:57

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Jan. 17 2008,09:25)
Seems, too, that we've progressed from being Nazis to being Marxists:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think there is this kind of Marxist establishment in this country that has been overthrown in other countries, but not overthrown here. There is a very powerful Marxist establishment within the intelligentsia that does not allow questioning of its premises.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So, while biological research in the US remains chained to outmoded Darwinian orthodoxy by a sinister cabal of Nazis Marxists, other countries are forging ahead with spectacular findings based on the cutting-edge new paradigm of ID.

Does anyone know where I can read about this research?  Or do the Nazis Marxists control the publishing houses, libraries and Internet?
Posted by: Mister DNA on Jan. 17 2008,12:12

Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 17 2008,11:38)
Nomad, Improvius, and Mr. Christopher – I recomment UTorrent. Then you don’t pay a thing and can take this stuff (like Jesus Camp) in little bites.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In addition... if you can spare a few bucks each month, a premium Usenet service is handy. I just checked, and the "Jesus Camp" DVD is available in alt.binaries.boneless - for review purposes only, of course.

Since it's in my Netflix queue I'm not going to bother, though.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Jan. 17 2008,12:50

Glen links to this article in his above post but it's too tardish to not post the whole turd here (my bolding):



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Interview: 'Big Science' in America is Killing 1st Amendment, Says Actor Ben Stein
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
January 17, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - Intelligent design theory, or ID, is opening new doors of scientific research, particularly in cancer and other disease research, according to its adherents, but a new movie, "Expelled" starring Ben Stein explores how an "elitist scientific establishment" is apparently muzzling and smearing scientists who publicly discuss ID.

The First Amendment is under brutal attack in the scientific community, Ben Stein, a former presidential speechwriter-turned-actor and commentator, says in the film, which opens in theaters on Feb. 12.

"I always assumed scientists were free to ask any question, pursue any line of inquiry without fear or reprisal," he says. "But recently, I've been alarmed to discover that this is not the case."

In an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service - with audio clips below - Stein contends that rigid Darwinists are silencing their critics in academia, which the film explores, and discusses how ID ideas are helping in cancer research and similar work.

Yet the ID research that could potentially produce medical breakthroughs, says Stein, is also being undermined by Darwinian scientists who don't want ID research viewed as legitimate.

Cybercast News Service: Is this controversy about science versus religion, or is this more science versus science? Simply, is this about scientists with different worldviews -with one group more willing to open themselves up to alternative explanations than others - as the film suggests?

Ben Stein: Well, first of all, I question your premise. It's not just scientists versus scientists. It is a particular subset of science which does not admit any kind of questions - it is a kind of perversion of science, which doesn't allow for any kind of questioning of itself. Science should always be in the business of attempting to disprove itself. Neo-Darwinian science is exactly in the opposite business of endlessly trying to rationalize itself - and reprove itself, you might say - reprove that it's right without any kind of test. So it's not scientists - it's really, I would say, scientists are the ones willing to look into intelligent design. The people who are anti-science are the ones unwilling to look at anything new or different. So I'd say it's a perverted kind of science versus what I would call a more classical science. But it is also science versus at least the possibility of belief.

Cybercast News Service: There is a fair amount of discussion of creationism and how it might relate to intelligent design, and there are a lot of critics who say this is just folks with religious convictions trying to use intelligent design as a Trojan horse to advance a form of creationism. ... What sort of separation do you see or perhaps don't see between creationism, on the one hand, and intelligent design? Do you have your own definition of intelligent design, and is it distinct and different from creationism?

Ben Stein: Well, I would say it's creationism by someone. For me, I've always believed that there was a God. I've always believed that God created the heavens and earth - so, for me it's not a huge leap from there to intelligent design. I think for some of the people who work on intelligent design, they're not as long-time believers as I am. So, I would answer that question, in brief, by saying, I believe in God and God created the heavens and the earth and all the life on the earth. But what other people, who are intelligent design people, think, I could not characterize. (Listen to Audio)

Cybercast News Service: There is a segment in the film, where it's made clear that intelligent design can open up new areas of inquiry that could improve the human condition. One involves a neurosurgeon, Michael Egnor, and another scientist, Jon Wells, who indicate that given how the cells are put together, with eye toward intelligent design, and with the idea that animal cells have tiny turbines - or if viewed as tiny turbines - he was able to formulate a theory that said in the event these things malfunction and don't properly shut down and could break apart, this is the first step on the way to cancer. He seemed to be suggesting that intelligent design theory could open up a lot of possibilities into improving the human condition. He doesn't explicitly say 'a cure for cancer,' but at least providing additional insight into new areas of treatment or a better understanding of how cancer is formed. What is your reaction to that part of the film? What sort of potential is attached to research going forward?

Ben Stein: Well, I think, I wouldn't say, if you say intelligent design is the answer and we're all created by an intelligent designer - that does not by itself provide the cure to cancer or any other disease or does not provide any ideas about how to deal with a stroke or with the heart hammering blood into the brain. But I would say, if you accept a broader, an even broader premise than intelligent design, namely, don't foreclose anything in your study of the human body and of the cell, then you are a lot more likely to get somewhere. I'd put it like that. I don't think saying intelligent design just automatically gets you anywhere. (Listen to Audio)

Ben Stein: But I think if you say we are going to study everything, and we are not going to let anyone close down our rights of inquiry, then I think we are getting somewhere. But also, there is this big issue about RNA and DNA, and whether RNA and DNA can respond to changes in the world around them. I think we say it can respond to changes in the world around them and that neo-Darwinians say it can only do that by random chance - it only happens by random chance. We say the cell may have the possibility of doing itself in an intelligent way that there may be some intelligence in the cell itself so that's probably a big difference between the two of us. We, on this side, think at least there's a possibility. We believe there's some possibility the cell could have an intelligence of its own. (Listen to Audio)

Cybercast News Service: The film spends a fair amount of time on the complexity of the cell and makes the point that no one at the time, including Darwin himself - no one could have anticipated that level of complexity ...

Ben Stein: Not even close. (Listen to audio)

Cybercast News Service: In what way did the film have any influence or change in your thinking and how it relates to intelligent design or scientific inquiry?

Ben Stein: Oh, when I first started working on this, I had no remote clue of how complicated the cell was, and I was believer just because I'd always been a believer and the idea that an intelligent being created the universe. But after working with these scientists and interviewing them and learning about how complex the cell was and how unlikely the proposition was that it all happened by random chance, then I was just overwhelmed by this data. And I was just overwhelmed by the fact, at least as I am told, that Darwinists have never observed natural species being originated ... There's not even a clear definition of what a species is - and the Darwinists have no theory whatsoever about the origin of life, none whatsoever, except the most hazy, the kind of preposterous, New Age hypothesis. And I think our theory that there is a creator strikes even some people, even Dawkins very possibly, as more likely than it all happened by total chance.

Cybercast News Service: Mr. Dawkins describes the proponents of ID as being ignorant. They don't buy into the scientific consensus - a lot of arguments made that there is a rock solid consensus in favor of evolution to explain biology. What is your reaction to this notion of consensus, and how does this complicate the journey for scientist or academics open to the idea?

Ben Stein: It doesn't complicate it at all because Dawkins, at least in my opinion, is completely wrong, and we produced a number of people who are bona fide scientists who clearly believe there is a possibility of intelligent design. So, his idea that there is a complete rock solid consensus is completely wrong. I mean, God bless him, he's obviously an intelligent guy, but it's obviously wrong. The people we produced weren't actors pretending to be scientists - they were scientists. (Listen to Audio)

Cybercast News Service: Why do you think the very idea or suggestion of intelligent design is so antagonistic to scientists who claim they have evidence? Why not have the debate? If they are so confident, why not have debate?

Ben Stein: That's a deep question. That's a sociological, psychological and ethical question. One, if they are Darwinists and they owe their jobs to being Darwinists, they are not going to challenge the orthodoxy because that would challenge the whole basis of their jobs and their lives. So they are not going to challenge the ideology that has given them lush positions in real life. That's one thing. Second thing, once people are locked into a way of thinking, they are unlikely to change. Third is, if they acknowledge the possibility of intelligent design and that intelligent design is God, then they may think God has moral expectations of them and they may be falling short of those moral expectations, and they may be worried about some sort of judgment upon them. (Listen to Audio)

Cybercast News Service: The film starts with you giving a presentation about American freedom, and when you get near the end of the film there's a Polish official - I believe a member of the EU Parliament - who said there's actually more freedom and latitude in Poland than here in the United States to explore these questions, and he blames it on political correctness. Mr. Stein how did we get to this point? ... If there's more latitude for scientific inquiry overseas in a recently released communist country than there is in the United States of America?

Ben Stein: That is a very, very, very good question. How did we get here? I don't know. How did we get to this point in Hollywood? There's (sic) only certain attitudes allowed about military, religion, or small towns or about business? I don't know how we got to this, this kind of orthodoxy. I think there is this kind of Marxist establishment in this country that has been overthrown in other countries, but not overthrown here. There is a very powerful Marxist establishment within the intelligentsia that does not allow questioning of its premises. (Listen to Audio)

Cybercast News Service: What do you think needs to happen in academia? What suggestions or prescriptions do you think will come out of the film?

Ben Stein: We want more freedom. I just spoke to some young people in Orlando. And I said, this to us - at least to me, I don't know what it is to other people in the film - is a bit like the Civil Rights movement. You want to have freedom, where our goal is freedom. We want freedom. We want all our rights, not some of them, all our rights to free speech. We want them here in America, and we want them now. That's what we want; we're not going to get it. But we hope to open the door wider to some serious debate on these issues. (Listen to Audio)

Cybercast News Service: The point is made that journalists have a tendency to embrace the establishment position ...

Ben Stein: If the establishment position is the sort of left-wing establishment position. They are certainly not going to embrace the Republican establishment position. (Listen to Audio)

Cybercast News Service: This reminds me of the global warming debate. The Union of Concerned Scientists, exactly one year ago, put out a report on Exxon Mobil for their position on global warming, and in their report they say too often journalists' inclination to provide political balance leads to inaccurate reporting - and that members of the media should not quote ExxonMobil officials or anybody who questions the scientific consensus.

Ben Stein: Yes, that is precisely the analogy. Very well done. I totally agree. There are still plenty of scientists who question fossil fuels' role in global warming, but you're not allowed to question that anymore. (Listen to Audio)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Nomad on Jan. 18 2008,02:12



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think there is this kind of Marxist establishment in this country that has been overthrown in other countries, but not overthrown here
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What?  He's saying that only in the US are the darwinistas in power?  And in the rest of the world ID is being received with open arms?

It's an interesting inversion of the usual rah rah USA rhetoric.  Now instead of the US being the best, suddenly we're the worst.  It still appears to rely on the audience's total ignorance of what anything outside the country is like.


Believe me I'm familiar with other means of acquiring intellectual property.  The thing about Expelled is that I'm interested in seeing what the audience is like.  My hope, futile or not, is that there'll just be a few people there to witness the spectacle, and we can all end up rolling in the aisles laughing at it.  I imagine lots of booing, and throwing popcorn at the screen.

I'm kind of doubting whether this will actually ever be widely released.  If I worked at it maybe I could find it in some country town an hour away from me, but I just don't see a movie accusing the scientific and academic world of being marxists doing all that well in the land of Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory.
Granted that'd be worse for the Einstein denialist movie.  But I don't think that's coming anywhere near here.  Although I'd like to see a rampaging mob of respectable physicists as a result of it.  What would they wield instead of torches and pitchforks?
Posted by: Henry J on Jan. 18 2008,21:53



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Science should always be in the business of attempting to disprove itself.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Wonder if that guy's heard of the following hypotheses:

Phlogiston.

Lamarckism.

Steady State.

Newton's Laws (motion and gravity).

Bohr model of the atom.

Geocentrism.

Cold fusion.

Ether, and absolute motion relative to it.

Epicycles.

Blending inheritance.

Light regarded as strictly wave-like.

Light regarded as strictly particle-like.

(And those are just the ones that came to mind in a few minutes of thought.)



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Ben Stein: But I think if you say we are going to study everything, and we are not going to let anyone close down our rights of inquiry, then I think we are getting somewhere.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Maybe if they'd take half the money they're pouring into P.R. and propaganda and put it into actually doing those inquiries they're talking about... Wait, what am I saying?

Henry

Edit: Add Aquatic Ape to the above list.
Posted by: IanBrown_101 on Jan. 18 2008,22:31

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Jan. 17 2008,17:25)
Seems, too, that we've progressed from being Nazis to being Marxists:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think there is this kind of Marxist establishment in this country that has been overthrown in other countries, but not overthrown here. There is a very powerful Marxist establishment within the intelligentsia that does not allow questioning of its premises.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If it helps I'm almost a Marxist (I've been informed I'm a "Lenin lover"before, despite the fact I was, at the time, arguing AGAINST bolshevism, good ol' cognitive dissonance/ failure to understand what communism is despite knowing you hate it).

Unfortunately, I'm not in your country.

Ah well, at least Stein can burn effigies of Lenny.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Jan. 19 2008,08:41

There certainly has been a Marxist strand in evolutionary biologists.  Haldane and Maynard Smith in the UK come to mind.  And Lewontin and co. in the US.

For a really good read about how evolutionary biology and sociobiology developed, try Ullica Segerstråle's < Defenders of the Truth >, where the Marxist influence is one of the sub-plots.

Bob (not a Marxist.  At least not that Marx)
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Jan. 19 2008,15:32

Quote (Bob O'H @ Jan. 19 2008,08:41)
There certainly has been a Marxist strand in evolutionary biologists.  Haldane and Maynard Smith in the UK come to mind.  And Lewontin and co. in the US.

For a really good read about how evolutionary biology and sociobiology developed, try Ullica Segerstråle's < Defenders of the Truth >, where the Marxist influence is one of the sub-plots.

Bob (not a Marxist.  At least not that Marx)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard Marx?



Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 29 2008,15:01

Well I have to admit to being dead wrong about something:

I thought that the movie Network was a hilarious but empty satire of a set of circumstances that could never happen.

< And now we have Ben Stein with his Howard Beale moment. >

Good grief! Network has probably proved to be one of the most prescient visions of the future of all time, surpassing many classic sci fi films in predictive accuracy. And though I knew that future generations would laugh at Stein for having debauched himself before the entire world with Ken Ham-style creationists, the fact that he has made a major ass of himself regarding Wall Street while pushing back the release of this film-turd was not expected by me. I have never seen such bad judgement on the part of a prominent public figure outside of Michael Jackson.

Truly I am astonished. And when I wonder why this could happen, I am reminded of the line, “Because you’re on television, dummy!” Maybe being on television too much drives one insane?

If that’s the case then I give Wes, Lou, Steve Story, and even that warlock Rich Hughes the power of attorney to yank me from the radio show and send me camping if I happen to go nuts, so’s I can cut down some trees and suck at fishing and otherwise interact with reality. :)

Golly day, now I can’t flipping read the New York Times anymore. I don’t want to get addicted to SteinKrystolmeth or whatever it is. :p

"If this is the way he wants to go out, this is how he'll go out."
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Jan. 29 2008,15:22



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have never seen such bad judgement on the part of a prominent public figure outside of Michael Jackson.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



clearly you have never looked .< here >
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 29 2008,16:32

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Jan. 29 2008,14:22)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have never seen such bad judgement on the part of a prominent public figure outside of Michael Jackson.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



clearly you have never looked .< here >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, clearly I have not, Erasmus. My idea of trash is watching “American Princess” and Cleopatra with Liz Taylor one more time. Thanks, dude, I don’t have the tough rind you obviously do, and for my delicate safety I’ve also avoided the whole Dr. Phil/Britney/Oprah radiation and whatever Bobby Brown is doing, and wherever TF Fabian Basabe is in his honeymoon away from the honeymoon, which is what the rich call “work.”

Now I’m gonna have to pick up my brains from the carpet all the rest of the afternoon. Thanks for that, pal. :p

I’ll just check myself into a nursing home now if anyone cares.  :D
Posted by: bystander on Jan. 29 2008,20:04

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. No professional trader or group of traders can move the market for more than a few minutes at a time. The big meltdown last week was cause by SocGen closing out the truly enormous trades put on by their rogue trader and that only lasted a day.

The real crooks in the markets are and always have been the salesmen. They push the gullible into buying instruments which they do not understand. Books such as FIASCO and Liar's Poker are fascinating reads, shame Stein has never even read the popular books on market manipulation.

Short sellers have been the boogy men in the markets ever since the 1930s Wall street crash. It's like blaming the undertaker for somebody dieing.

edit to add: I don't know why everybody is surprised that the NYTimes keeps him on. They don't get rid of people because they are wrong, they get rid of them because they are boring.
Posted by: tsig on Jan. 30 2008,22:02

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Jan. 15 2008,11:37)
I guess I should link to the page with the "challenge" as well, though I assume one can get to it from the "FAQ":

< http://www.getexpelled.com/schools.php >

This is added in edit, because I'd like to point out that it's quite a lot of money that they are using to get Xian schools to force kids to fill the theater seats:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
0-99 ticket stubs submitted = $5 per ticket stub

100-299 ticket stubs submitted = $1,000 donated to your school

300-499 ticket stubs submitted = $2,500 donated to your school

500 ticket stubs submitted = $5,000 donated to your school
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



They're going to point to the numbers and claim the movie is popular, when they're paying as much as $10/ticket, and $5/ticket minimum, to have the schools force the kids to their dishonest "flick".

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I predict that a lot of churches are going to be left holding a bag of ticket stubs.
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on Jan. 31 2008,07:17

Is this old news: < Darwin Film >

Creation Ministries International has already begun a major international documentary film project to help challenge evolution in 2009. The film will take a critical look at some of Darwin's key ideas and will interview historians and scientists from a variety of views, including evolutionists. Together with wildlife footage from South America and dramatic re-enactments, the program will illustrate how the evolutionary viewpoint is far from the tried and tested science many believe it to be. It will shed some clear truth on the man Darwin, and his legend that has grown beyond historical fact.

Expelled is heading against stiff competition next year. Which will be the Top Tard in content?
Posted by: Steverino on Jan. 31 2008,11:03

Both bits of schlock will go "straight to video" as they are nothing more than propaganda pieces created to sell to their own market.

Just more fleecing of the sheep.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Jan. 31 2008,11:14

Quote (Advocatus Diaboli @ Jan. 31 2008,07:17)
Is this old news: < Darwin Film >

Creation Ministries International has already begun a major international documentary film project to help challenge evolution in 2009. The film will take a critical look at some of Darwin's key ideas and will interview historians and scientists from a variety of views, including evolutionists. Together with wildlife footage from South America and dramatic re-enactments, the program will illustrate how the evolutionary viewpoint is far from the tried and tested science many believe it to be. It will shed some clear truth on the man Darwin, and his legend that has grown beyond historical fact.

Expelled is heading against stiff competition next year. Which will be the Top Tard in content?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's certainly interesting.

However, I suspect that David Attenborough's series on evolution to commemorate the bicentennial of Darwin's birthday (2009) will likely more than counter that bit of rubbish.  This was mentioned in a recent Nature.

And it is about time that something like that is done.  As limited as the creationist junk is in persuasiveness and appeal, it has its impact, and will probably end up on the web for conspiracy-mongers to lap up.

It'll be amazing if Creation Ministries can make greater Tard than Expelled has, judging from what we've seen there.  Seriously, I bet even a number of the IDiots and other creationists will be embarrassed by such over-the-top ranting, even if they'll cling tightly to the illusion that anonymous cowards recounting their "persecution" are to be believed.

Glen D
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 31 2008,11:19

It looks to me like the minimum calculated payout on the kickback scheme is just over $3.33 per ticket, for a school turning in 299 tickets and hoping to get $1000 back for them.
Posted by: EoRaptor013 on Jan. 31 2008,12:15

As a counter-example to Expelled, there was an article in the NJ Star Ledger about < Dr. Gerta Keller >, a geologist and paleontologist at Princeton. According to the article, ..."for the last 20 years, this Princeton professor has been the leading critic of the established theory of dinosaur extinction."

I'm not qualified to judge her work, so I'm not going there. What's interesting, however, in the context of this thread, is that Dr. Keller is considered, umm... a heretic. Indeed, some academic geologists/paleontologists have been down-right rude in their opposition to her views. BUT, she is regularly published in peer-reviewed journals (see Google scholar), holds a position at a fairly prestigious university, applies for, and receives, funding for her work, and oversees a lot of Ph.D. candidates and post-docs.

Some of the attacks against Dr. Keller have been very personal and bitter. (Isn't there some adage about goring oxen that might be appropriate here?) Nevertheless, through hard work she has accumulated sufficient data to convert some skeptics, and made others not quite so adamant in their opposition. In other words, she produces the data and it gets published, despite opposition. The great Chinese wall erected by the Evil Darwinist Conspiracy seems to have some pretty big holes, don't you think?

I'm guessing you won't see Dr. Gerta, or anybody like her, in Expelled.
Posted by: EoRaptor013 on Jan. 31 2008,12:25

Oh, and here's a pretty cool picture from the article:


Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 31 2008,13:12

Quote (EoRaptor013 @ Jan. 31 2008,11:15)
As a counter-example to Expelled, there was an article in the NJ Star Ledger about < Dr. Gerta Keller >, a geologist and paleontologist at Princeton. According to the article, ..."for the last 20 years, this Princeton professor has been the leading critic of the established theory of dinosaur extinction."

I'm not qualified to judge her work, so I'm not going there. What's interesting, however, in the context of this thread, is that Dr. Keller is considered, umm... a heretic. Indeed, some academic geologists/paleontologists have been down-right rude in their opposition to her views. BUT, she is regularly published in peer-reviewed journals (see Google scholar), holds a position at a fairly prestigious university, applies for, and receives, funding for her work, and oversees a lot of Ph.D. candidates and post-docs.

Some of the attacks against Dr. Keller have been very personal and bitter. (Isn't there some adage about goring oxen that might be appropriate here?) Nevertheless, through hard work she has accumulated sufficient data to convert some skeptics, and made others not quite so adamant in their opposition. In other words, she produces the data and it gets published, despite opposition. The great Chinese wall erected by the Evil Darwinist Conspiracy seems to have some pretty big holes, don't you think?

I'm guessing you won't see Dr. Gerta, or anybody like her, in Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That's not to say Keller wholly rejects the idea that an impact contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs, but she disagrees that the meteor that created the Chixculub crater did the deed. Perhaps an as-yet-undiscovered meteor did contribute to the mass extinction, but she also thinks that fierce volcanism in India could have triggered disastrous global warming.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< I just watched a show > on the History Channel that suggested this same hypothesis.

She doesn't sound like a crackpot - and she isn't weeping like Sternboohoo. In fact, she sounds like she relishes a good scrap.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"We were called bohemians," she says, "but really, we were the early hippies."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

:)
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 31 2008,13:29

I'm guessing you won't see Dr. Gerta, or anybody like her, in Expelled.[/quote]
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That's not to say Keller wholly rejects the idea that an impact contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs, but she disagrees that the meteor that created the
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"We were called bohemians," she says, "but really, we were the early hippies."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

:)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




LIKE SHE IS SOOOO WRONG DUDES!

I think I need to contact her...

I think we Neandertals were the first real hippies.  We communed with nature, stared at our cave fires when our Lava Lamps weren't working, and drew colored paintings on the walls.

Plus we got cool chicks.

< >
Posted by: JohnW on Jan. 31 2008,15:43

Quote (EoRaptor013 @ Jan. 31 2008,10:15)
As a counter-example to Expelled, there was an article in the NJ Star Ledger about < Dr. Gerta Keller >, a geologist and paleontologist at Princeton. According to the article, ..."for the last 20 years, this Princeton professor has been the leading critic of the established theory of dinosaur extinction."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought they ran out of coconuts.
Posted by: Henry J on Jan. 31 2008,22:38



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I thought they ran out of coconuts.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What? No no - see, the moon is receding from the Earth. 70 Mya it was only a few feet off the ground. That's what killed off the dinosaurs. Well, the taller ones, anyway.

Henry
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 01 2008,12:08

< Orlando Sentinel's review of Expelled, "Is Ben Stein the new face of Creationism?" >

Since "Is Ben Stein the new face of Creationism" is locked, I want to archive the comment I made on their blog here.  I don't know why they wouldn't publish it, but I'd rather be safe...



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There's a great irony in the attempts to link Stalinism and the modern evolutionary theory begun by Darwin.  Stalin was opposed to so-called "Darwinism," much like Stein and company are, and he used the heavy-handed tactics to keep scientific evolution suppressed.

Stalin replaced scientific evolutionary theory with Lysenkoism, which is nearly as magical as ID is, though without God.

There's a danger in over-hyping such analogies (especially when they're as untrue, like the ones in Expelled).  However, since they brought it up, and because the forces of anti-freedom have often targeted the science of evolution, the fact that IDists appear poised to adopt a milder Stalinist suppression of the most comprehensive biological theory seems worth mentioning.

Glen Davidson
[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 01 2008,12:32

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ Feb. 01 2008,09:53)
   
Making people sign NDA's at a film screening. . .



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
 How do you re-package that tried, untested and untestable faith-without-facts warhorse, "Creationism" after its nearly-annual beat-down by an increasingly exasperated scientific community?

After you've tried renaming it "Intelligent Design," I mean.

With comedy. Mock your "Darwinist" foes the way comics, thinkers, scientists and educated people everywhere have been mocking creationism since Scopes took that monkey off our back.

Tuck into the way Michael Moore would, with a documentary hosted by a funny Don Quixote willing to tilt at science the way MM has gone after the gun culture, corporate cold-heartedness, George W. Bush and Big Health Care.

Get funnyman and ex-Nixon speech writer Ben Stein to host it, to be the on-camera jester-interviewer.

And re-cast this argument about what people chose to believe vs. what others can prove as fact as a fight for "Freedom."

That's the mnemonic device Stein came back to, time and again, last night in an Orlando screening of his new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It's a rabble-rouser of a doc that uses all manner of loaded images, loaded rhetoric, few if any facts and mockery of hand-picked "weirdo" scientists to attack those who, Stein claims, are stifling the Religious Right's efforts to inject intelligent design into science courses, science curricula and the national debate.

He was showing the movie to what he and the producers hoped would be a friendly, receptive audience of conservative Christian ministers at a conference at the Northland mega-church next to the dog track up in Longwood. They're marking this movie, which they had said, earlier, they'd open in Feb. (now April) the same way they pitched The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, said Paul Lauer of Motive Entertainment, who introduced Stein.

In other words, a stealth campaign, out of the public eye, preaching to the choir as it were in an effort to get the word out about the movie.

They postered the Orlando Sentinel with email invitations, then tried to withdraw the one they sent to me. No dice. They also passed out non-disclosure "statement of confidentiality" agreements for people to sign. I didn't.

What are they hiding from you? Straight propaganda, to be sure. But again, if Michael Moore or Robert Greenwald can do it, why not Ben Stein?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Read it < here >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From the same article:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I remember stumbling across, at a bookstore, one of the more shrill and lunatic Bill Clinton had people KILLED in Arkansas books that came out during the 90s. I open it at the B. Dalton, and lo and behold, there's Ben Stein writing the intro.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What? Well, I did an OCLC search for that, as well as Library of Congress. Nothing yet, but I'll track it down. That's too good to pass up. I don't remember him being a big voice in that stuff.

Other interesting items:
< Ben Stein gives Bill Clinton advice on how to host a talk show >.

< Ben Stein says that Mark Felt ("Deep Throat") looks like a Nazi >. Then he accused Felt of essentially being a Nazi. Nazi fixation, anyone?

Whole truckloads of Steintard out there. ("You shovel 16 tons and waddaya get? Another tard boulder and < deeper in debt >." :p Love how his books are located in "2 libraries worldwide" and that this one is available for $0.01.)
Posted by: Annyday on Feb. 08 2008,13:15

I didn't want to bump this, but I want to know what the hell < this > is.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
When I took my graduate work at the state university, I took the opportunity to investigate the theory of evolution by taking some science classes. I was a member of the MENSA society (SUPER MENSA qualified) and eagerly anticipated the intellectual repartee I was to enjoy in these classes.

What a disappointment! After sitting and listening for the first week or so, I had to start challenging the many assumptions that were being presented as fact. In short order, the professors quit acknowledging my upraised hand. If I tried to interject a thought, I was asked not to interrupt until given permission to speak. I don't take that kind of attitude from anybody.

I confronted each of these three professors in turn in the classroom as to why they were denying me an opportunity to ask questions and receive clarification from them. Each of them told me the same thing, "You are confusing the class"!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Pretentious grad student screws up foundational undergrad classes, wonders why professors are annoyed!

This is apart from his degrees;



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I earned Master Degrees in American History and Political Science. I have Bachelor Degrees in Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion. I also took Pre-Law and was offered a full-ride scholarship to Harvard Law School, on the basis of LSAT score.

I turned the scholarship down after the Dean of the school advised me that my personal moral beliefs would be a hindrance in a legal career and employment would be difficult, at best. I spent 13 years as a Special Agent in the Drug Enforcement Administration and I am now attempting to build a creation ministry.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'm half-convinced that this is a spoof. Four bachelor's degrees in overlapping fields. "Religion" isn't even a proper major. Prelaw, DEA agent, creationist, MENSA member. It's like someone sat down and asked, "if the most annoying person alive were posting on the Expelled web site, what would they write about themselves?"

I kid. It could be worse. He could have said "Deleuzian" somewhere in there. That might, possibly, be more annoying. But ... really, this is very close.
Posted by: JohnW on Feb. 08 2008,14:27

Quote (Annyday @ Feb. 08 2008,11:15)
"Religion" isn't even a proper major.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, it is.  Just not at proper colleges.
Posted by: JohnW on Feb. 08 2008,14:32

Quote (Annyday @ Feb. 08 2008,11:15)
I didn't want to bump this, but I want to know what the hell < this > is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


More from the same source:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Despite my academic abilities and awards, I received virtually no interest when I initially attempted to procure a teaching position. I thought little of it at the time, since I was still considering attending Law School or returning to the DEA, but when I later obtained my personal file from the University, I learned that they had responded to inquiries from interested schools, that I was deficient both academically and intellectually. You must be dumb if you don't worship Darwin!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So, two options:
1.  The Great Intercontinental Darwinist Conspiracy runs whatever madrassa gave him his religion degree;
2.  Just possibly, he may actually be "deficient both academically and intellectually".

We report, you decide.



[edit: fixed run-on sentence of O'Learyan ugliness]
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 08 2008,15:05

There is some major league tard going on at that site.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Carl Sagan
Added by: Mike, on 2008-01-26 10:24:43

It seems that when we handed the Nobel Laureate our paper on intelligent design of the multiverse, proving the existence of God, he summarily walked out -- on 350 of my classmates and dropped the paper in the trash. Later, his colleagues at Princeton and Cambridge told him that he'd committed a major faux pas, and should at least have read our work.
Such closed minds argue by authority, sad to say, and have scant little evidence to back them up. We whose insight has proved sound suffer no such drawbacks. Eventually it comes down to faith. Either you accept the evidence or you do not.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=222 >
As you can see, the number on the end of the URL references each item.
Some, oddly, seem to be missing.
< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=220 >
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The selected story does not exist.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Story ?  :p Least they are honest about that!

Obviously some of the "stories" have been deleted. Yet what's not been deleted has unbelievable levels of tard.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Discrimination
Added by: Brittany, on 2008-01-25 11:17:50

In the late year of 2007, I wrote an essay about my feelings toward God and creation. The class was American Literature, and we were learning about Puritanism, so I took my beliefs and wrote them down onto paper. I expressed how I felt. God had helped me through my life, and I mentioned that it was because he loves us; we are God's "creation." I had been warned by many, saying that I shouldn't mention God in my paper, because it's a public school system, and it is not allowed. I thought long and hard before turning in my paper, and I thought about the first amendment. I, and everyone else in the United States of America, has the freedom of speech. Yes, there are limits to that freedom; I can speak my mind freely as long as I do not break a law, I do not harm anyone, and I do not infringe on anyone else's rights. Well, in this essay, I did not break any laws, harm anyone, or infringe on a person's rights. However, after I turned in my paper, my teacher returned it to me and I had 17% grade. I looked through the paper to see what my teacher marked incorrect, and all throughout the paper there were notes from my teacher, crossing out anything, and everything about God. She wrote to me that "mentioning God was unnecessary." What I didn't understand was that God was the entire point on the paper. People of the U.S.A. also have the freedom of religion, but if that is the case, then why do so many people get ridiculed for mentioning God is public places? Our country was built on the subject of God.. "... one nation, under GOD..." Why are people so discriminating? It simply does not make sense, and I don't know if it ever will. Thank you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=221 >
Now, I realise Brittany got sectioned the other day but...
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Chased and Suppressed
Added by: Jack, on 2008-01-31 11:28:42
In 1979 I x-rayed and measured the Neanderthal child's skull, Pech de l'Azé, in Paris, France in the famous Museé de l'Homme. I first reported my results in an article in 1987:Cuozzo JW." Earlier orthodontic intervention: a view from prehistory." [Historical Article. Journal Article] Journal of the New Jersey Dental Association. 58(4):33-40, 1987 Autumn. Next, in 1998 New Leaf Press published my first book "Buried Alive" in which this little Neanderthal was prominently featured. In both the first article and the book I pointed out and illustrated how the French anthropologist E. Patte had misplaced the lower jaw too far forward to make it appear more ape-like, rather than a flatter face, which is more human-like. When I first turned in my duplicate x-rays to the museum, in August 1979, we were followed (my family of five children and I) for several days by shadowy men in two sports cars. This pursuit finally ended with a high-speed street chase through the streets of Paris, with us barricading ourselves in our borrowed apartment in a Parisian suburb. They sat on the hoods of their cars smoking cigarettes most of the night looking up at the high rise where we were hidden. We got away. The rest of the story is recalled in the book.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


WTF?
< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=227 >
Posted by: J-Dog on Feb. 08 2008,15:20

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Feb. 08 2008,15:05)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Chased and Suppressed
Added by: Jack, on 2008-01-31 11:28:42
In 1979 I x-rayed and measured the Neanderthal child's skull, Pech de l'Azé, in Paris, France in the famous Museé de l'Homme. I first reported my results in an article in 1987:Cuozzo JW." Earlier orthodontic intervention: a view from prehistory." [Historical Article. Journal Article] Journal of the New Jersey Dental Association. 58(4):33-40, 1987 Autumn. Next, in 1998 New Leaf Press published my first book "Buried Alive" in which this little Neanderthal was prominently featured. In both the first article and the book I pointed out and illustrated how the French anthropologist E. Patte had misplaced the lower jaw too far forward to make it appear more ape-like, rather than a flatter face, which is more human-like. When I first turned in my duplicate x-rays to the museum, in August 1979, we were followed (my family of five children and I) for several days by shadowy men in two sports cars. This pursuit finally ended with a high-speed street chase through the streets of Paris, with us barricading ourselves in our borrowed apartment in a Parisian suburb. They sat on the hoods of their cars smoking cigarettes most of the night looking up at the high rise where we were hidden. We got away. The rest of the story is recalled in the book.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


WTF?
< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/shoutout_text.php?story=227 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This guy is like a UFOer or Big Foot Believer, and I heard about his story a long time ago - well, 3 years ago anyway...

I think he is like Larry and delusional, and recall vaguely, that what he has as "proof" has been totally discredited.

I would have to Google for more info.

added in edit:  Good Old Talk Origins:
< http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/cuozzo_cg.html >
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 08 2008,15:42

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Feb. 08 2008,16:05)
Discrimination
Added by: Brittany, on 2008-01-25 11:17:50

In the late year of 2007, I wrote an essay about my feelings toward God and creation. The class was American Literature, and we were learning about Puritanism, so I took my beliefs and wrote them down onto paper. I expressed how I felt. God had helped me through my life, and I mentioned that it was because he loves us; we are God's "creation." I had been warned by many, saying that I shouldn't mention God in my paper, because it's a public school system, and it is not allowed. I thought long and hard before turning in my paper, and I thought about the first amendment. I, and everyone else in the United States of America, has the freedom of speech. Yes, there are limits to that freedom; I can speak my mind freely as long as I do not break a law, I do not harm anyone, and I do not infringe on anyone else's rights. Well, in this essay, I did not break any laws, harm anyone, or infringe on a person's rights. However, after I turned in my paper, my teacher returned it to me and I had 17% grade. I looked through the paper to see what my teacher marked incorrect, and all throughout the paper there were notes from my teacher, crossing out anything, and everything about God. She wrote to me that "mentioning God was unnecessary." What I didn't understand was that God was the entire point on the paper. People of the U.S.A. also have the freedom of religion, but if that is the case, then why do so many people get ridiculed for mentioning God is public places? Our country was built on the subject of God.. "... one nation, under GOD..." Why are people so discriminating? It simply does not make sense, and I don't know if it ever will. Thank you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't believe this for a second.  It may as well start off "Dear Jack Chick, you won't believe this, but..."
Posted by: Nomad on Feb. 09 2008,04:18

Quote (improvius @ Feb. 08 2008,15:42)

I don't believe this for a second.  It may as well start off "Dear Jack Chick, you won't believe this, but..."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not so certain.  It's AWFULLY vague on what the actual subject for the paper was.  "we were learning about Puritanism" is not sufficient explanation.

If the class was about the history of American literature, then what place does "god helped me through my life" have on an assignment?  If anything in this story is at all factually based (and I think it is, just filtered through the brain of a creationist), I'm guessing that the assignment had something to do with the writings of the Puritans.  Instead Brittany wrote an essay about her personal relationship with the big invisible man in the sky.

I doubt "mentioning god was unnecessary" is what the teacher really wrote though, it'd be difficult to discuss the Puritans without mentioning the big guy at some point.  Perhaps "mentioning your relationship with god was unnecessary", that sounds more likely.

This is all guesswork of course, but... the story just isn't good enough to be a fabrication.  It feels more incomplete than fictional.
Posted by: Marion Delgado on Feb. 09 2008,19:29

Actually, this could be turned on Ben Stein and the whole right-wing anti-science movement.

Who says there's no possibility of intelligence in biogenesis or evolution? They're explicitly leaving out "intelligence" possessed by systems, and things like the Gaia Effect. They're leaving out coevolution. Indeed, all sorts of things.

It's like the saying that monotheists are atheists for all gods but one. They want to expel all intelligence that doesn't meet a theistic definition. The way they treat the panspermia and alien designers is a great example. They should not be allowed to get away with that.

Make them commit to a yes or no on could the whole thing be space aliens, with no need for a god or gods, could it be that there was panspermia so even if the Earth wasn't "old enough" for evolution to work, it could have come from outer space, could life systems as a whole have some kind of "intelligence" we can't comprehend, and so on. Maybe we should worship Nature, and theistic patriarchal deities violate The Intelligence. :)

Not to push any of these. More to point out that THEY are not allowing or admitting anything but their narrow Christianist wedge definitions, and call them on it publicly.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 09 2008,20:33

< It doesn't look like the creationists need Ben Stein >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Creationists Seek Foothold in Europe
By GREGORY KATZ,AP

LONDON (Feb. 9) - After the Sunday service in Westminster Chapel, where worshippers were exhorted to wage "the culture war" in the World War II spirit of Sir Winston Churchill, cabbie James McLean delivered his verdict on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

"Evolution is a lie, and it's being taught in schools as fact, and it's leading our kids in the wrong direction," said McLean, chatting outside the chapel. "But now people like Ken Ham are tearing evolution to pieces."

Ken Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, a Kentucky-based organization that is part of an ambitious effort to bring creationist theory to Britain and the rest of Europe. McLean is one of a growing number of evangelicals embracing that message - that the true history of the Earth is told in the Bible, not Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

Europeans have long viewed the conflict between evolutionists and creationists as primarily an American phenomenon, but it has recently jumped the Atlantic Ocean with skirmishes in Italy, Germany, Poland and, notably, Britain, where Darwin was born and where he published his 1859 classic.

Darwin's defenders are fighting back. In October, the 47-nation Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, condemned all attempts to bring creationism into Europe's schools. Bible-based theories and "religious dogma" threaten to undercut sound educational practices, it charged.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So much for my plans to emigrate to Europe.  :(
Posted by: Annyday on Feb. 09 2008,21:15

That's not Europe, that's Britain.
Posted by: Mister DNA on Feb. 09 2008,21:29

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 09 2008,20:33)
< It doesn't look like the creationists need Ben Stein >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Creationists Seek Foothold in Europe
By GREGORY KATZ,AP

LONDON (Feb. 9) - After the Sunday service in Westminster Chapel, where worshippers were exhorted to wage "the culture war" in the World War II spirit of Sir Winston Churchill, cabbie James McLean delivered his verdict on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

"Evolution is a lie, and it's being taught in schools as fact, and it's leading our kids in the wrong direction," said McLean, chatting outside the chapel. "But now people like Ken Ham are tearing evolution to pieces."

Ken Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, a Kentucky-based organization that is part of an ambitious effort to bring creationist theory to Britain and the rest of Europe. McLean is one of a growing number of evangelicals embracing that message - that the true history of the Earth is told in the Bible, not Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

Europeans have long viewed the conflict between evolutionists and creationists as primarily an American phenomenon, but it has recently jumped the Atlantic Ocean with skirmishes in Italy, Germany, Poland and, notably, Britain, where Darwin was born and where he published his 1859 classic.

Darwin's defenders are fighting back. In October, the 47-nation Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, condemned all attempts to bring creationism into Europe's schools. Bible-based theories and "religious dogma" threaten to undercut sound educational practices, it charged.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So much for my plans to emigrate to Europe.  :(
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does "cabbie" have a different meaning in the UK? Over here, a cabbie is a taxi driver. Is "cabbie" British slang for "Electrical Engineer" or "Refrigerator Repairman"?
Posted by: Bob O'H on Feb. 10 2008,01:51

Nope, cabbie is short for cabman.  There are a lot of them in Huntingdonshire*.  The caricature is that they are opinionated (well, what else is there to do in a taxi but talk and drive?), and not necessarily tolerant of others in society.

Bob
* thrown in because somebody here will understand it.
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 12 2008,08:04

Now the DI is officially in bed with Expelled.  Here's the latest email newsletter for the film:





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
EXPELLED teams up with the Discovery Institute to launch the Aca demic Freedom Petition, EXPELLED receives endorsements from James Dobson and more!
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (Feb. 11, 2008) - With nothing less than truth and freedom at stake, the producers of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed and Motive Entertainment have teamed up with the Discovery Institute to launch the Academic Freedom Petition. The petition urges America's academic institutions to adopt policies to ensure teachers and students have the freedom to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution.

On another front, EXPELLED star Ben Stein and the producers have been traveling the nation to meet with key leaders and screen the movie. EXPELLED has received strong support already!

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING:
"Ben Stein's film, EXPELLED, makes a powerful case for Intelligent Design in explaining the origins of life and the creation of the universe. It also exposes an entrenched and aggressive Darwinist establishment in academia that suffocates all competing points of view. Highly qualified professors and scientists who dare to question evolutionary orthodoxy are systematically excluded or summarily dismissed. It is political correctness run amuck on university campuses. Stein sets out on a mission to find out why I.D. is most often expelled from the public square, and what he discovers in this riveting documentary is incredibly enlightening. I recommend the film enthusiastically."
- James C. Dobson, Ph.D., Chairman of the Board, Focus on the Family

"This is an enormously important project and I am so proud of the fact that Ben Stein, who is a national treasure, is part of it. People know that there is a dictatorial impulse at work in the land to shut down ev en the most elementary questioning of this unquestionable belief in random evolution and the American people don't like being told by their 'betters' what they are supposed to believe."
- Michael Medved, nationally syndicated radio host

"EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is earthshaking. I was absolutely blown away. Ben Stein boldly shines a light of honest inquiry revealing that evolution's emperor has no clothes. It will have Darwin's disciples scurrying for the shadows. Everyone in America, even skeptics of Intelligent Design, must see this film. They can't possibly walk away without at least admitting that the debate over who we are and how we got here is far from over. The controversy will be intense, so get ready for a rollercoaster ride."
- J. Matt Barber, Director for Cultural Issues, Concerned Women for America

"EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed offers a compelling examination of an important topic for everyone who values the freedom to explore ideas that challenge conventional wisdom. Ben Stein has given us a powerful documentary about the widespread repression of faith-friendly scientific scholarship. Along the way, he also makes a strong case for a return to civil discourse in a time when political correctness often overshadows the search for truth. EXPELLED is an engaging film that features a winning combination of humor and reason with just the right tone needed to bring its significant story to the worldwide audience."
- Ronald D. Ellis, Ph.D., President, California Baptist University

Read more at: www.GetExpelled.com/quotes.php

HOW YOU CAN HELP:
We need your support! Here's what you can do to help spread the word about the movie EXPELLED and stand up for academic freedom:

  1. Send an email to all of your contacts informing them to learn more a bout the film by visiting www.GetExpelled.com and encourage others to spread the word!

  2. Go to your local theater and speak with a manager to request that EXPELLED is shown in your city. The movie is coming out this April and you can print off a movie poster for the theater's reference by visiting www.GetExpelled.com.

  3. Buy advance tickets for your family and friends to see the movie. Invite everyone to see the film during opening weekend in April 2008.

  4. Add a banner or post a video clip to your website, MySpace page, Shoutlife page or blog. You can access our Tools for Webmasters by visiting www.GetExpelled.com. We have various free resources available for your use.

  5. Help spread the word in your local area churches, schools, clubs and community centers. For more info, please email: [EMAIL=paul.lauer@getexpelled.com.]paul.lauer@getexpelled.com.[/EMAIL]

  6. Stand up for academic freedom and freedom of scientific inquiry by signing the petition at: www.academicfreedompetition.com.

The EXPELLED resource website - www.GetEXPELLED.com - has added some exciting new features. The site is packed full of useful tools and resources to promote the ideas surrounding this history-changing film, which opens in theaters this April:

   * Learn about new scientific evidence that invalidates Darwin's claims.
   * Hear from scientists who are being SILENCED for those discoveries.
   * Learn how to DEFEND BELIEF in God based on SCIENTIFIC evidence.
   * Learn what can and cannot be taught in schools and how that is CHANGING nationwide.

See a SNEAK PEEK < /strong>of exclusive video clips from the upcoming movie.

ABOUT THE FILM:
In this film, author, former presidential speechwriter, economist, lawyer and actor Ben Stein exposes the frightening "atheist agenda." The film also reveals how teachers, students and scientists are being "expelled" and persecuted for questioning Darwinism despite the mounting evidence that debunks Darwinism and shows proof of a Designer ("God") in the universe! This highly controversial documentary is receiving major media buzz (including the front page of the New York Times). In the movie, Stein travels the world, asking top scientific minds whether Darwinism is still a "theory" or if it's become a "law" which no one is allowed to question.

NATIONWIDE TOUR:
The second leg of the EXPELLED Nationwide Tour wrapped up in late January. The EXPELLED team traveled from Texas to Miami before heading north to the nation's capitol. The guys in the big, red EXPELLED bus met some amazing people along the way, including EXPELLED star Ben Stein himself. Ben attended a screening in Orlando for about 3,000 Young Life leaders. He was incredibly gracious and stayed to sign autographs for everyone in line. Following a screening at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, the EXPELLED crew passed out information on the film at the March for Life, which drew over 30,000 people. The tour continues with stops in Georgia before heading back to Florida and Texas. Tour details at: www.GetEXPELLED.com/tourblog
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: guthrie on Feb. 12 2008,08:20

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 09 2008,20:33)
So much for my plans to emigrate to Europe.  :(
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's alright, we're fighting them tooth and claw, and they are not really getting anywhere.  You'd be welcome here anytime.
Posted by: keiths on Feb. 13 2008,16:07

It will be interesting to see Caroline Crocker do the Martyrdom Mambo in Expelled.

I watched her lie her way through a Coral Ridge Ministries video called < The Intelligent Design Controversy in Higher Education > (the same one that Slimy Sal was so proud to have appeared in).

The highlight is this self-righteous quote from Crocker:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I decided not to give the students only the standard story, which is what they have heard since they were very small, but I did one lecture where I gave them the evidence for and against evolution, just the scientific evidence.

I was so careful when I wrote that lecture not to be partial in any way.  I was very careful to make sure that I would talk about point by point the evidence that the book would put forward for evolution and then talk about point by point the experiments and say "Well, you know, there's a problem here."

And then I did at the end of the lecture talk about, "Well, this is evidence for a new theory that several, that some scientists are considering,  and it's called Intelligent Design..."

I think it was on the last slide where I left the students with a question.  I said "Is it evolution, intelligent design, or creation?  Think about it."  At the end of the lecture students would tell me that they didn't know what I believed and they would ask me, "What do you believe?", and I would say, "Well, that's for outside of class."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



While she is declaring her innocence, images of her slides are being displayed on the screen.  Check out what Crocker means by "impartial scientific evidence":

< >


< >


< >


< >


< >


< >


If this is impartial scientific evidence, I'd love to see what biased creationist propaganda looks like.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 13 2008,16:15

It could be P-A-R-O-D-Y, it's that bad...
Posted by: khan on Feb. 13 2008,18:41

She lies like a fundie.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 13 2008,21:52

Hahahaha! :D



Via < Pharyngula >.

Thanks, Guthrie, I hope you don't mind if I bring all my friends! ;)
Posted by: Mister DNA on Feb. 13 2008,22:22

Kristine, that poster is awesome - I wouldn't mind hanging it on my wall, but it needs a "PYGMIES + DWARFS" reference to  make it complete...
Posted by: IanBrown_101 on Feb. 13 2008,23:13

Quote (Bob O'H @ Feb. 10 2008,07:51)
Nope, cabbie is short for cabman.  There are a lot of them in Huntingdonshire*.  The caricature is that they are opinionated (well, what else is there to do in a taxi but talk and drive?), and not necessarily tolerant of others in society.

Bob
* thrown in because somebody here will understand it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What you mean is they're all fascists who believe every word they read in The Sun, The Express or The Daily Mail, particularly if it's written by that bastard (sorry for the swearing) Richard Littlejohn.

There's one cabbie here in Aber who is quite a nice guy really, but a couple of my friends, one Jewish, got in a cab with him, ad had to listen to him banging on about how he hates jews because, apparently, they all pay with £50 notes. Cab drivers are only one step up from white van men, to be honest, which is really annoying, because ideally I'd like more power to the proletariat. Unfortunately, the proletariat are, to a fair extent, nazi sociopaths who hate everyone who isn't British, despite the fact we've been invaded and have invaded others so many times that's a totally meaningless concept.

Oh the joys of casual racism. Rant over.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 15 2008,11:25

Britannica blog weighs in on Stein's blogging for expelled, calling him an ignoramus on science:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
How Low Can Ben Stein Go? (To the Maligning of Charles Darwin) Robert McHenry - February 15th, 2008
You laughed at his affectless droning high school economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off ; you may have enjoyed his repartee with Jimmy Kimmel or his command of trivial knowledge on "Win Ben Stein's Money"; you may even have run out and bought some eyedrops on his recommendation. But don't ask him about evolution, Charles Darwin, science, or any related topic, for on those Ben Stein is an ignoramus. Since he is demonstrably intelligent, it must be concluded that he is a willful ignoramus.

He evidently stars in a soon-to-be-released movie called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," which makes some sort of case for "Intelligent [sic] Design" and decries the teaching of evolutionary science in public schools. The producers of the movie have built a website to help promote their work, and the compliant Mr. Stein has written a little essay to help us place "Darwinism" in historical context. Let's have a look.

He begins, as any high school essay must, with a broad theme:

It would be taken for granted by any serious historian that any ideology or worldview would partake of the culture in which it grew up and would also be largely influenced by the personality of the writer of the theory.

Seems harmless enough, though we're not sure what "partake" means, exactly, or how much is "largely."

By way of illustration he gives us - guess which theoretician plucked, just offhand, from the entire history of mankind? Sonofagun! Karl Marx. What were the odds?

"[M]ajor theories," the avuncular Ben tells us, "...come from the era in which they arose." Yes, yes, I see your hands; tautology. But give him a break. Here comes the minor premise.

Darwinism...is a perfect example of the age from which it came: the age of Imperialism.

And therefore.... Well, he doesn't say. This is called an enthymeme, or a rhetorical syllogism. The idea is that the conclusion gains force from seeming to occur spontaneously to the reader. This is the sort of thing that gives rhetoric a bad name.

But why isn't "Darwinism" offered as a perfect example of, say, the Victorian Age? Or of the Steam Age? Or the Age of the Clipper Ship? Is it possible that Stein is loading the argument just a tad?

A little bit later he tells us that "Imperialism had a short but hideous history - of repression and murder." He seems to think that the British, and specifically the Victorians, invented imperialism. This idea would surprise the Incas and the Arabs and the Spanish and the Portuguese, among others around the world. He seems also to believe that the results of European imperialism were uniformly terrible. Some were, some were not. There is surely something to be said for the spread of democracy and the rule of law and of technology such as the railroad and the telegraph. With difficulties but with clear lines of descent, such generally decent modern states as India, Indonesia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States all arose out of imperialist action.

Stein has pulled a second fast one on us here, though. He has equivocated. He has said, in effect, "Marx wrote a theory; things done in its name were very bad. Darwin wrote a theory; [fill in the blanks]." He conflates two distinct senses of the word "theory," one of them appropriate when a chap sits in the Reading Room of the British Museum, gazing up at the cobwebs, and concocts a story to explain all of human behavior and history, the other appropriate when another chap spends years in painstaking observation of specific phenomena and finds a way not only to explain by a single principle all that he has observed but to predict phenomena not yet seen. This latter method you may recognize as what we call "science."

But Stein has found his horse now, and off he rides. "Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism." No demonstration or even quotation is given in support of that astonishing charge, but suffice it to say that The Origin of Species contains no such argument. Much about birds and such, but not a word on who should rule Africa.

And now we are at full gallop:

Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.

By now the term "Darwinism" has lost all connection to the theory of biological speciation as propounded by the quiet man in his study in Kent, and Stein has simply lost his mind.

What does it mean, for example, to speak of "Darwinism...mixed with Imperialism"? Is this a chemical compound of some sort? Was "Darwinism" relatively innocent until some proportion of "Imperialism" got mixed in with it? Then what to make of "perhaps"? And who did the mixing? There is a clue to this last question in the mention of "Social Darwinism," an inapt phrase that is most often associated with the sociology of Herbert Spencer. Inconveniently, however, Spencer had first laid out his basic views in Social Statics, published eight years before Darwin's great work.

It sorts out this way: Charles Darwin, after long study and thought, proposed a mechanism by which biological species differentiate. The mechanism was "natural selection," which supposes that some of the observed variations among members of a species render the possessor more able to survive and propagate. By that means the variant becomes dominant. This is one side.

On the other hand is a wildly diverse assortment of economists, sociologists, political writers, and plain cranks who share in some degree the belief that certain physical characteristics, mental capacities, behavioral habits and so on render certain human individuals or certain groups more able to succeed in the search for survival and security. They have various and equally diverse notions of what inferences follow from this. But someone notices that there is at least a linguistic similarity between these thoughts and Charles Darwin's theory and thus invents the label "Social Darwinism" to pin on the lot.

On the third hand, yet other people, possibly or possibly not influenced by reading works by some of the second crowd but quite clearly capable of evil without any such assistance, perpetrate great horrors.

And for these horrors Ben Stein wishes to blame the theory of evolution by natural selection. He produces a shambles of an essay in the course of which he manages to malign the name of Darwin by association with both Communism and Naziism, a remarkable day's work after which any civilized man would knock off early and call for cocktails. But not Ben. No, Ben toils on. By the time he's through, every kook and monster who ever used the word "evolution" has become the satanic spawn of Charles Darwin. This sort of thing is doubtless effective in a sermonette at the Discovery Institute, but as a contribution to the public discourse it is simply shameful.

And what is all this perverseness in aid of? In support of a set of beliefs that parades as a scientific alternative to "Darwinism" even though it is supported by no evidence, while evolution by natural selection is controverted by none. More subversively, it is a set of beliefs held by people whose aim is to prevail not in the scientific journals or the universities but at the ballot box and in the public schools. Like Ben Stein's arguments, they are not to be trusted.

< http://blogs.britannica.com/blog....tein-go >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 15 2008,12:54

Robert McHenry, author of the Britannica blog piece, editor-in-chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica for five years, wrote the book < How to Know > and maintains a < website > of his articles, including an < open letter to Pat Robertson > regarding the Dover decision.

He's an excellent scholar and I'm glad he's decided to speak out about this phenomenon.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 18 2008,11:28

Here is what I plan to do and I'm going to propose it to others when I have more details.

Assuming this sack of shite plays in my city, I'm going to pick a really dumb movie that's showing at the same theater.  Something like Rambo or hopefully something even dumber that the fundies are complaining about.  I'll buy a ticket to see the dumb movie and then mosey over to the screen that's showing Expelled.  I'll watch Ben's movie, he won't get a dime of my money.  Instead the money I spend to see Ben's movie goes to someone else.

Picking which movie will get my donation should be fun.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 18 2008,12:29

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Feb. 18 2008,10:28)
Here is what I plan to do and I'm going to propose it to others when I have more details.

Assuming this sack of shite plays in my city, I'm going to pick a really dumb movie that's showing at the same theater.  Something like Rambo or hopefully something even dumber that the fundies are complaining about.  I'll buy a ticket to see the dumb movie and then mosey over to the screen that's showing Expelled.  I'll watch Ben's movie, he won't get a dime of my money.  Instead the money I spend to see Ben's movie goes to someone else.

Picking which movie will get my donation should be fun.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Assuming it even plays at a multi-plex. It's beginning to look like this will only play in church basements.

That's the folly of simultaneously trying to be "revolutionary" while trying to control your film's critical reception.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 18 2008,14:39

Very true, Kristine.  I wish April would hurry and get here.  I can't wait to see this thing play out.
Posted by: Nomad on Feb. 18 2008,20:01

I like that idea Mr Christian - er, Mr Christopher.  Sorry, Mutiny on the Bounty moment.

The ethical implications of my money going to the makers of the movie had really been stressing me out.  Strangely enough, more than the prospect of sitting through over an hour of creationist propaganda presented by a dead pan Nixon scriptwriter.

While I wouldn't be surprised to see it get a VERY limited release, I'm expecting to be able to find it somewhere around here.  With the way things are going I'm almost expecting the producers to pay a handful of theaters to show it so that they can pay schools to make their students go see it.
Then in the alternate reality of creationist apologetics they can publish figures showing that while the movies had a limited release, the theaters that did show it had large attendance.  It'll play right in to the expelled them.  If only the darwinist conspiracy wasn't preventing them from getting the movie out into more theaters.
Posted by: Peter Henderson on Feb. 20 2008,12:32

Answers in Genesis are absolutely "over the moon" about this film:

< http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundt....d-movie >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You will be shocked by what you see and hear because you will begin to experience the hypocrisy in the scientific world concerning so-called academic freedom. The interviews with God-hating atheist Richard Dawkins (from Oxford University) will stun you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This movie is a must! Christians, drag your non-Christian friends along—they will never be the same again. Challenge school board members in your local community to see this movie/documentary—pay for their tickets, but get them there!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I am sure the secular community, in accord with their bias against academic freedom, will do all they can to discredit this movie and try to stop people from seeing it. After all, many in the secular scientific community don’t want you to know the truth about what is really happening—they want this censored from the community.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Well, obviously there's some sort of conspiracy amoungst scientists to stop the evidence that the Earth/Universe really is 6,000-10,000 years old from getting to the ordinary citizen and the public at large is being prevented from knowing the truth ?????

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Congratulations to Ben Stein and the producers (including Mark Mathis, who came to our Creation Museum to show us his film on Tuesday—see him in the photo) for having the courage to produce such a needed perspective on the secular scientific community and the erosion of freedoms in America. What they portray in this movie/documentary is what we at AiG have experienced over the years. I believe they have correctly represented what is really going on in the academic community.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I presume from the above, that Stein is a Young Earth Creationist ?



:O
Posted by: fusilier on Feb. 21 2008,09:31

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Feb. 18 2008,12:28)
Here is what I plan to do and I'm going to propose it to others when I have more details.
{snip}

Picking which movie will get my donation should be fun.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How about this?  Gather a small claque, and dress in business suits.  Go to the movie (paying to see "Grindhouse" or "Friday the 13th Part XXXII") and lead cheers.

Boo and hiss whenever Dawkins or PZ appear, and break out in hymns whenever Stein, Sternberg, or whoever show up.

"Ein feste Burg" - in German of course - would be the best intro for Stein.  IMHO, to be sure.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 21 2008,09:39

Quote (fusilier @ Feb. 21 2008,09:31)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Feb. 18 2008,12:28)
Here is what I plan to do and I'm going to propose it to others when I have more details.
{snip}

Picking which movie will get my donation should be fun.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How about this?  Gather a small claque, and dress in business suits.  Go to the movie (paying to see "Grindhouse" or "Friday the 13th Part XXXII") and lead cheers.

Boo and hiss whenever Dawkins or PZ appear, and break out in hymns whenever Stein, Sternberg, or whoever show up.

"Ein feste Burg" - in German of course - would be the best intro for Stein.  IMHO, to be sure.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I want to party with YOU, cowboy!

Love the ideas,  I'm thinking I'll carry a copy of The Word too.  I'll taking my suit to the cleaners later today.

The wild card of course is whether Ben's Pig will be playing at a multi-theater cinema in my area.  Only the Great Mighty Space Alien knows for sure.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 21 2008,13:23

Hey I wonder why Ben did not include < this scientist > in "Expelled"?

Here we have a Christian physicist (associate professor) who was bannished and publicly ridiculed for simply asking questions and pointing out what is science and what is not and most of all, not adopting the "default view".  

Ben must have overlooked this case of a scientist being punished for his views.  It would have been perfect for his movie.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 21 2008,15:55

You know they're really aiming for dumb people to see their "documentary," or they wouldn't let Stein out of his cage to write this:





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Author Bio
Letter to the Editor
Print This Article
Email This Article
About RSS Feeds


Special Report
Florida's Darwinian Interlude
By Ben Stein
Published 2/20/2008 12:08:44 AM
Just a few tiny, insignificant little questions.

* How did the universe start?

* Where did matter come from?

* Where did energy come from?

* Where did the laws of motion, thermodynamics, physics, chemistry, come from?

* Where did gravity come from?

* How did inorganic matter, that is, lifeless matter such as dirt and rocks, become living beings?

* Has anyone ever observed beyond doubt the evolution of a new mammalian or aviary species, as opposed to changes within a species?

These teeny weeny little questions are just some of the issues as to which Darwin and Darwinism have absolutely no verifiable answers. Hypotheses.

Yes. Guesses. Yes. Proof? None.

To my little pea brain, these are some pretty big issues about evolution, the origins of life, and genetics that Darwinism cannot answer. Now, to be fair, does anyone else have verifiable answers either? Not as far as I know.

But if there are no answers that can be reproduced in the laboratory, isn't any theory about them a hypothesis or a guess? Isn't any hypothesis worth thinking about? And aren't these immense questions?

Yet the state of Florida, the glorious Sunshine State, was (I am told), until recently, considering legislation that would make it illegal to allow teachers or students in public schools to discuss any hypothesis about origins of life or the universe except that it all happened by accident without any prime mover or first cause or designer -- allowing only, again, the hypothesis, which is considered Darwinian, that it all started by, well, by, something that Darwin never even mentioned.

That is, the state of Florida was considering mandating that only Darwinian-type suppositions can be allowed about scientific subjects that Darwin never studied. (This is not to mention that we know now that Darwin was wildly wrong about some subjects such as genetics, and, again, although he wrote about the evolution of species, never observed an entirely new species evolve.)

This was beyond Stalinism. Stalinism decreed that only Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin knew all the answers, but it did not say that subjects they never mentioned could only be studied if the student guessed at what they might have said. The proposed law in the state of Florida was an anti-knowledge, anti-freedom of inquiry law on a scale such as has rarely been encountered. Maybe in Pol Pot's Kampuchea there were such laws, but they have been unknown in the USA until now.

By an incredible miracle of good sense, at the last minute, the state of Florida changed the proposed regulations. They backed off powerfully saying that only Darwinism could possibly make sense and said they would allow discussion of differing theories about the origins of life. That's the current proposal as I write this on the afternoon of the 19th of February.

I suspect the now omitted proposals would have been unconstitutional in any event (although this always depends on the court you ask). Freedom of inquiry is part of freedom of speech. That is basic. That is what America is all about. Whatever the proposed -- now discarded -- regulations were, they have nothing to do with freedom, very little to do with science, and not even much to do with Darwin, who had a lot more respect for freedom of thought than his henchmen in Florida apparently do.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




< http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12767 >
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 21 2008,16:34

deleted
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 21 2008,16:39

Now here's something worth considering, if anyone lives anywhere near to Corvallis, that is to say, near Portland Oregon:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Restore America event seeks to spread influence
By Carol Reeves
Gazette-Times reporter
The role of government, homosexuality, the culture wars and who’s controlling public education are just a few of the topics that will be addressed at the third annual Restore America conference Friday and Saturday, Feb. 23 at the Rolling Hills Community Church, 3550 S.W. Borland Road in Tualatin.

The theme of the event, “The Seven Spheres of Influence,” is expected to draw up to 2,000 participants anxious to answer such “politically incorrect” questions as: Should faith influence the workplace? Is homosexuality wrong? and Are we at war with Islam?

Conference organizers claim history has shown it only takes a small minority in leadership in the areas of government, family, religion, education, business, entertainment and the media to control the direction of a nation. Participants will be challenged to assume their responsibility as individual Christians to make a difference in each one.

David Crowe and Marshall Foster will speak during the 6:30 to 9 p.m. opening session on Friday. Crowe is the founder and executive director of Restore America, an advocacy organization intent on restoring the United States to a nation “under God.” Foster is the founder of the Mayflower Institute, an education foundation also dedicated to teaching the history of what it calls America’s godly heritage.

Friday night concludes with a premier screening and interview with the producers of Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” from 9 to 11 p.m. The film offers a look at the debate over intelligent design and campaign to keep the theory out of public schools.

Saturday morning will feature Terri Schiavo’s attorney David Gibbs III, filmwriters and producers Jonathan and Deborah Flora and David Kupelian, the managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com and author of “The Marketing of Evil.” In the afternoon, featured speakers include Charlene Cothran, a former lesbian activist and publisher of Venus magazine; Kamal Saleem, a former Muslim terrorist; and Star Parker, a social policy consultant and founder and president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education.

General admission for both days of the conference costs $89. Discounted tickets of $69 are available to pastors, persons in the military and seniors age 60 or older. Teens and college students with ID can attend for $29.

Those interested in attending Friday night only will be charged $39; Saturday only costs $59. Registration and check-in will begin at 5 p.m. Friday.

Admission to the premier of “The Expelled” is free, but preregistration is required.

For more information, call 503-639-7298 or go online to www.restoreamerica.org.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://www.gazettetimes.com/article....216.txt >

You don't even have to pay to hear and see Stein's lies, though I suspect you'd do best to have your sock puppet do your pre-registration for you.

Glen D
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 21 2008,17:10

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Feb. 21 2008,17:39)
You don't even have to pay to hear and see Stein's lies, though I suspect you'd do best to have your sock puppet do your pre-registration for you.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, now that gives me an idea...
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 22 2008,12:02

Quote (Lou FCD @ Feb. 21 2008,17:10)
Quote (Glen Davidson @ Feb. 21 2008,17:39)
You don't even have to pay to hear and see Stein's lies, though I suspect you'd do best to have your sock puppet do your pre-registration for you.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, now that gives me an idea...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ah, I like the sound of that.

Tell us about it as soon as the telling won't screw it all up.

Glen D
Posted by: Peter Henderson on Feb. 25 2008,11:51

Here's an interview with ken Ham on the movie:

< http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundt....d-movie >
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 25 2008,12:30

Quote (Peter Henderson @ Feb. 25 2008,10:51)
Here's an interview with ken Ham on the movie:

< http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundt....d-movie >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why, oh why?

Why does the son of a prominent economist (himself claiming to be a prominent economist, actor, intellectual, etc.) want to be associated with anti-intellectual low-lives like Ken Ham? Isn’t Ben Stein embarrassed at all?

Why does the son of a professor in evolutionary biology (himself claiming to speak for evolutionary biologists) [Dembski] want to be associated with anti-intellectual low-lives like Michael Behe, Denyse O’Leary, et al? I would be humiliated!

These people grew up with everything I never had, and kicked that in the teeth for the sake of garnering applause from the same type of people I ran away from, and didn’t want to become.

What is it with this trend in our culture, simultaneously championing “plain folks” ignorance and conformity and conventionality, while pretending that same popular ignorance and conformity and anti-intellectual mediocrity is somehow avant-guarde, dangerous, radical, hip, and young?

What’s next, “cutting-edge” quilt blocks and knitted scarves in our nation’s galleries? Orchestras performing muzak and Christmas carols? Sheesh. It’s like our whole nation wants to be my hometown. Ben Stein can have it.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 25 2008,12:38

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 25 2008,12:30)
What is it with this trend in our culture, simultaneously championing “plain folks” ignorance and conformity and conventionality, while pretending that same popular ignorance and conformity and anti-intellectual mediocrity is somehow avant-guarde, dangerous, radical, hip, and young?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I say give them their own island and we can watch on TV as they return to the bronze age.

EDIT sometime later: No, it's not the UK :p isle of Wight perhaps....
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 25 2008,21:42

Hey here is Kevin Miller's < blog >  I guess he is one of the writers for Expelled?  I invited him to drop by and chat with us

I told him most everyone here is an atheist, scientist or evil doer in general.  If he shows up please don't let me down.

Chris!
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 25 2008,22:09

Yeah, I'm here. Thanks for the invite, Chris. Sorry if I don't turn out to be the fire-breathing fundamentalist you all expected. Unfortunately, I don't have a ton of time to hang out and debate ad nauseum about the film. But if any of you would like to come over to my place (www.kevinmillerxi.com), feel free to post whatever evil, ungodly thing you want and perhaps we can get a discussion started.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 25 2008,22:12

Welcome, Kevin.

Can you set up a thread for us? We'll cross post here too incase you have any server hiccups.
Posted by: Henry J on Feb. 25 2008,22:28



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I say give them their own island and we can watch on TV as they return to the bronze age.

EDIT sometime later: No, it's not the UK :p isle of Wight perhaps....  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



For poetic justice, make it the Galapagos. ;)

Henry
Posted by: keiths on Feb. 25 2008,22:37

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 25 2008,22:09)
Sorry if I don't turn out to be the fire-breathing fundamentalist you all expected.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Mouth-breathing will do.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 25 2008,22:56

You didn't seem like a fundy to me judging from your blog.  But yes I'm mystified by your cause.

Glad to have you here.

Chris
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 25 2008,23:33

Mouth-breathing. Very funny. When Chris sent his invite my gut response was to say I wasn't interested, b/c after over two years on this project, frankly, I'm a little worn out with all the fire-breathing (and mouth breathing) fundies on all sides of this debate. But if we can keep things halfway civil and actually have a discussion rather than a flame war, I'm all for it.

As for being mystified by "my cause," my main interest in this project is the whole philosophy of science angle. How do we conceptualize science and its implications? How can we know that we know anything? The debate between rationalism and empiricism. Epistemology, that sort of thing. Personally, I see ID as a challenge not just to Darwinian evolution but to the very foundation of the scientific enterprise itself. Will we allow non-material causation into science or won't we? Most people think this question was settled decades or centuries ago. IDers say new evidence in biology and elsewhere compels us to reconsider our answer. I find this intriguing, especially when you bring in philosophers like Michael Polanyi, Alvin Plantinga, and new discoveries in quantum physics that are essentially saying the same thing. I'm not talking about supernatural causation--as in magic. Just non-material causation, such as human consciousness. Right now, I see many branches of science--particularly evolutionary biology--as highly rationalistic. Theory-driven rather than evidence driven. ID seems to be an attempt to call science back to a more empirical approach--at least according to the rhetoric I've heard from ID advocates. (I can't tell you how many times I've heard them say, "Follow the evidence wherever it leads.") So I'm prone to wonder if all the fireworks over ID are really just the most recent manifestation of an age-old scientific debate that's been cloaked in all sorts of modern religious and political agendas. It's just the latest swing of the rationalist/empiricist pendulum. At least that's one way of trying to conceptualize it. I could be way off. It's been a long day.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 25 2008,23:41

Could we start with Popper's demarcation criterion?

Also, Kevin, how famliar are you with the history of the ID movement?

Cheers!
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 25 2008,23:50

Kevin, sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but consciousness is material.

Now, on to more interesting things!

I have seen the Expelled trailer, followed the blog, read Ben Stein's stuff on the film but I want to know one simple thing:

Sternberg.  From what was he expelled?

His editorship?  Nope, he resigned months before the fated issue of BSW was printed.

The Smithsonian?  Nope, he still has access to the collections, and he wasn't an employee of the Smithsonian.

The NIH?  Nope, he still has his same job;  no demotion, even.

Expelled?  From what?

Thanks in advance.  I'm sure you'll be able to answer this simple question.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 26 2008,00:19

Hmmm. Interesting take, since every time an IDC advocate changes the definition of science (as has happened several times where states have considered changes in science standards), they have changed it to remove any dependence upon actually having to test ideas for them to be considered to be science.

I was there at the 1997 DI-sponsored conference where the nearly-complete IDC advocate lineup tried really hard to get the rest of the philosophy community to sign off on the assertion that ID was science. What they got instead were a pair of questions: "What would an ID hypothesis look like? How would we test it?" They didn't have answers to those questions then. They still don't have answers to those questions now.

So how does that work that IDC advocates become the new proponents of empiricism? What is the empirical evidence that would support that claim? How is the contradictory evidence (those inconvenient anti-empirical re-definitions of science that are on the record) set aside?

And, while we have an opportunity for questions, why is it that Rob Pennock's interview for the "Crossroads""Expelled" project ended up on the cutting room floor? Would it have something to do with the content of his answers to the questions, that indicate that IDC is commonly included into courses at the college level and is criticized there on both its empirical deficiencies and also its problematic claims at odds with aspects of Christian theology? Would that account for Pennock being "expelled" from the project? Or would one need the additional information that Pennock is both a Christian believer and a trenchant critic of IDC arguments?


Posted by: stevestory on Feb. 26 2008,01:04

At first glance Kevin doesn't seem to be a mouth-breathing kook, so it's just a matter of time before he realizes the Discovery Institute is full of liars, and that scientific revolutions are built on results, of which the IDers haven't any, and not by propaganda, of which they have plenty, a recent example being his movie.
Posted by: stevestory on Feb. 26 2008,01:08

Although his saying that the IDers are trying to pull science in a more evidentiary direction, and away from abstract theory, is pretty astonishingly ill-informed.

I urge him to learn a bit about how actual scientific revolutions took place, by looking at any of the major or minor ones in the 20th century. And I also encourage him to put down the Dancing Wu-Li Masters-type quantum nonsense.
Posted by: Annyday on Feb. 26 2008,01:41

A few things briefly, because I'm lazy.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kevin, sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but consciousness is material.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is not technically true. We don't know what consciousness is, or if it exists, in any meaningful empirical way. People just have a "sense" that they're conscious, and the way people act is something we understand in terms of consciousness. Empirically, the best we can say is that human consciousness, if it can be said to exist, is ordinarily attached to a physical object (a brain) about which a moderate amount is known. Since brains follow physical rules and consciousness (if it can be said to exist) seems, to all evidence, to be attached to the brain's physical state, it follows that consciousness seems to be material. But we can't empirically say that consciousness is material because we don't know what or if it is!

Of course, the outside effects of consciousness are different. The things people say and do, in spite of the fact that we can't really quantify their people-ness (or "consciousness"), are really really extensively studied by almost every field we'd call the humanities or social sciences. So they're potentially inside the field of scientific investigation.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'm not talking about supernatural causation--as in magic. Just non-material causation, such as human consciousness. Right now, I see many branches of science--particularly evolutionary biology--as highly rationalistic. Theory-driven rather than evidence driven. ID seems to be an attempt to call science back to a more empirical approach--at least according to the rhetoric I've heard from ID advocates.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is wrong because it relies upon tinkering with the definition of "material". "Material causes", in the sense of being the subject for science, means that it effects or originates in something we can observe. Any effect we can observe is "material", more or less, whether it's quantum, human, or magical. Non-material causation is by definition outside of scientific investigation, even more so than magic would be. If magic could be shown to do something, we'd call its effects "material" for purposes of measurement. The material effect could be quantity of lead turned to gold, estimated amount of psychokinetic force exerted, statistical accuracy of psychic predictions, or whatever else. So trying to introduce "non-material causes" is essentially meaningless, since if it's an observed cause at all, it's considered "material" enough to be a part of scientific investigation anyway. There's also plenty of heavy hints that "non-material causes" is a codeword for God, but you knew I was going to say that.

On a related note, evolutionary biology's not really that theoretical. It's anchored, heavily, in empirical findings from field studies and molecular biology. There are many theorists - Hamilton and Dawkins are my personal favorites - who largely work out abstract or mathematical theories, but their theories stand or fall based upon their ability to predict and account for empirical results.  If an empirical finding comes back that flatly contradicts a specific hypothesis in Dawkins' latest paper, Dawkins is screwed and his next paper will likely be about why and how he thinks his model's predictions diverged from reality. For this reason, even the most highly "theoretical" biologists are obsessively focused on empirical facts. There's also some molecular biologists or biochemists who aren't very interested in overarching theories, and they're even more outrageously hardcore empiricists.

Basically what I'm saying is that this isn't empiricism vs rationalism. Or, if it is, evolutionary biology appears to be on the empiricist side. "Follow the evidence wherever it leads" is a good catchphrase, because nobody disagrees with it. Since the evidence doesn't appear to actually lead to ID, though, it's nothing more than a catchphrase.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 26 2008,01:55

Steve: For the record, I said, "ID seems to be an attempt to call science back to a more empirical approach--at least according to the rhetoric I've heard from ID advocates." You seem to have missed that qualifier. For a good discussion on this, I'd highly recommend "Science's Blind Spot" by Cornelius Hunter.

Wayne: To the best of my knowledge we never interviewed Robert Pennock. If we had, the transcript and footage would have definitely crossed my desk.

Doc Bill: I think the jury is still out on exactly what consciousness is. As for Sternberg, you'll just have to watch the film.

Richard: The Demarcaction Problem is the heart of this controversy, isn't it? I'm no expert on Popper's demarcation criterion, but I am somewhat familiar with his assertion that a hypothesis, proposition or theory is scientific only if it is falsifiable--as well as subsequent criticisms of his position, namely, that virtually all scientific inquiry begins with a set of unfalsifiable assumptions.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 26 2008,03:00



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

To the best of my knowledge we never interviewed Robert Pennock. If we had, the transcript and footage would have definitely crossed my desk.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



No film... that's right, the rejection came after the initial telephone interview. So I misspoke concerning a cutting room floor, but there was contact between the producers and Pennock. Pennock's response, though, wasn't considered a "side" of the discussion that the CrossroadsExpelled producers felt their audience needed to hear.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 26 2008,03:01

I notice the main point I had went without response.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 26 2008,03:04



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

As for Sternberg, you'll just have to watch the film.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So, if it is in a film, it qualifies as true?

You were saying something about empiricism earlier...
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,07:19

What I want to know is do you plan to tech your three children that ID is science.  And are your kids home schooled?

Have you read the wedge strategy?

Chris
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 26 2008,07:27

Hi kevin

What is design?

How can we extrapolate from designers which we may observe, to designers we can not observe, or have not observed?

Does knowing that a piece of stick and leaves is made by a caddisfly, or that scratches on a tree were made by a giant felid, give you any additional leverage in attempting to peek up Dame Nature's skirt?  

How does one justify saying "Well, we know that foxes crap on top of logs, and there is crap on top of that log.  Let's use this method to determine whether or not we are living in the best of all possible worlds?"
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,08:54

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 26 2008,03:04)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

As for Sternberg, you'll just have to watch the film.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So, if it is in a film, it qualifies as true?

You were saying something about empiricism earlier...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's "Buy my book" for the new generation. If merchandising and retailing were science and logic, ID would have taken us to the stars by now.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 26 2008,09:25

Kevin, the reason I asked the question is because I have followed the Sternberg saga for years.

I fully expected you to say "watch the film" because you can't answer the question.  Just like Behe and Dembski resort to "read my book" when asked a question not addressed in their books.

As you and I both know, Sternberg wasn't expelled or fired or demoted from anything.  He got caught with his ethical pants down. Sternberg's situation has nothing to do with his beliefs and everything to do with his ethics and honesty.

So, really, Expelled is like a "documentary" about crop circles.  Are they made by aliens?  Some people still think so!  You decide!

Hey, maybe Sternberg makes crop circles!  Could be a story for a new film.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,09:36

You dopes don't think Ben Stein is going to get sidetracked by the fallacy of facts do you?  Ha ha ha!   He'll never fall for that!  

Big Science, you're going down!
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 26 2008,09:43

Kevin, what does Ben Stein think of being associated with the likes of Ken Ham? Is he proud?
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 26 2008,10:05

Never let the facts or silly things like integrity get in the way of making a buck off the ignorant and the superstitious.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 26 2008,12:16

[quote=kevinmillerxi,Feb. 25 2008,23:33][/quote]
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As for being mystified by "my cause," my main interest in this project is the whole philosophy of science angle. How do we conceptualize science and its implications? How can we know that we know anything? The debate between rationalism and empiricism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Not in the slightest.  The two necessarily go together.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Epistemology, that sort of thing. Personally, I see ID as a challenge not just to Darwinian evolution but to the very foundation of the scientific enterprise itself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Of course it is, since ID insists that sticking to the evidence doesn't matter.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Will we allow non-material causation into science or won't we?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



If you ever find evidence for "non-material causation," we will allow it into science.  What you're calling "material causation" is what we call "causation" in science.  Matter itself is at issue as to origin and meaning.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Most people think this question was settled decades or centuries ago.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In science, it was.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
IDers say new evidence in biology and elsewhere compels us to reconsider our answer.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And we've asked, futilely, for any legitimate evidence that this is so.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I find this intriguing, especially when you bring in philosophers like Michael Polanyi, Alvin Plantinga, and new discoveries in quantum physics that are essentially saying the same thing. I'm not talking about supernatural causation--as in magic. Just non-material causation, such as human consciousness.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's just nonsense.  By all of the evidence we have, human consciousness does not violate any physics, including the laws of thermodynamics.  What is more, it appears evolved.  It's merely a presupposition of IDists that consciousness is "non-material," whatever that phrase is supposed to mean.

Besides which, human consciousness has never been excluded from science as a causal phenomenon.  So you're attacking a strawman.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Right now, I see many branches of science--particularly evolutionary biology--as highly rationalistic.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Actually, it's ID that tries to use rational means such as mathematics to deny the typical inferences of descent by observed processes of all of life from a single source (if perhaps a population rather than an individual or pair of conjugators).  We rely on the evidence to come up with explanatory models.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Theory-driven rather than evidence driven.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Perhaps such mistakes are why you call evolutionary theory "Darwinism," because you fail to understand that the theory has changed with the evidence.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ID seems to be an attempt to call science back to a more empirical approach--at least according to the rhetoric I've heard from ID advocates.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Perhaps you ought to listen to the other side for once.  

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
(I can't tell you how many times I've heard them say, "Follow the evidence wherever it leads.")
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oh, so the fact that we've pointed out time and again that they fail to follow the evidence has been ignored by you.  I guess that explains why the movie is so full of errors and false accusation.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So I'm prone to wonder if all the fireworks over ID are really just the most recent manifestation of an age-old scientific debate that's been cloaked in all sorts of modern religious and political agendas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Why didn't you bother to find out, before accusing scientists of numerous calumnies?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It's just the latest swing of the rationalist/empiricist pendulum. At least that's one way of trying to conceptualize it. I could be way off. It's been a long day.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's not like we haven't actually answered every one of your claims, with evidence, long ago.

Glen D
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,12:38



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As for being mystified by "my cause," my main interest in this project is the whole philosophy of science angle. How do we conceptualize science and its implications? How can we know that we know anything? The debate between rationalism and empiricism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is delusional.  I mean, might as well call a spade a spade.  Expelled is not about the debate between rationalism and empericism, it's the debate between creationism and science.  But it's not even that, judging it ONLY from its website, blog, and Ben Stein's interviews, Expelled is pure anti-science propaganda and the evil doers are "big science" and the good guys are the persecuted christians.  

From claiming "Darwinism" caused Hitler to claiming evolution cannot explain how the world began, while portraying ID as anything but pseudoscience it's NOTHING but propaganda for the extreemly ignorant and/or politically motivated.

Let's not kid ourselves, Kevin Miller.  You are a religious propagandist.

Oh, and I plan to watch the movie, no doubt.  I just won't pay any money to do so.


editsz:  any truth to the rumor that Ben Stein and Expelled won the Leni Riefenstahl Best Documentary Award?
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 26 2008,12:40

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 25 2008,11:30)
 
Quote (Peter Henderson @ Feb. 25 2008,10:51)
Here's an interview with ken Ham on the movie:

< http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundt....d-movie >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why, oh why?

Why does the son of a prominent economist (himself claiming to be a prominent economist, actor, intellectual, etc.) want to be associated with anti-intellectual low-lives like Ken Ham? Isn’t Ben Stein embarrassed at all?

Why does the son of a professor in evolutionary biology (himself claiming to speak for evolutionary biologists) [Dembski] want to be associated with anti-intellectual low-lives like Michael Behe, Denyse O’Leary, et al? I would be humiliated!

These people grew up with everything I never had, and kicked that in the teeth for the sake of garnering applause from the same type of people I ran away from, and didn’t want to become.

What is it with this trend in our culture, simultaneously championing “plain folks” ignorance and conformity and conventionality, while pretending that same popular ignorance and conformity and anti-intellectual mediocrity is somehow avant-guarde, dangerous, radical, hip, and young?

What’s next, “cutting-edge” quilt blocks and knitted scarves in our nation’s galleries? Orchestras performing muzak and Christmas carols? Sheesh. It’s like our whole nation wants to be my hometown. Ben Stein can have it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


“I’ll tell you why,” said Rev.Barky to me last night [I’m paraphrasing, of course]. “These people couldn’t measure up to the expectations that their parents had for them. So they found some people that they could ‘wow.’ Now they’re famous! That’s why they preach to children, because children are easy to manipulate. That’s why they hang out with uneducated adults for the same reason. They market their mediocrity, because they don’t have the talent or the imagination to do anything really important.”

Good luck with < the art world >. :)
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 26 2008,13:18

You know guys, you are about as predictable as an animal driven soley by hunger and instinct. Sort of like a crocodile. What never ceases to amaze me is how completely binary your thinking is. This is supremely ironic in a field that introduced us to ideas like transitional forms, evolutionary trajectories and continuums of change. You just can't seem to shake free of the "either/or" "black/white" thinking that pretty much became untenable during the first decades of the 20th century. You bear all the marks of the religious fundamentalists you despise: A complete inability to countenance two seemingly contradictory ideas in your brain and a fervent need to squash and destroy anyone who diagrees with you. This is exactly why I was initially hesitant to accept Chris's invitation to come over here and chat. Not because I'm afraid of criticism (I could get involved with a project like "Expelled" if I were afraid of that) but because of your utter disinterest in true debate and discussion. It's more like a dogpile than a dialogue. And frankly, it's just supremely boring. So I'll let you guys get back to being oh so clever while I get back to doing something a little more productive.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 26 2008,13:26

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,13:18)
You know guys, you are about as predictable as an animal driven soley by hunger and instinct. Sort of like a crocodile. What never ceases to amaze me is how completely binary your thinking is. This is supremely ironic in a field that introduced us to ideas like transitional forms, evolutionary trajectories and continuums of change. You just can't seem to shake free of the "either/or" "black/white" thinking that pretty much became untenable during the first decades of the 20th century. You bear all the marks of the religious fundamentalists you despise: A complete inability to countenance two seemingly contradictory ideas in your brain and a fervent need to squash and destroy anyone who diagrees with you. This is exactly why I was initially hesitant to accept Chris's invitation to come over here and chat. Not because I'm afraid of criticism (I could get involved with a project like "Expelled" if I were afraid of that) but because of your utter disinterest in true debate and discussion. It's more like a dogpile than a dialogue. And frankly, it's just supremely boring. So I'll let you guys get back to being oh so clever while I get back to doing something a little more productive.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh dear, the attack chihuahua can dish it out so long as he is insulated from, you know, actually answering questions, supplying evidence, and making sense.  

The moment he's called to account for his bigotry, dishonesty, and complete lack of any evidence or reasonable arguments, he's back to the chihuahua mode, now whining in the corner about how he's treated.

Gee, yes, Kevin, we are predictable, we react badly against unsupported and unsupportable accusations.  This is part of our virtue, our honesty, and it is apparently something that you dislike as such.

Glen D
Posted by: stevestory on Feb. 26 2008,13:29

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,02:55)
Steve: For the record, I said, "ID seems to be an attempt to call science back to a more empirical approach--at least according to the rhetoric I've heard from ID advocates." You seem to have missed that qualifier.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, the qualifier doesn't absolve you here. You're passing along obviously bogus claims and then when you're called on it, blaming others. Learn something about science and the philosophy of science and understand why your film is stupid propaganda.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,13:40

Yet another whiny persecuted victim.  Grow up, Mr "Big Science".
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on Feb. 26 2008,13:53

Quote (stevestory @ Feb. 26 2008,13:29)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,02:55)
Steve: For the record, I said, "ID seems to be an attempt to call science back to a more empirical approach--at least according to the rhetoric I've heard from ID advocates." You seem to have missed that qualifier.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, the qualifier doesn't absolve you here. You're passing along obviously bogus claims and then when you're called on it, blaming others. Learn something about science and the philosophy of science and understand why your film is stupid propaganda.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Research the ID claims to see if what they claimed was actually true?  Heaven forfend! :O
Posted by: Annyday on Feb. 26 2008,14:08

How wonderfully smug.

I'm sorry that you're too good to actually address what anyone thinks, Kevin. Since you won't actually explain why, we'll just have to take your word that we're all wrong, dogmatic, and animally unreasoning. I can only imagine that knowing why this was true would enrich all of our lives, but I guess I'm wrong and you'd only be casting pearls before swine.

The other part that deserves a tap is the "dogpile" crack. Are only two or three people allowed to disagree with you at once? You can answer at your leisure, it's not like you're getting rushed.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,14:24

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,13:18)
You know guys, you are about as predictable as an animal driven soley by hunger and instinct. Sort of like a crocodile. What never ceases to amaze me is how completely binary your thinking is. This is supremely ironic in a field that introduced us to ideas like transitional forms, evolutionary trajectories and continuums of change. You just can't seem to shake free of the "either/or" "black/white" thinking that pretty much became untenable during the first decades of the 20th century. You bear all the marks of the religious fundamentalists you despise: A complete inability to countenance two seemingly contradictory ideas in your brain and a fervent need to squash and destroy anyone who diagrees with you. This is exactly why I was initially hesitant to accept Chris's invitation to come over here and chat. Not because I'm afraid of criticism (I could get involved with a project like "Expelled" if I were afraid of that) but because of your utter disinterest in true debate and discussion. It's more like a dogpile than a dialogue. And frankly, it's just supremely boring. So I'll let you guys get back to being oh so clever while I get back to doing something a little more productive.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooooh! Two sides to every story! You are fundies too! "Utter disinterest in debate and discussion".

We brought up some legitimate questions - but you're just doing the "not fair" dance. You've provided nothing of substance. I was hoping from more from you. Disappointed - but given your tone, enjoy the failure that comes with your dishonest endeavour.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 26 2008,14:30

You guys are merely proving my point. The only thing you seem to be interested in is attacking me personally. Any attempt at discussion is immediately turned into an opportunity to tell me what a stupid, smug, ignorant propagandist I am. I'm not whining about that. It's just not my idea of a good time. If anyone wants to approach me with a formal interview request for an established publication or web site, I'm all for it. But I'm not going to be the bloody chicken in the henhouse just so you have a few hours of entertainment.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,14:34

It's difficult, Kevin, because you seem to want to defend something without actually defending it. There are many, in my opinion, legitimate concerns with intelligent design, catalogued here and elsewhere. It would appear to offer nothing from a predictive / descriptive scientific standpoint - the big "who, how, where, when and possibly why" questions. But you don't want to field these questions. No IDers do. But they want to teach it in schools.
Posted by: J-Dog on Feb. 26 2008,14:38

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,01:55)
Steve: For the record, I said, "ID seems to be an attempt to call science back to a more empirical approach--at least according to the rhetoric I've heard from ID advocates." You seem to have missed that qualifier. For a good discussion on this, I'd highly recommend "Science's Blind Spot" by Cornelius Hunter.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin - This is the same Cornelius Hunter than ran away crying from this blog last year!

He couldn't tell the difference between a wolf and a thalycine!

And his "science book source" was a Comic Book!

Cornelius Hunter??!!

added in edit:  Ha!  Found the link:

< http://www.antievolution.org/aebb-ar....ad.html >
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,14:41

Hey there will be no personal attacks in this post!

Here is my question - who was Ben's biology consultant for Expelled?  Who advised him on evolution, Darwin and biology?

Since everything that comes out of Ben's mouth regarding those three topics is demonstrably false you have to wonder what kind of "research" he indulged in.

Did you guys do ANY checking up on the Discovery Institute?  Their goals and objectives?  

And I note Kevin never answered my question - have you read the < Wedge Strategy/Document >?  You can read the original < here >

And do you teach your kids that ID is science, Kevin?  Do you teach them that Darwin caused the Holocaust?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 26 2008,14:47

Hi Kevin

Please note that I did not attack you one tiny little bit whatsoever.  And I won't do such a thing unless provoked.

Now, I had some really nice friendly touchy feely questions about this project you are working on, and so does everyone else.  I can wait my turn.

But since you are running around pushing this idea of 'Intelligent Design', regardless of what we know about your fellow travelers, I am asking you 'What Is Design?'  How is beaver dam design equivalent to designing bacterial flagella?  How is SETI comparable to designing blood clots?  How is Colonel Custard, in the Drawing Room, with an icicle dagger IN ANY WAY comparable to The Privileged Planet?  

If irreducible complexity is a hallmark of design, does this mean that the designer is neither irreducible, nor complex?  Doesn't that mean that God is rather ordinary and by Dembski's criterion explainable by recourse to regularity, ie natural law?  

Do you really believe all this stuff, or is it just a handy hook for some publicity?
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 26 2008,14:50



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You guys are merely proving my point. The only thing you seem to be interested in is attacking me personally.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's the whole theme of Expelled, you lie about us, we respond like anyone unfairly accused, and then you're whimpering about how you're abused.

Well guess what, we don't actually appreciate a bunch of dishonest attacks.  We didn't come out and attack you, you came out and lied about us.

Learn some decency.  We're not going to "meet you halfway" on your implications that we're Nazis or Stalinists, we're going to demand that you support such dishonest attacks.  

Furthermore, not only do you refuse to supply evidence that ID is anything but a whiny bunch of lies about science, you can't supply any evidence that it's been treated inappropriately by science, or that there is a lack of opennness to its claims (it's been discussed in excruciating detail on the web, and a good deal elsewhere).  The fact is that you're a bunch of incompetent losers who can't make a case for your claims, from persecution to your supposed science, and there's no reason for us not to tell that truth.

As I've asked previously on the web, just what evidence would IDists supply, if they weren't (supposedly) limited to supplying "naturalistic" or "materialistic" evidence (those modifiers merely stand in place of other considerations, in any event)?  

I've never gotten a reply to that question.

Or to put it another way, how would Kevin Miller like to be tried in court without using the standards of evidence used in both science and in courts?  I've never gotten a response to those questions I've asked of IDists either.

And no, we're not going to be "open" to the idea that evidence-free tripe is worth considering.  Come up with evidence that is repeatable and arguable, and then we'll talk.  The blather that Miller hopes will obfuscate the fact that he has no evidence and no arguments is not grounds for a discussion.

We wouldn't be attacking you personally if you actually could do anything but attack us first, Miller.  It's your lack of any sort of considerable evidence and arguments that leaves us no choice but to attack you for bringing in intellectually dishonest tripe.

Glen D
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 26 2008,14:52

Do you ever mention the phrase "cdesign proponentsists" in your film?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 26 2008,15:04

MrChristopher:

Here is my question - who was Ben's biology consultant for Expelled?  Who advised him on evolution, Darwin and biology?
Ben consulted with many individuals regarding biology and Darwinism, some of whom I know and some I don't. One individual who I know had a significant influence on him is mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. He was also very impressed with Michael Shermer. But Ben Stein is no one's toady. He is a completely free agent who has developed his own unique perspective on this issue.


Did you guys do ANY checking up on the Discovery Institute?  Their goals and objectives?  Of course we did. We researched them extensively and conducted interviews with numerous Discovery fellows.

And I note Kevin never answered my question - have you read the Wedge Strategy/Document?  You can read the original here. Yes, I've read this document as well as Discovery's response. My response is that you can't disqualify a theory merely b/c it is religiously motivated. In that case, you'd have to disqualify anything coming out of Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers who aren't afraid to conflate their religious or areligious beliefs with their science. It all comes down to the arguments and the evidence. So the Wedge document is a moot point from my perspective. I'd rather disentagle the scientific questions from the religious questions so that the real question becomes, can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories? I think the jury is still out on that. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't get a chance to try. Virtually all of the IDers I met--and I met a lot--appeared to be sincere, hard-working scientists just like their peers. Religious agendas aside, I really do believe that people like Sternberg, Dembski, Marks, Berlinski, Gonzalez, Behe, etc are sincerely seeking the truth. That may be difficult for some of you to accept, but they weren't anywhere close to the fundamentalist bogeymen they're often made out to be.

And do you teach your kids that ID is science, Kevin?  Do you teach them that Darwin caused the Holocaust?

My kids are still pretty young, so at this point I'm merely trying to introduce them to the wonders of the natural world. How will that change when they get older? Rather than shove any particular theory down their throats, I hope to teach them how to think critically about the various options that are out there and then make up their own minds. But I also want to encourage them that life is about constant change and growth, so they should be wary of locking themselves down to one position for all of time.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 26 2008,15:08

I forgot to address the Holocaust. No, I won't teach my kids that Darwin initiated the Holocaust, because that is patently untrue. However, I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,15:10



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Religious agendas aside, I really do believe that people like Sternberg, Dembski, Marks, Berlinski, Gonzalez, Behe, etc are sincerely seeking the truth. That may be difficult for some of you to accept, but they weren't anywhere close to the fundamentalist bogeymen they're often made out to be.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



No. They think they have the truth, his name is God and he should be in science class. They have the answer before you ask the question. Every "we don't know" gets filled by God the designer.

How many times has ID detected design?

Why does ID look *exactly* like "creation science" minus the illegal bits?

Edit - changed "-" to "minus"
Posted by: olegt on Feb. 26 2008,15:11

David Berlinski is an expert in biology?  That's rich.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,15:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:08)
I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My goodness.

(1) did he travel back in time to Sparta, as they culled the weak?
(2) Is it natural selection, *cough* "Darwinism" or artificial selection that mankind has known about through for example animal husbandry, for thousands of years?
(3) Is there any long debunked creationist canard you think we haven't heard?
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 26 2008,15:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,16:08)
I forgot to address the Holocaust. No, I won't teach my kids that Darwin initiated the Holocaust, because that is patently untrue. However, I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And why do you think that the concept of eugenics was a greater contributing factor than centuries of Christian persecution of Jews?
Posted by: Annyday on Feb. 26 2008,15:14

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,14:30)
You guys are merely proving my point. The only thing you seem to be interested in is attacking me personally. Any attempt at discussion is immediately turned into an opportunity to tell me what a stupid, smug, ignorant propagandist I am. I'm not whining about that. It's just not my idea of a good time. If anyone wants to approach me with a formal interview request for an established publication or web site, I'm all for it. But I'm not going to be the bloody chicken in the henhouse just so you have a few hours of entertainment.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Look, I wrote a rather long post about why what you've written here (whoever's original words they were) is wrong, on two specific points. Wesley's made specific points curtly, too. Everyone else has been more blunt, but they raised plenty of points, too. Instead of answering peoples' arguments, you respond with this:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You know guys, you are about as predictable as an animal driven soley by hunger and instinct. Sort of like a crocodile. What never ceases to amaze me is how completely binary your thinking is.

...


You bear all the marks of the religious fundamentalists you despise: A complete inability to countenance two seemingly contradictory ideas in your brain and a fervent need to squash and destroy anyone who diagrees with you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And then, when you're called a smug propagandist for it, you run away because we're "clearly" not interested in a real debate. If you'd actually defend your position, you'd have the high ground from which to tell people to stop being sarcastic bastards. Instead, you condescendingly insist that by disagreeing (sorry: disagreeing rudely) everyone's a complete fundamentalist out to squash and destroy you.

I'm not unhappy you're leaving, but the hypocritical indignity is obnoxious.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,15:16



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben consulted with many individuals regarding biology and Darwinism, some of whom I know and some I don't. One individual who I know had a significant influence on him is mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ok, NOW Ben makes total sense to me.  I get it (and I get why Ben doesn't). Thanks for answering all my questions, I have no interest in debating any of this with you, only because there is no point.  So I will leave it with I appreciate you shedding some light on the subject(s).

The question about the wedge strategy was just trying to figure out how educated you are on the subject.  Your answer told me volumes.  Thanks!

Chris

edit - I gotta say one more thing.  Kevin, no one cares that Dembski, behe et al are searching for answers.  The issue is the dishonesty they ALL indulge in to advance IDC into our public science classes, pretending IDC is science. THAT is the issue

Ever  heard of the Templeton Foundation?  They are searching for the truth, yet no one bothers them because they, unlike the IDC crowd, are not trying to sneak religion into out public science classes.  This is a vital point that you and Ben seem to not get.  No one cares about scientists trying to find god, more power to them.  But all these fine fellows have publicly lied, quote mined, and micharacterized science in the name of advancing their creationist cause.

That is not science.  It's anti-science.  Yet you and Ben portray "big science" as the enemy.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,15:22

Quote (Annyday @ Feb. 26 2008,15:14)
I'm not unhappy you're leaving, but the hypocritical indignity is obnoxious.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He was EXPELLED!!! by the darwinist establisment!
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 26 2008,15:25

Annyday: I'm sorry I neglected to respond to your points. If you want to make a list of questions you'd like me to answer, I'll do my best.
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 26 2008,15:28

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Feb. 26 2008,16:16)
Ever  heard of the Templeton Foundation?  They are searching for the truth, yet no one bothers them because they, unlike the IDC crowd, are not trying to sneak religion into out public science classes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And it gets worse.  Guess who had < this > to say about the "ID" movement:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review,"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 26 2008,15:29



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories? I think the jury is still out on that. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't get a chance to try.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And who is stopping them from trying?

Besides which, why haven't they found evidence in the roughly 200 years since Paley?

What you're doing, Kevin, besides accusing falsely, is judging solely by "sincerity" of the IDists (which can be disputed, and has been), and not by the fact that science is interested in claims that at least potentially can be backed up by evidence.

As it happens, ID tries as hard as it can to avoid making reasonable predictions based on known design practice.  It won't predict rational solutions to problems (like the mousetrap, vs. the highly modified organs and organisms that we actually see), it won't predict the novelty and/or extensive "borrowing" that real designers utilize, and it won't predict evident purpose.  The sole reason that we can recognize for the lack of those predictions is that your "sincere" IDists know very well that these do not exist, and so refuse to make the entailed predictions, knowing that they will immediately be falsified by the evidence.

Furthermore, the only "predictions" they attempt to fob off onto the public are that "life is too complex to have evolved," a false dilemma.  We detect design because we know what designers do (think and act rationally and purposefully), we do not default to design the moment that we can't explain something by known means.  How would we even be able to hypothesize that evolution occurred if we had merely assumed that "God did it" when we didn't have a good explanation for life's diversity?

Indeed, IDists can try to do their magic as much as they wish.  One problem is that they rarely do any science at all, and even when they do, they aren't really doing ID science because they have no testable hypotheses (since they refuse to produce hypotheses that can be tested, for those hypotheses failed long ago).  Why is PCID, which was expressly invented to publish "ID research," languishes without any papers having been published in years?  Obviously they can make or find outlets for any science or pseudoscience they choose, they just don't have any legitimate output.

The other problem is what we've already pointed out to you without you bothering to answer:  ID isn't science in any way whatsoever, since it wishes us to get rid of the requirement to provide evidence.  Need I remind you of what Dembski wrote long ago?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As for your example, I'm not going to take the bait. You're asking me to play a game: "Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position." ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it's not ID's task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.

< http://www.iscid.org/ubbcgi....152;p=3 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Sure, Kevin, not connecting the dots makes ID into a real science (note the weaseling that allows some dots to be connected (selective treatment of evidence), while not treating cause and effect analysis as the only way to get to the facts, which is the case in classical science).  

The problem we have with you and your chihuahua attacks and chihuahua whimpers is that you don't simply let such pseudoscientific nonsense be held by religionists and whatever they are at the Biologic Institute, but you insist that we grant such pseudoscience exceptions that have never been granted to similar pseudosciences.  You wish to use gov't to force science to accept what is anathema to science--meaningless evidence-free religiously-inspired drivel.

But these things have been pointed out to people like you countless times, and you all manage to ignore everything of substance that you receive in response.

Glen D
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 26 2008,15:30

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,12:18)
You know guys, you are about as predictable as an animal driven soley by hunger and instinct. Sort of like a crocodile. What never ceases to amaze me is how completely binary your thinking is. This is supremely ironic in a field that introduced us to ideas like transitional forms, evolutionary trajectories and continuums of change. You just can't seem to shake free of the "either/or" "black/white" thinking that pretty much became untenable during the first decades of the 20th century. You bear all the marks of the religious fundamentalists you despise: A complete inability to countenance two seemingly contradictory ideas in your brain and a fervent need to squash and destroy anyone who diagrees with you. This is exactly why I was initially hesitant to accept Chris's invitation to come over here and chat. Not because I'm afraid of criticism (I could get involved with a project like "Expelled" if I were afraid of that) but because of your utter disinterest in true debate and discussion. It's more like a dogpile than a dialogue. And frankly, it's just supremely boring. So I'll let you guys get back to being oh so clever while I get back to doing something a little more productive.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Productivity, in film or in science, is ultimately judged over the long term.

< It's a date >, Kevin.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 26 2008,15:32

I'm sure that many of us would like to hear just how you can make ID a scientific enterprise, if you want to get around to that one (we already know how to make it a commercial enterprise.... wink wink nudge nudge saynomore saynomore).



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'd rather disentagle <sic> the scientific questions from the religious questions so that the real question becomes, can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories? I think the jury is still out on that. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't get a chance to try
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yeah, we'd love for you to do that also.  We'd also love to hear you explain why, in the absence of any compelling evidence that there might BE such evidence or arguments you think that ID'ers deserve this affirmative action?  What makes their religious beliefs privileged?

Why don't I deserve to have the NSF fund me completely for 12 years while I work out whether or not the fact that the sun appears yellow to our eyes is predicted by the first principle that god made everything?  Why don't we privilege everyone's arbitrary religious beliefs?  Let's just forget about science and evidence and reason:  you deserve a chance to make the absolutely stupidest argument you can muster, and at the expense of people who actually take this sort of thing seriously.

Your democratic fallacy is showing hon.  Might wanna cover it up, it's liable to get bruised 'round heah.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,15:39

Hey Kevin, just as an FYI there are numerous actual biologists here.  Feel free to ask them science questions.  Well if you want.  Maybe you have some questions about evolution you'd like answered.

Anyhow, questions are a two way street.  You're being a sport answering some questions, feel free to ask too.

Chris
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 26 2008,15:40

Thanks, Chris. I actually do have a number of questions. I'll come back later.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,15:44

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:40)
Thanks, Chris. I actually do have a number of questions. I'll come back later.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cool beans.  That could lead to some interesting conversations.
Posted by: Annyday on Feb. 26 2008,15:46



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Annyday: I'm sorry I neglected to respond to your points. If you want to make a list of questions you'd like me to answer, I'll do my best.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



"Non-material causes" is a meaningless buzzword. Anything we can observe- any "cause"- is considered "material" enough to be a part of science. Human agency, quantum mechanics, and the like are included in this definition. So what does ID actually want to change about the philosophy of science?

That's the only real question. The other thing is that biologists are slaves to empirical results. Even most theorists can still wax eloquent for ages on the minutia of their most-studied organism's traits and behaviors. It's actually kind of terrifying. So, it's really not empiricism vs rationalism.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'd rather disentagle the scientific questions from the religious questions so that the real question becomes, can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories? I think the jury is still out on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



... and, when the jury's still out on whether a large group of people can produce any evidence for their case after twenty years and some millions of dollars, it bodes very poorly.
Posted by: bystander on Feb. 26 2008,15:55

Kevin,

When I was fourteen (32 years ago), I believed in all kinds of woo and firmly believed that science was blind. Unhappily (but fortunately) I found that each guru had feet of clay until I have become a confirmed sceptic. These guys have a good story and if you use them as your only source of information it is easy to be seduced.

A lot of the people you see around here have been fighting anti-science for over 20 years. Instead of ignoring ID science and simply attacking the people (which is what Berlinski, Behe etc would like you believe) these guys have done detailed critiques of their ideas. It's all easy to find on the internet if you research. The reason that a lot of people on this board and people like PZ seem angry is that the ID people never address the critiques.

I believe that this movie will be like the Dover trial. The more popular the movie, the more likely somebody will do another documentary where they do look under the rocks, where they do do the research (I have a great title "Duped").
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,15:59

Quote (improvius @ Feb. 26 2008,15:28)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Feb. 26 2008,16:16)
Ever  heard of the Templeton Foundation?  They are searching for the truth, yet no one bothers them because they, unlike the IDC crowd, are not trying to sneak religion into out public science classes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And it gets worse.  Guess who had < this > to say about the "ID" movement:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review,"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, they of all organizations should be ID friendly and they're not.  And my point was that science is not trying to silence people who are seeking god in a test tube.  Holy cow man if someone discovered god from a scientific standpoint they'd win ever freakin prize known to man.

I wonder if the Templeton Foundation is in Expelled.  They should have been included.  They're a perfect example of theists seeking an understanding through science.  The biggest difference is they do not have a hidden political agenda and they're not out to discredit science to bolster their argument.

In short, they're not creationists trying to slip religion back in the public science class.
Posted by: jeannot on Feb. 26 2008,16:03

Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,15:13)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:08)
I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My goodness.

(1) did he travel back in time to Sparta, as they culled the weak?
(2) Is it natural selection, *cough* "Darwinism" or artificial selection that mankind has known about through for example animal husbandry, for thousands of years?
(3) Is there any long debunked creationist canard you think we haven't heard?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And more to the point, Kevin: science tells us how the world works, not how it ought to work.
Had Hitler worshipped Darwin's name in his book, that wouldn't falsify the theory of natural selection.

Is it so hard to understand?
Posted by: ERV on Feb. 26 2008,16:10

hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Email me, Kevin.  We need to talk about Behe and Dembski.  If youre looking for a student who has been harassed, slandered, and threatened by professional scientists/philosophers just seeking the truth for EXPELLED, I would be happy to sign on.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,16:11

Quote (jeannot @ Feb. 26 2008,16:03)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,15:13)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:08)
I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My goodness.

(1) did he travel back in time to Sparta, as they culled the weak?
(2) Is it natural selection, *cough* "Darwinism" or artificial selection that mankind has known about through for example animal husbandry, for thousands of years?
(3) Is there any long debunked creationist canard you think we haven't heard?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And more to the point, Kevin: science tells us how the world works, not how it ought to work.
Had Hitler worshipped Darwin's name in his book, that wouldn't falsify the theory of natural selection.

Is it so hard to understand?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What's so laff riot ironic is the bible clearly condones slavery and was used to justify slavery in this country.  I mean Leviticus is a slave owners manual.  The bible to this day justifies slavery (and murdering innocent little boys, stoning women to death, etc) but Darwin is  bad because he formulated a theory about how species evolve...Never mind that his theory has stood every single test since his ideas were published.

Did anyone ever see the Flock of Dodos movie?  I did not.  Was it any good?
Posted by: Annyday on Feb. 26 2008,16:14

Quote (jeannot @ Feb. 26 2008,16:03)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,15:13)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:08)
I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My goodness.

(1) did he travel back in time to Sparta, as they culled the weak?
(2) Is it natural selection, *cough* "Darwinism" or artificial selection that mankind has known about through for example animal husbandry, for thousands of years?
(3) Is there any long debunked creationist canard you think we haven't heard?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And more to the point, Kevin: science tells us how the world works, not how it ought to work.
Had Hitler worshipped Darwin's name in his book, that wouldn't falsify the theory of natural selection.

Is it so hard to understand?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He didn't say that, he was answering a question. Just because it's a classic ID/creationist line doesn't mean any specific person agrees with it, mkay?
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,16:16

Quote (ERV @ Feb. 26 2008,16:10)
hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Email me, Kevin.  We need to talk about Behe and Dembski.  If youre looking for a student who has been harassed, slandered, and threatened by professional scientists/philosophers just seeking the truth for EXPELLED, I would be happy to sign on.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh but you're just a girl...  

ERV, go to his blog and you'll find a link to his email address.

I wonder if Kevin is hip to Behe's HIV denial or the fact that so many of the DI fellows have signed on to HIV denialism.  I wonder if Kevin read Well's reasons for getting his PhD in biology?  

Note to Kevin, ERV is a hard core HIV researcher (who knows kung fu).  As in cutting edge HIV research (not just some crank who's read a pamphlet on it).  The question is can she behave? ;-)
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,16:23

Oh, Welcome Pharyngulans!

*waves*

PS KRISTINE HARTLEY IS TEH WITCH.  :angry:
Posted by: jeannot on Feb. 26 2008,16:24

Quote (Annyday @ Feb. 26 2008,16:14)
 
Quote (jeannot @ Feb. 26 2008,16:03)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,15:13)
   
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:08)
I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My goodness.

(1) did he travel back in time to Sparta, as they culled the weak?
(2) Is it natural selection, *cough* "Darwinism" or artificial selection that mankind has known about through for example animal husbandry, for thousands of years?
(3) Is there any long debunked creationist canard you think we haven't heard?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And more to the point, Kevin: science tells us how the world works, not how it ought to work.
Had Hitler worshipped Darwin's name in his book, that wouldn't falsify the theory of natural selection.

Is it so hard to understand?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He didn't say that [...]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Say what, specifically? It seems clear to me that Kevin confuses the validity of a scientific theory with its social implications.

Perhaps I miswrote the phrase "Had Hitler worshipped Darwin's name...". I didn't imply that Kevin said such thing. Remember that English is not my native language.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 26 2008,16:25

Kevin,

I never got an answer to my question "from what was Sternberg expelled?"

"Watch the movie" is not an answer.  I love spoilers and I will see the movie, anyway.

Poor Sternberg.  One little slip and he's a piranha.  (inside joke)

Only it wasn't his first slip, now, was it?  Surly you did the research, Kevin, and you know that Sternberg had a history of shepherding dubious papers into publication.

Such as this one:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

>>> Frank Ferrari 09/08/04 03:29PM >>>
Hi Hans,
Rafa gave me a heads up about the Nature - News. What is troubling is the implication in the article that
the manuscript was peer-reviewed. I doubt that it was, based on my experience with Sternberg and the
infamous Nizinski manuscript, which Sternberg also wanted to publish and also insisted had been
peer-reviewed. Prior to publication, I asked him who reviewed the Nizinski manuscript, but he would not
give me any names. When I insisted that the manuscript be reviewed internationally, the concensus of 4
international reviewers was rejection [sadly, Sternberg published it anyway].
Frank

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Sternberg knew the Meyer paper would be reviewed as rubbish because it is rubbish.  Sternberg covered his tracks and snuck it through into publication anyway.  Only Sternberg of all the other editors saw the manuscript, there was no Abstract and only Sternberg reviewed the galley proofs.  

Total inside job?  Unethical?  Dishonest?  Crop circles?  You decide.

So, tell me Kevin old bean, from what was Sternberg expelled?  Was he "expelled" for his beliefs which he held and expressed for years with no consequence, or was he castigated for his actions of malfeasance and abuse of his editorial privilege?

Let me guess.  See the movie because it covers all this in great deal, in color, and in stereo.  Can't wait.
Posted by: bystander on Feb. 26 2008,16:29



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But Ben Stein is no one's toady. He is a completely free agent who has developed his own unique perspective on this issue.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Unfortunately con men tell us that these are the easiest people to con.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Did you guys do ANY checking up on the Discovery Institute?  Their goals and objectives?  Of course we did. We researched them extensively and conducted interviews with numerous Discovery fellows.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Did you interview their critics? Gave people they criticized (basically the science establishment) a chance to rebuff. Spend a weekend reading the archives of Panda's Thumb to see the other side of their various press releases. They also have some interesting critiques of Berlinski.

Please don't think we are being mean. BELIEVING that there may be more to existence than what science has shown is fine and dandy. BELIEVING that some scientist somewhere will find this is also fine. We are more curious as to why hitch your wagon to these particular characters?

It doesn't take much research to discover that these guys are wrong, dishonest or both.

Sternberg -- there was a senate investigation. read the appendix, this guy was pretty odious and would have been sacked from any private company.
Gonzales -- Wasn't expelled just not promoted. Didn't take any students to Doctorate. Brought in hardly any research money, Did hardly any research. He did write the book privileged planet but didn't develop this any further.
etc. etc.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,16:46

Is this P-A-R-O-D-Y?

< http://www.benstein4president.com/ >

(from "expelled"). Is he connect with reality at *any* level?
Posted by: rpenner on Feb. 26 2008,16:50

Now, I'm not a professional biologist or expert in biological molecules (despite over 30 days of sinus discharge) but I would like to ask Kevin a question, since he would seem to prefer questions than pointed explanations and empirical details.

Why is this movie taking so long from the appearantly completed version being shown around the country to it's rumored April theatrical release? Are you waiting for original animation, additional on-site footage or clearance? Is "Bad to the Bone" going to be replaced with an AC/DC song to match Stein's costume?

Why are schools being (promised to be) paid to get children to see this film, that being the opposite of the usual Hollywood strategy and children being the opposite of the typical documentary audience?

Is Ben Stein still attached to this project? The movie website only has two posts from Stein on the purported blog. Generally spokespersons get paid to, um, speak. Did Stein write his own lines in the trailer? Reminding us of his association with Nixon, doesn't seem to put him in the modest, trustworthy, or likeable catagories. (Wasn't it Nixon who created the modern Federal Holiday which in many people's minds takes the place of the actual dates of Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays? I ask because one of the movie's producers seems to blame this on evolution, not Nixon.)

Good luck, I hope to see the movie someday.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,16:50

When you read the history of Dembski and Baylor it becomes obvious he was not expelled, but rather does not play well with others.  

And Dembski takes joy in expelling < Christian scientist >from the ID movment

Yeah when you get to know him Dembski does not make a very good persecuted victim.

Speaking of being expelled...I wonder how long it would take to get banned from Dembski's blog if Kevin joined and did not tell them who he is, but instead asked logical and even scientific questions about ID.  

1) Show me the ID evidence
2) IC does not prove design, so show me more evidence
3) So is a snowflake designed?
4) Ha ha ha yes that's funny, a 747 could not just create itself.  Hmmm...Then who created the creato....<ban>
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 26 2008,17:01

Annyday:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Wesley's made specific points curtly, too.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Curt, but no "personal attacks". Everything I've said or asked Kevin M. was directed at his claims, not his person.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 26 2008,17:08

Dembski, apparently, isn't featured in Expelled.

Why is that?

After all, Dembski was removed from his position by that atheist, Darwinist mafia boss Robert Sloan, president of Baylor.

Removed with pay for 5 years, I might add.

Hey, Kevin, do you know where I can get "Expelled" for 5 years with pay?

Inquiring minds want to know.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 26 2008,17:09

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,14:08)
I forgot to address the Holocaust. No, I won't teach my kids that Darwin initiated the Holocaust, because that is patently untrue. However, I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You may be interested in Christopher Hitchens' essay about anti-Semitism (Hitchens is particularly enraged by it) in the < current Atlantic Monthly >. What is particularly revealing, in my opinion, are the parallels between it and the arguments made (including those by Ben Stein) against evolutionary theory:       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Political anti-Semitism in its more modern form often de-emphasized the supposed murder of Christ in favor of polemics against monopolies and cartels, leading the great German Marxist August Bebel to describe its propaganda as “the socialism of fools.” Peter Pulzer’s essential history of anti-Semitism in pre-1914 Germany and Austria, which shows the element of populist opportunism in the deployment of the Jew-baiting repertoire, is, among other things, a great illustration of that ironic observation. And then there is the notion of the Jews’ lack of rooted allegiance: their indifference to the wholesome loyalties of the rural, the hierarchical, and the traditional, and their concomitant attraction to modernity. Writing from the prewar Balkans in her Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West noticed this suspicion at work in old Serbia and wrote:

'Now I understand another cause for anti-Semitism; many primitive peoples must receive their first intimation of the toxic quality of thought from Jews. They know only the fortifying idea of religion; they see in Jews the effect of the tormenting and disintegrating ideas of skepticism.'

The best recent illustration of that point that I know comes from Jacobo Timerman, the Argentine Jewish newspaper editor who was kidnapped and tortured by the death-squad regime in his country in the late 1970s. In his luminous memoir, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, he analyzes the work of the neo-Nazi element that formed such an important part of the military/clerical dictatorship, and quotes one of the “diagnoses” that animated their ferocity:

"Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space." [emphases mine]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Note that Albert Einstein has now been replaced by Charles Darwin. Note also that "Darwinism" is, as was Jewry, portrayed simultaneously as a hideously strong force about to overwhelm the nations, and as on the brink of collapse.
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Anti-Semitism is an elusive and protean phenomenon, but it certainly involves the paradox whereby great power is attributed to the powerless. In the mind of the anti-Jewish paranoid, some shabby bearded figure in a distant shtetl is a putative member of a secret world government: hence the enduring fascination of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. (Incidentally, it is entirely wrong to refer to this document of the Czarist secret police as “a forgery.” A forgery is a counterfeit of a true bill. The Protocols are a straightforward fabrication, based on medieval Christian fantasies about Judaism.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ID has its lengthy record of straightforward fabrication as well.
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That is perhaps what distinguishes it from other forms of racism. Almost every tribe or ethnicity has a rival tribe or ethnicity that it views as inferior or dirtier or more primitive: the Hutu with the Tutsi, the Sinhalese with the Tamil, the Ulster Protestant with the Irish Catholic, and so forth. The “other” group will invariably be found to have a different smell, a higher birthrate, and a lazier temperament. These poor qualities are sometimes attributed even by Jews to Jews: elevated German and Austrian Jews once wrinkled their nostrils at the matted sidelocks and large families of the poor Ostjuden who had come from the backwoods of Galicia and Silesia; and Ashkenazi-Se­phardic rivalry in Israel sometimes recalls and resembles this hostility. But garden-variety racists do not usually suspect the objects of their dislike of secretly manipulating the banks and the stock markets and of harboring a demonic plan for world domination.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Note now this quote from Stein:
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Just as a tiny example, years ago a close friend, now deceased, was a trader in London for a big financial house. As he told it, one day I.B.M. came out with stellar numbers. The boss of the trading floor said, “O.K., the guy who’s getting the prize is the one who can make us money selling I.B.M. short.”

So the traders grabbed for their phones and started to put out any bad thoughts they could dream up about I.B.M. They called journalists, retailers, anyone. They sold huge amounts of I.B.M. short. Soon, they had I.B.M. on the run, made money on their shorts and went to Langan’s to drink champers.

As I see it, this is what traders do all day long — and especially what they’ve been doing since the subprime mess burst upon the scene. They have seized upon a fairly bad situation: a stunning number of defaults and foreclosures in the subprime arena, although just a small part of the total financial picture of the United States. They have then tried — with the collaboration of their advance guards in the press — to make it seem like a total catastrophe so they could make money on their short sales. They sense an opportunity to trick other traders and poor retail slobs like you and me, and they generate data and rumor to support their positions, and to make money.

MORE than that, they trade to support the way they want the market to go. If they are huge traders like some of the major hedge funds, they can sell massively and move the market downward, then suck in other traders who go short, and create a vacuum of fear that sucks down whatever they are selling.

Note what is happening here: They are not figuring out which way the market will go. They are making the market go the direction they want.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Weeks before this it was Goldman Sachs out to corner the market and dominate the world.

Stein's allegedly being no one's toady does not rule out his having a blind spot to his embracing of this absurd archetype of paranoiac revelation, in his own words, of cliches such as "the scales fell from my eyes." I am not a biologist, but a scholar of languages and literature. The use of rhetoric, special pleading, and emotional manipulation, as opposed to sound arguments, in both of these cases leaps out at one.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,17:12

Our very own Richardhughes has documented the Darwing = Hitler link very well I might add.  Here is his research findings:



Keep in mind Richardhughes may be a tard, but he's our tard.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Feb. 26 2008,17:17

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)
Here is my question - who was Ben's biology consultant for Expelled?  Who advised him on evolution, Darwin and biology?
Ben consulted with many individuals regarding biology and Darwinism, some of whom I know and some I don't. One individual who I know had a significant influence on him is mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. He was also very impressed with Michael Shermer. But Ben Stein is no one's toady. He is a completely free agent who has developed his own unique perspective on this issue.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin

Welcome, and kudos for sticking your head into the lions den.

But here are a couple of clues.

Nobody is a "Darwinist" these days; that died out in the late 19th century. If you want to converse with scientists who will take you seriously, you won't use that word again. It's a dead giveaway that you haven't bothered to even cursorily examine the science of modern evolutionary biology.

David Berlinksi is not a biologist; he is nominally a philosopher who also writes detective novels. Michael Shermer is not a biologist; he is a historian of science. If these sources are where Stein gets information about biology, he is even more misinformed than I imagined. And my imagination is pretty active...

On this board, there are several card-carrying practicing biologists, including Wesley Elsberry, with whom you have already interacted. It won't hurt to listen to some of what they have to say, rather than claim persecution.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Feb. 26 2008,17:20

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,13:08)
I forgot to address the Holocaust. No, I won't teach my kids that Darwin initiated the Holocaust, because that is patently untrue. However, I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In that case you will be a (personal expletive deleted) liar.  Racism and bigotry are far older than Darwin, and older than the sciences. They have been justified by every sort of argument, mostly religious and nationalistic. The genocides in the Bible were used as Nazi justifications more than any nonexistant mention of Darwin.  

Rev. Donal Kerr, Emeritus Professor of Ecclesiastical History,
St. Patrick's University, Maynooth, Ireland has written on the massive ideological support the "new science" of economics privided to justify the deaths of thousands during the Irish Potato Famine.  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"
Trevelyan, whose influence was paramount, summed up this attitude when he said that the Famine was "the judgment of God on an indolent and unself-reliant people." It was "the cure...applied by the direct stroke of an all wise Providence in a manner as unexpected...as it is likely to be effectual!" As God had "sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated." In other words, the Famine was God's will and we should not alleviate it too much."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



However, following the publication of "Origin of Species" there was a great interest in the potential for human improvement by the application of biology. The most active centers for this thinking, called Social Darwinism, were in the United States, and secondly in Germany.  The origin of Social Darwinism was of course British; particularly from the writing of Francis Galton, and Herbert Spencer.  The notion of evolution was used in these nations primarily as justification of the political status quo- basically the poor underclass were inately "inferior" and there was no moral onus to care for them.

The political and economic situation in late 19th century Germany led to a huge polarization between Left and Right, and this is how the notions associated with Social Darwinism in England and the United States came to such different and disastrous results in Germany.

The man most responsible for Germany's "racial hygiene" Rassenhygiene and author of its founding articles and books was Alfred Ploetz.  His 1895 work particularly argued aginst medical care for the "weak" as this would alow them to reproduce more than the "fit."  His ideal of "fitness" was the wealthy.  Ploetz established the Society for Racial Hygiene, Gesellshaft für Rassenhygiene, in 1905 which grew to 1,300 members by 1930.  Curiously, the Racial Hygiene movement opposed birth control,  and in the words of Max von Gruber (1914) "the so-called women's liberation movement."  This latter point was echoed by American eugenicists who objected to birth control as part of an "antibaby strike" by emancipated women.  Today's US religious right-wing fits hand and glove.

The German racial hygienists prior to the 1920s were not particularly concerned with "race" in the sense we use it today, but were concerned with their notion of race=national identity, and race=the totality of humankind.  Ploetz (1895), for example, felt it necessary to explicitly state that his was not an anti-Semitic program, citing the achievements of Jesus, Spinoza and Marx in particular and rejected that there was any such thing as a "pure race" anywhere in the world.  Similarly, he denied that interracial breeding was at all harmful, and referred to the notion of hybrid vigor; interbreeding of races was "a means of increasing fitness and as a source of good variations."  Notably, Willhelm Schallmayer, winner of the 1900 Krupp Prize for his essay on evolution and political development of the state, urged that the singular Rassehygiene be used (rather then the plural Rassen-) to emphasize the focal unity of the human species.  

None-the-less, Ploetz did maintain in 1895 that there were intellectual differences between the Caucasians and Negroes citing 1890 American studies of literacy rates!  (The absurdity of this is patent, but even today there are similar arguments presented by radical conservatives).  More sinisterly, Ploetz together with F. Wollny and Fritz Lenz, organized a secret Nordic division (Ring der Norda) within the Society for Race Hygiene from the very beginning.  Fritz Lenz would become the leading Nazi racial theorist.  His 1917 article "The Rebirth of Ethics" directly brought the thinking of Arthur Comte de Gobineau into German racial theories.  Well before Darwin's Origin, Gobineau published his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races in 1853-1855 which proposed that "racial vitality" was the driving force of history, and that the "white" races were superior to the "colored" races.  Initially this work was only popular in the American slave states, following the biblical arguments of the Negro's bearing the "curse of Ham."  American and European creationist theories of the "pre-Adamites" went so far as to claim that Negroes had been created on the Genesis fifth day with "other beasts of the field."  Gobineau's claim that the German Volk represented the last pure Nordic population attracted Lenz who reintroduced Gobineau into German racist theories.  

What was outstanding and uniquely German was the domination of the racist Nordic movement by medical doctors.  This had several important consequences, one being the prominance given to inherited disease and secondly the willingness to take direct "curative action" as a public health program.  

Leading figures of the Nordic movement wrote for the Politisch-anthropologish Revue edited by Ludwig Wolttmaann, M.D. ( e.g. Rüdin, Lentz, Fisher and Schallmayer).   The right wing of the racial hygiene movement, the Nordic supremacists, that ultimately became the Nazi medical establishment was virtually the creation of medical publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann.  Lehmann joint the Nazi party in 1920, and was the first Nazi to recieve the party's "Golden Medal of Honor" in 1934.  Actually, by 1930 it was nearly impossible to distinguish between the Nordic/Nazi and the transformed Rassenhygiene movements.  At that time, some people still attempted to separate what they viewed as the medical and scientific study of human genetics from the Nazi dominated Rassenhygiene, but within Germany they were suppressed.  

There is a hightly significant passage in Evans pg. 92-93:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"The minutes [taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt] for the second day's meeting, on 17 April 1943, recorded a statement by Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, in Hitler's presence, to a point made by Hungarian Admiral Horthy: "On Horthy's retort, what should he do with the Jews then, after he had pretty well taken all means of living from them-- he surely couldn't beat them to death-- the Reich Foreign Minister [Ribbentrop] replied that the Jews must either be annihilated or taken to concentration camps. There is no other way."

Hitler almost immediately confirmed Ribbentrop's explicitly murderous statement at some length: Hitler: "Where the Jews were left to themselves, as for example in Poland, gruesome poverty and degeneracy had ruled. They were just pure parasites. One had fundamentally cleared up this state of affairs in Poland. If the Jews there didn't want to work [in Third Reich concentration camps], they were shot. If they couldn't work they had to perish. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, from which a healthy body could be infected. That was not cruel, if one remembered that even innocent natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so that no harm was caused. Why should one spare the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism more? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished." (references and footnotes are found in Evans, 2001:92-93)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Here we have Hitler, in his argument to Hungary's Admiral Horthy, invoking not an übermench racist position, but an anti-Bolshevik, and nationalist one.  His analogy is to disease and there is no argument based on the notion of evolution.  Hitler never tried to draw rhetorical support from Social Darwinism arguing in Mein Kampf, it is not present in the text.  Science in any event was at most merely a twig on the trunk of his anti-Semitism. His opposition is to what he considered a Marxist threat, not drawn from Darwin, which was more a rationalization of his hatred than its origin.  

The Nazi Office of Racial Policy held thousands of public meetings a month promoting anti-semitism and attacking “muddle-headed humanitarianism” (Humanitätsduselei)  or, what we call “liberalism” today.  The theoretical models and dominant metaphors Hitler drew from did not include evolution at any event, but the Germ Theory of Disease, and Christianity.  In 1938 the Nazi "Office of Racial Policy" publication Inromationsdienst Martin Luther’s advice on the “proper” treatment of Jews was given prominent display:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
... to put their synagogues and schools to fire, and what will not burn, to cover with earth and rubble so that no-one will ever again see anything there but cinders ... Second, one should tear down and destroy their houses, for they do also in there what they do in their schools and synagogues ... And third, one should confiscate their prayer books and Talmud, in which idolatry and lies, slander and blasphemy is taught” From Proctor 1988: 88.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The founder of Protestant Christianity was a greater inspiration to the Nazis than any scientist.  Science, politicized by the same conditions that radicalized both Left, and Right in Germany, was used as justification for actions long advocated as “Christian.”  

In fact, the Nazis has the works of Darwin publically burned along with the books of Ernst Haeckel (Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279). Die Bücherei, the official Nazi journal for lending libraries, published these collection evaluation "guidelines" during the second round of "purifications" (saüberung).

6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).    

Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279

6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)

Readers interestd in an honest assesment of the history of the Nazis and their "science" of Racial Hygiene should read the following works;

Evans, Richard J.
2001 Lying about Hitler New York:Basic Books.

Hitler, Adolf
1999 (orig. 1925) Mien Kampf  Ralph Manheim, translator.  New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Proctor, Robert N.
1988 Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis Boston:Harvard University Press.


Posted by: JAM on Feb. 26 2008,17:27

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)
My response is that you can't disqualify a theory merely b/c it is religiously motivated.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You can, however, completely disqualify it as a theory because it has absolutely zero track record of making correct predictions.

Hint: in science, predictions have nothing to do with how you think your "theory" will fare in the future, they are predictions about what you actually observe, in experiments or other observations (like locations and morphologies of fossils before they are found).

Here's an example: the prion hypothesis (prions are infectious proteins) predicts that treating a brain homogenate from a prion-infected animal with enzymes that degrade nucleic acids (DNA + RNA) will have no effect on infectivity when the treated brain homogenate is used to infect new animals.

This is the part to consider carefully, Kevin: when Stan Prusiner introduced this hypothesis (not a theory) in the early 80s, the majority of his fellow microbiologists thought he was not only wrong, but nuts.

Stan did not write any books.
Stan did not lie and call his hypothesis a theory.
Stan did not demand that the prion hypothesis be taught in the public schools.
Stan did not have a movie made about the derision he endured from his peers.

Instead, Stan did something that your ID proponents are too cowardly to do, because they know that they are lying.

Stan tested his hypothesis.
Stan did everything he could think of that had the potential to falsify his hypothesis.
Stan did experiments proposed by his critics.
Stan went far beyond the experiments proposed by his critics.
Stan published his data in what we call the primary literature (papers with new data).
Stan's critics examined the evidence (not Stan's arguments).
Stan's critics, nearly all of whom were fair-minded people, began to suspect that the prion hypothesis might be correct.
More people (including Stan's former critics) started to work on prions.
The prion hypothesis is now considered to be a theory.
Stan won the Nobel Prize in 1997.

Kevin, every time anyone calls ID a "theory," we scientists view it as a lie. Now, let's look at what your beloved ID pseudoscientists do:

ID pseudoscientists do not test their hypotheses; they are afraid to.
ID pseudoscientists do nothing that has the slightest potential to falsify their hypotheses.
ID pseudoscientists do no experiments proposed by their critics.
ID pseudoscientists have published not a single datum from testing their own hypotheses in what we call the primary literature (papers with new data).
ID critics (real scientists) look at the total absence of new evidence produced by the ID movement (not arguments).
Real scientists, nearly all of whom were fair-minded people, can see that ID has no scientific basis, and we see that ID proponents realize this.
No people are working on ID. I've done more to test the probabilistic assumptions (falsely presented as facts) underlying the idiotic claims that functional proteins are improbable than the entire ID movement combined. I did this in the course of doing something completely different (not evolutionary biology).
Nothing about ID is considered to be a theory by honest scientists who use the term correctly and consistently.

ID proponents have their very own journal that has not put out an issue in over two years. I'll bet that's not going to be mentioned in the movie, right?
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In that case, you'd have to disqualify anything coming out of Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers who aren't afraid to conflate their religious or areligious beliefs with their science.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin, you ignorant goof, we consider evidence. You don't produce any.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It all comes down to the arguments and the evidence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No. Arguments aren't science without any effort to produce new evidence. Spinning existing evidence only illustrates the impotence and dishonesty of the ID movement, as well as their fear of testing a single ID hypothesis.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...I'd rather disentagle the scientific questions from the religious questions so that the real question becomes, can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The dishonesty of your question is compound. The real question is, HAS the ID movement produced ANY evidence, much less compelling evidence, to back up their NOTION?

The answer is no. Arguments don't matter without evidence, and hypotheses aren't considered theories unless there is a large body of evidence that was correctly predicted.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think the jury is still out on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think that you are laboring under the weight of the goalposts that you are frantically moving.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But that doesn't mean they shouldn't get a chance to try.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They've had every chance to try, and they aren't trying. In fact, for every one of the handful of trained scientists with a track record of productivity, they QUIT TRYING.

Go back and look at the stark contrasts with Stan Prusiner. He was successful. Your guys are pathetic failures.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Virtually all of the IDers I met--and I met a lot--appeared to be sincere, hard-working scientists just like their peers.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How can they possibly appear to be hard-working when they don't produce any data, Kevin?
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Religious agendas aside, I really do believe that people like Sternberg, Dembski, Marks, Berlinski, Gonzalez, Behe, etc are sincerely seeking the truth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If they were seeking the truth, they would test their hypotheses. They don't, so they aren't.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Rather than shove any particular theory down their throats, I hope to teach them how to think critically about the various options that are out there and then make up their own minds.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You mean misrepresenting hypotheses as theories and ignoring the most important evidence--that produced by testing predictions of a hypothesis? That seems dishonest to me.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But I also want to encourage them that life is about constant change and growth, so they should be wary of locking themselves down to one position for all of time.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The essence of science is that all conclusions are provisional, and our duty is to attempt to falsify our conclusions. The ID movement rejects the very basis of science and is afraid to attempt to falsify even the least important ID hypothesis.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,17:37

From a < positive > review of Expelled

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In the movie there are somber moments, as when Stein visits World War II death camps and traces the Nazi philosophy back to the godless Darwinian world in which fitness must prevail and everything is permitted
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Documentary or propaganda?  YOU decide!

And when reading Darwin or modern evolution I seem to have overlooked the part about "fitness must prevail and everything is permitted"  Can someone point that page out to me?

This all reminds me of my favorite Philip E Johnson quote:

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The objective [of the Wedge Strategy] is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yup, all science so far!

edit:

My new favorite Ben Stein quote:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"I'm hoping that (schools) will at least allow in science classes someone to say, 'What if it's not Darwinism, but what if there was some intelligent designer who created the universe?' "

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So...Ben does want intelligent design creationism in the classroom after all.  What a total fruit cake.  When did ben Stein become an idiot?  I used to like him!

Note to Ben - Darwinism/ToE has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE YOU DUMB ASS!  NOTHING!  BIOLOGY IS NOT THE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSE YOU UNEDUCATED CRACKPOT!

Kevin, you wonder why everyone is so hostile to Expelled.  Well that Ben Stein quote sums it up nicely.

Good god, Kevin, could you please explain to Ben that the creation of the universe is not related to the theory of evolution, natural selection, or Charles Darwin.  If nothing else man would you please explain this to Ben?  He'd look far less stupid when he quits confusing darwinism/ToE with the creation of the universe.

This is the kind of shit that pisses people off, Kevin. Ben is clearly ignorant about biology and is perpetuating that ignorance with this propaganda film that only Leni Riefenstahl could appreciate.

Ben looks totally retarded everytime he says stuff like this.  Did ben even graduate from college?  Did he take ANY biology classes?  I mean, biology is not cosmology.  Darwin never theorized on the creation of the universe, Kevin.  

You've got to get Ben a new biology tutor and the one he now has should be fired.

Unless of course....Ben knows better and it lying.  Does Ben not know better, Kevin, or is he lying?  You of all people know the answer.  Is Ben miselading people on purpose, or does he not know the difference between cosmology and biology?  Please shed some light on the subject.

So here we have Ben Stein who does not know the difference between biology and cosmology, mistakenly portraying Darwin as having theorized on the creation of the universe..And he's advocating we teach this crap in science class.  And when we say no way jose you whine about persecution and being silenced.  

How can you defend this rube, Kevin?

Oh and if I sound pissed off it's because I am pissed off.  The Texas school board rubes are using the same kind of nonsense arguments Ben is spouting to justify teaching this shit in public science class in Texas.  In fact the head of our state School board is on record telling his church they do not call it creationism, they call it "intelligent design" so it sounds more like science.  He's yet another liar for jesus from the intelligent design creationism camp with a dishonest agenda.  But you said not to judge a theory by the agenda.  I guess you missed the the note - THEY HAVE NO THEORY IT IS ALL AN AGENDA.  

I will have to put my kids in private school if they succeed, I am not going to give my kids a retarded education, the kind of education Ben Stein seems to be advocating.  

So yeah, as a father of two I am way pissed off.
Posted by: Richard Simons on Feb. 26 2008,18:01

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)
can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Before they do that they need to come up with a theory. If they ever manage to do that, then there will be something to test and scientists will start to be interested.

While interviewing for the film, did you ever ask anyone what would constitute evidence that ID is not correct? That is an essential requirement for any notion to be considered a hypothesis.
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on Feb. 26 2008,18:08

Quote (Richard Simons @ Feb. 26 2008,18:01)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)
can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Before they do that they need to come up with a theory. If they ever manage to do that, then there will be something to test and scientists will start to be interested.

While interviewing for the film, did you ever ask anyone what would constitute evidence that ID is not correct? That is an essential requirement for any notion to be considered a hypothesis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


About half of scientists are religious.  They certainly wouldn't care if a scientific theory was religiously motivated.  Maybe the reason that those scientists won't accept ID is because it is not a theory, plain and simple.
Posted by: elucifuga on Feb. 26 2008,18:19

The problem with supposed 'exposures' such as 'Expelled' is that we do not have the other side of any of the examples.  We have only a one-sided view.  Sure, sometimes there are no extenuating circumstances that show actions against persons were warranted, but often there are real, justifiable reasons for personnel actions, etc.

For example, after about 45 years in higher education I have been involved in and know about quite a few cases where faculty members were denied  tenure.  In quite a few cases the person receiving the adverse action claimed discrimination (racial, sexual, political, etc.,) when there were absolutely no grounds for such claims.  In each of those cases the complaints were found to be not true upon appeal.

How many of the cases in 'Expelled' are like that?  We will not know, since the opposite side will likely not be revealed. The real truth is not what the producers of this film seek.
Posted by: ERV on Feb. 26 2008,18:22

Quote (rpenner @ Feb. 26 2008,16:50)
Why is this movie taking so long from the appearantly completed version being shown around the country to it's rumored April theatrical release? Are you waiting for original animation...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL!

New guy wins.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 26 2008,18:38

The bottom line, Kevin, is that nobody has been expelled and your entire movie is a lie.

Oh, what a shock!  Creationists produce a lie.

Sternberg expelled?  No, he is a cheat.
Dembski expelled?  No, poor sport.
Wells expelled?  No, employed.
Behe expelled?  No, full professor with tenure.
Crocker expelled?  No, contract expired, currently employed.
Gonzalez expelled?  No, contract expired.  (in May, 2008)
Luskin expelled?  No, employed lawyer for the DI.
Robert Marks expelled?  No, tenured professor at Baylor.

Hundreds and hundreds of working scientists expelled?  Name one.

So, Kevin, please explain the premise of Expelled?  Based on the trailer, website, blog and your comments I just can't figure it out.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 26 2008,18:46

C'mon Doc, you know what it is.

Darwinismus bad.  Materialismus culture of death.

and stuff like that.
Posted by: J-Dog on Feb. 26 2008,18:57

Quote (Doc Bill @ Feb. 26 2008,18:38)
The bottom line, Kevin, is that nobody has been expelled and your entire movie is a lie.

Oh, what a shock!  Creationists produce a lie.

Sternberg expelled?  No, he is a cheat.
Dembski expelled?  No, poor sport.
Wells expelled?  No, employed.
Behe expelled?  No, full professor with tenure.
Crocker expelled?  No, contract expired, currently employed.
Gonzalez expelled?  No, contract expired.  (in May, 2008)
Luskin expelled?  No, employed lawyer for the DI.
Robert Marks expelled?  No, tenured professor at Baylor.

Hundreds and hundreds of working scientists expelled?  Name one.

So, Kevin, please explain the premise of Expelled?  Based on the trailer, website, blog and your comments I just can't figure it out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Doc Bill - Kevin just called me on the New Super Secret ID Phone and has an answer for you:

The premise of Expelled, is that the "stars" of the movie, like Sternberg, Gonzalez et al, have been "expelled" from the everyday world of happy, healthy, sane, normal people, and forced to associate themselves with a pig-ignorant and foolish premise that the "Designer" (Not the Christian God wink, wink) created us, and "Darwinism" is wrong.

As all normal healthy, happy sane people all know, this is total lunacy, and hence, the featured performers in Expelled The Movie all feel like martyers, and "expelled" from a normal human existence.

HTH :)
Posted by: elucifuga on Feb. 26 2008,19:03

Perhaps it is worth repeating just how Sternberg was 'expelled.'  He was NOT!  He was NOT an employee of the Natural History Museum, but was given space and access to the collections for his research.  HE STILL HAS THOSE..  His keys were NOT taken from him, only a master key that he (and some others) were not permitted to have; all those that were unauthorized had to give up the master keys.  

He complains that he was 'mistreated' by comments from colleagues at the Museum.  That may be true, but his unethical behavior as an Associate Editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington was the not unexpected cause of the criticisms from other scientists. He brought those upon himself by his attempts at the surreptitious approval of a paper that would not have been published, if the accepted editorial process of the journal had been followed. These facts are ignored in the 'defense' of Sternberg by the ID and other creationists. He is no hero.
Posted by: rpenner on Feb. 26 2008,19:08

Quote (ERV @ Feb. 26 2008,18:22)
New guy wins.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are too kind.

I spend most of my time on the completely crank-polluted < http://forum.physorg.com/ > and trying to code up the interface to my personal anti-woo site, but you might have spotted me on < Science Blogs >.
Posted by: Ogee on Feb. 26 2008,19:14

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:04)
Religious agendas aside, I really do believe that people like Sternberg, Dembski, Marks, Berlinski, Gonzalez, Behe, etc are sincerely seeking the truth. That may be difficult for some of you to accept
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmmm, yeah.. that would be because it is demonstrably untrue.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 26 2008,20:01

Quote (Ogee @ Feb. 26 2008,18:14)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:04)
Religious agendas aside, I really do believe that people like Sternberg, Dembski, Marks, Berlinski, Gonzalez, Behe, etc are sincerely seeking the truth. That may be difficult for some of you to accept
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmmm, yeah.. that would be because it is demonstrably untrue.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I honestly don’t think Ben Stein is a liar. Not intentionally, anyway. I honestly think he has a blind spot, because something else is going on here.

In looking over what I wrote above I’ve come to realize that Americans are still haunted by Adolf Hitler in some profound way that I don’t understand. My parents were the generation that defeated Hitler, and yet, Godwin’s Law notwithstanding, the ID side in this debate more than 60 years after America’s triumph see Hitler’s fingerprint in what is happening today, see his long shadow darken our children’s future, and claim resistance to his tyranny for their own. Has Hitler really done such a number on us? Or rather, have Americans failed to confront some heretofore unacknowledged shadow, and instead (especially the anti-evolution rhetoricians) invoke him to scare schoolchildren about evolution? (Ironically they don’t seem to be too alarmed about neo-Nazis in America.)

Perhaps it really does have something to do with the inexplicable resurgence of anti-Semitism, which reappears like acne, loathsomely, irrationally, sparking Hitchens’ ire and mine, and certainly Stein’s, and being taken up as a moral cause by evangelicals as they have (but merely to fit with their own agenda) adopted Zionism. Or perhaps it is something else.

I think this fear on the part of the ID folks is sincere, despite the antics that we have seen from them. This fear is what motivates them, and they do intend good, and that is why they lie. They tell what they think is a small lie for a moral purpose. They fear societal collapse. That fascism is anathema to most Americas whether Democrat or Republican is a truth that they do not trust.

Why they cannot seem to trust Americans more is beyond me. Certainly I was as moved as Stein was by his visits to Nazi death camps by my visits to the Holocaust memorial behind Notre Dame in Paris and to the plaque, which I sought out, naming the French Resistance martyrs in the Church in the St. Germain des Pres (one of the war heroes was an atheist and a surrealist poet, Robert Desnos, who died in one of those Nazi death camps).

Atheists died fighting Hitler. Artists and “hedonists” were as brave as Christians and Jews in repelling the Third Reich. They fought shoulder-to-shoulder. This isn’t about atheism. This isn’t about Hitler.

This isn’t even about evolution, really. Something else is going on here, and we need to find out what it is – but unfortunately, Stein’s lack of insight into himself hardly gets at what the real fear is. It will be left to others to find out. It is left to you, Kevin, or to me, or to someone else, but someone will find out, but not by continuing Stein’s silly “is not” to science’s “is.” This is not about science.
Posted by: Paul Flocken on Feb. 26 2008,20:07

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Feb. 26 2008,17:37)
From a < positive > review of Expelled

         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In the movie there are somber moments, as when Stein visits World War II death camps and traces the Nazi philosophy back to the godless Darwinian world in which fitness must prevail and everything is permitted
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Documentary or propaganda?  YOU decide!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Plagiarizing Bronowski > won't earn any points for his tripe from people who know better.  I didn't think I could have been anymore disgusted by stein than I already was from what little I knew about him.  I was wrong.
Posted by: Robert S. on Feb. 26 2008,20:07

"My response is that you can't disqualify a theory merely b/c it is religiously motivated."

But you do know that Intelligent Design is not a theory, right?
Because it is not testable, verifiable nor repeatable. Doesn't qualify.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Feb. 26 2008,21:00

Quote (Robert S. @ Feb. 26 2008,20:07)
"My response is that you can't disqualify a theory merely b/c it is religiously motivated."

But you do know that Intelligent Design is not a theory, right?
Because it is not testable, verifiable nor repeatable. Doesn't qualify.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't think they get that part.  I don't think they get any of the science part, otherwise they'd be harping on the pseudoscientists and not the imaginary "big science"

Kevin has a link on his website that says something like "this guy gets it" and it links to an article claiming ID is not creationism.

I don't think they get it and I don't think they care.  They're too busy playing david against an imaginary goliath.
Posted by: Annyday on Feb. 26 2008,21:09

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 26 2008,17:01)
Annyday:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Wesley's made specific points curtly, too.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Curt, but no "personal attacks". Everything I've said or asked Kevin M. was directed at his claims, not his person.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes. Being a fan of brevity, I forgot that "curt" has negative connotations.

Also: Hello, Pharyngulites.

Edited for ugly sentence structure.
Posted by: stevestory on Feb. 26 2008,23:00

Quote (Annyday @ Feb. 26 2008,16:14)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,14:30)
If anyone wants to approach me with a formal interview request for an established publication or web site, I'm all for it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


By the way, if you do approach Kevin for a formal interview, take a page from Expelled and call yourself a different name and tell Kev it's for a different project.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 26 2008,23:02

Quote (stevestory @ Feb. 26 2008,23:00)
Quote (Annyday @ Feb. 26 2008,16:14)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,14:30)
If anyone wants to approach me with a formal interview request for an established publication or web site, I'm all for it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


By the way, if you do approach Kevin for a formal interview, take a page from Expelled and call yourself a different name and tell Kev it's for a different project.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Zing!

Hi Kevin. I'm making a film called "crossroads"...
Posted by: stevestory on Feb. 27 2008,02:20

Kevin should get hot on the case of why the ID scientists were EXPELLED from < their own ID journal >. I mean, they must have been expelled, right, no doubt by some horrible Darwinist. Now that's a hell of a conspiracy we're running, infiltrating their own journal and rejecting all their revolutionary research.
Posted by: stevestory on Feb. 27 2008,02:46

Of course that wouldn't work. We can actually see, on ISCID, all the revolutionary ID papers that were submitted for publication in PCID. Let's look at all the ID research submitted in 2007 to the premier ID journal:

< http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-forum-f-10.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Icon 1 posted 01. February 2007 17:03      Profile for Moderator   Email Moderator   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post  The Big Bad Wolf, Theism and the Foundations of Intelligent Design:
A Review of Richard Dawkins’, The God Delusion, (Bantam, 2006)

by Peter S. Williams (MA, MPhil)

Summary - The man described as ‘Darwin’s Rotweiller’ (by supporter Charles Simonyi) has evolved to metaphorically resemble the big bad wolf of nursery rhyme fame, and he is on a mission to liberate the pigs (the analogy is mine, not his) from what he sees as their prisons of straw. Indeed, Zoologist Richard Dawkins is so intent on blowing down straw houses that he not only acknowledges the existence of firm foundations that might be used for permanent constructions, but he fails to notice that some of the pigs are building on just such a wolf-endorsed foundation with bricks and mortar more than adequate to the task of withstanding all his huffing and puffing. Dawkins, who is Oxford University’s Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, has been described as ‘materialistic, reductionist and overtly anti-religious.’ Nevertheless, The God Delusion – which is descended by design from Dawkins’ two-part television series The Root of all Evil? - is Dawkins’ first book to make a direct attack upon religion (especially theism, and most especially Christianity): ‘If this books works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.’
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



A book review.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
posted 02. February 2007 13:57      Profile for Moderator   Email Moderator   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post  String Origins
by Richard Atkins

Abstract: It is shown that the string concept results naturally from considerations of gravitation. This paper describes a derivation of linearized general relativity based upon the hypotheses of special covariance and the existence of a gravitational potential. The gravitational field possesses gauge invariance given by a second-order covariant derivative defining an associated differential geometry. The concepts of parallelism and parallel transport lead to string-like constructions.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Some physics notions with no mention of ID.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
posted 07. March 2007 15:49      Profile for Moderator   Email Moderator   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post  The Evolutionary Gospel According to Sean B. Carroll
A Review of Sean B. Carroll’s The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution (W.W. Norton, 2006).

by Casey Luskin

Summary: Sean B. Carroll’s book The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution makes large promises but fails to delivers. He claims that science will remove “any doubt” about evolution, and he hopes his scare-tactics about a coming environmental apocalypse will convince people to just accept evolution and save the planet. As a conservationist myself, I don’t need, as Carroll taunts me, to “accept evolution or you won’t ‘think at all’” in order to understand the importance of conserving our natural resources.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Another book review, and probably an awful one, considering the author.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
posted 21. May 2007 11:08      Profile for Moderator   Email Moderator   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post  Objects of Thought, Thoughts of Objects?
From object-orientation to Process Physics

by Jeroen B.J. van Dijk

Abstract: To resolve the current impasse between realistic and anti-realistic thought, I‘d like to explore their latent neurocognitive origin. Since our brain’s self-referential neurocognitive mechanisms generate neural and mental patterns that ultimately pose as object-oriented units, they predetermine our mental modelling of reality, thus usually making us firmly believe that reality is ultimately object-based. This firm belief is the actual instigator of the strict, but imaginary boundary between physical and mental reality. By discussing self-organizing selectionist threshold models of complex systems, I will illustrate an alternative for the traditional object-oriented realistic and antirealistic schemes: process-oriented reflexive monism, which facilitates a framework for consciousness based on complexity science and is compatible with the recently developed pioneering paradigm of Process Physics. Moreover, an evolutionary account of an autopoietic (i.e., self-creating) natural universe is presented which is fully compatible with the pioneering paradigm of Process Physics.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And some jargony bullshit.

That's it. That's all the revolutionary ID research submitted to the premiere ID journal in 2007, and not even published.

Kevin, I know this might be hard to understand, but do you realize that scientific revolutionaries are supposed to at least do some science? Do you understand that's kind of an important part of a scientific revolution? Possibly an even more important one than press releases and propaganda movies?
Posted by: stevestory on Feb. 27 2008,03:52



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


-"Father of Intelligent Design" Philip Johnson, Spring 2006

Number of ID 'papers' published in the ID journal since Spring 2006: 0

Number of ID 'textbooks' his fellow IDers have written for the educational world anyway since Spring 2006: 2

Number of ID 'documentaries' Kevin helped write for the educational world anyway since Spring 2006: 1


Posted by: CeilingCat on Feb. 27 2008,04:09

Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,16:46)
Is this P-A-R-O-D-Y?

< http://www.benstein4president.com/ >

(from "expelled"). Is he connect with reality at *any* level?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Short answer: No.  Long answer: He might get his chance yet, what with McCain showing all the signs of going into a death spiral ... surely Ben would make a good vice presidential choice.  His battyness on evolution complements McCain's battyness on Iraq quite nicely.  Besides, America is obviously pining for a former Nixon speech writer in the White House or at least in the Naval Observatory grounds.
Posted by: Cubist on Feb. 27 2008,04:45

One question (well, maybe two questions, since it's a compound) for Kevin:
What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested with the scientific method?
Now, I wouldn't really expect you to know the answer to that, Kevin. The trouble is, nobody else in the ID movement seems to know, either! "There's a Designer -- but we can't say anything about Him. Or Her, or It, or Them, as the case may be. And we can't say anything about what He did, or why He did it, or what tools He used to do whatever the heck He did, or when He did it. In fact, we can't really say much of anything about the Intelligent Designer, other than the fact that He is both 'Intelligent' and a 'Designer'. We do know that His Designs are wonderfully good -- except, of course, for those of His Designs which appear to be lousy, which only go to show that we can't actually tell whether or not His Designs are good."
Now, you may object that ID isn't as gee-I-dunno-vacuous as I've painted it up to be here; you may even want to argue that I've horribly misrepresented ID. Well, maybe I have -- but if I have, indeed, misrepresented ID... how have I misrepresented it?
For instance: Does ID say anything about how the Designer did His thing? If it doesn't, then "we can't say anything about how the Designer did it" is an accurate portrayal of ID. And the same goes for the rest of my portrayal of ID.
So, once again:
What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested with the scientific method?
If ID ain't got that, it ain't got nothing whatsoever.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 27 2008,06:57

That's got a < history >.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 27 2008,08:46



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The trouble is, nobody else in the ID movement seems to know, either!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Cubist, I'd say that they do know.  And I'd agree with them partway (separating for the moment the messengers).  If you take what some of these demonstrated liars say at face value, their claim is that sometimes we can analytically deduce some property of some features of some objects as being 'designed' by some agents.  That at least is an objective claim, and one that is testable.   And surely it is nothing new, as it's the same logic that bears use to find yaller jacket nests.  This is not controversial, and it never has been (except that even at this basal level, they have never never substantiated even the mildest form of this claim that design is detectable).

Even at this first approximation, however, it's troubling to recognize the fact that many of the definitions of these terms and concepts IDists use to communicate this notion are, at the very least, not used in any sort of vernacular sense and in some ways completely opposite to other working prior definitions.  They made up a tard-language to obfuscate some of the fuzzy logic and quivering mathematics.  

First sleight of hand:   least as far as I can peer through the murky pool of thick gloppy* tard that has obscured the mechanics of this logical system, some agents are defined as 'intelligent', which then surreptitiously imports secondary meaning from all sorts of feel-good affirmation self-esteem cultural and metaphysical legacies.  One of those in particular is the ontological argument from intelligence and the eternal regress of where did intelligence come from.  This, we know, is tard, and has been properly recognized as self delusional wish fulfillment at least since Kant and undoubtedly longer.  It is an intractable morass resulting from improperly defined concepts**.

Even if I might be more charitable and grant that ID can legitimately deduce whether or not an object is designed, and while I am being charitable I will grant their definitions of all those terms.  Ok, you proved*** something is designed.  Now what?

Watch closely.

This means that anything possessing those characters that keyed out to 'design' is also 'designed'.  This could be peanut butter sandwiches, or scratches on a rock, or the precise position of the earth in relation to the moon sun galaxy etc, the blagella on a fracterium, the way that blood clots to the way that blood splatters from chicken gut oracles.  

Who designed those things?  

Jeeeesus.  

It can be hard to see where the science stopped and the stupid began.  Thank Mithra for folks like Wes and Jeff Shalitt and PZ and Ken Miller and Barbara Forrest and Nick Matzke and ERV and Lenny Flank.  They have exposed the greased palm groping underneath the skirts of reason.

What is amazing is that even though it's plain that ID is a non-starter from science, Kevin, your objective is to push for it anyway.  Whether or not it is science, it validates your beliefs and by your manichean logic anything that does not affirm your beliefs is attacking your beliefs and as a free citizen with religious freedom you have the right to have your beliefs affirmed in the public square and not not-validated in the public square hence the big stink about academic freedom and religious freedom when really all that it has ever been is the freedom to be as stupid as you can possibly be.  That, and follow a prescribed agenda by political and religious figures and be good little brownshirts.  Which are you, Kevin?  Are you a leader or a follower in this religious Scientific Renewal Revolution?

*  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?  Kev did you interview Galapagos Finch for Crossroads Expelled?  Do tell.

**  Formal logic does not work with propositions forged from jello and peppered with leavings from the Sandman.

***  Proved.  That is another huge problem with all of the ID issue.  Since IC and the EF are an argument from gaps, and science always leaves the door open to disproof, you and your fellow travelers have managed to squeeze a child's foot into the door.  Shame on you.  

Bad Tard, Kevin.  Bad Bad Bad Bad Bad Bad Bad Tard.  You seem like a nice guy.  Why do this?
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 27 2008,09:48

Kevin pulled an Ftk and blew long ago. He won't be back. *yawn*

They've had a < security breech [sic] >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
We already had our first security breech [sic] and are asking YOU now for your support to stand up for EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Hosted by Ben Stein, EXPELLED contains a critical message at a critical time. As an underdog in Hollywood right now, we need your support.

Recently Robert Moore, a film critic from The Orlando Sentinel pretending to be a minister, snuck into a private screening, did not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and criticized the film the next day in his article.

Moore compared Stein, who is Jewish, to Holocaust Deniers [as I did on this thread] and charge[d] [Jesus, can these people spell?] that Stein's linking of Darwinism to the Holocaust was "despicable." Stein states, "The only thing I find despicable is when reporters sneak into screenings by pretending to be ministers. This is a new low even for liberal reporters."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, how dare we film reviewers answer e-mail invitations. Teh idea. :p
Posted by: Paul Flocken on Feb. 27 2008,09:56

When marketers want to publicize movies they want the public to go see, don't they usually, well, invite critics?  When I hear that a movie was not screened it always means they have a dud on their hands and they dont want people to know it.  I wonder how many non-disclosure agreements Lucas forced people to sign before watching the original StarWars?
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 27 2008,09:59

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 27 2008,09:48)
Kevin pulled an Ftk and blew long ago. He won't be back. *yawn*

They've had a < security breech [sic] >.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
We already had our first security breech [sic] and are asking YOU now for your support to stand up for EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Hosted by Ben Stein, EXPELLED contains a critical message at a critical time. As an underdog in Hollywood right now, we need your support.

Recently Robert Moore, a film critic from The Orlando Sentinel pretending to be a minister, snuck into a private screening, did not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and criticized the film the next day in his article.

Moore compared Stein, who is Jewish, to Holocaust Deniers [as I did on this thread] and charge[d] [Jesus, can these people spell?] that Stein's linking of Darwinism to the Holocaust was "despicable." Stein states, "The only thing I find despicable is when reporters sneak into screenings by pretending to be ministers. This is a new low even for liberal reporters."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, how dare we film reviewers answer e-mail invitations. Teh idea. :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They are targeting ministers and making them sign NDAs?

All science so far!!!

Odious tards.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 27 2008,09:59

Paul, they know this P.O.S. is a dud.  They need to spin that the Darwinismus is why it is a dud, not that it is a piece of crap written by washed up doublethinkers like Kevin.

No-lose, really.  Somehow it is a hit (who knows, all kinds of dumb shit at the box office), yayyy ID.  Timely message, etc.  More likely it flunks, it is because it was expelled by the E.A.C.  Brilliant!

Kevin, have you read Teh Prince?
Posted by: factician on Feb. 27 2008,10:30

[quote=Albatrossity2,Feb. 26 2008,17:17]
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)

On this board, there are several card-carrying practicing biologists, including Wesley Elsberry, with whom you have already interacted. It won't hurt to listen to some of what they have to say, rather than claim persecution.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*holds up card*

Feel free to contact me if you like.  I'm a card-carrying, publishing, experimenting scientist.

edited to add:  Kevin?  Kevin?  Bueller?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,10:40

Okay, here’s a question with an unfortunately long lead-up: The way I see it, one reason ID is so controversial is that it argues mind precedes matter in the form of a creative intelligence; whereas classic evolutionary theory says that mind is a product of matter. Intelligence is one of the last things to appear on the scene.

But when confronted with the question of how life began, many evolutionary theorists allow that perhaps Panspermia had something to do with it. This theory is broadly accepted as a scientific possibility even though it also posits that mind came first and matter—at least the highly organized arrangements of matter we call living things—second.

So my question is, why is one theory so controversial and the other not? What if you stripped away all of the religious and political baggage from ID? Would the theory be more acceptible then? And wouldn’t ID and Panspermia become nearly indistinguishable? After all, both argue that perhaps the best possibility for explaining how life began is a higher intelligence that seeded it on earth. We can argue all day about what the nature of that intelligence really is. But that’s beside the main point: Do we need intelligence to explain things like the origin and diversity of life or not? Classical evolution says no, ID and Panspermia say yes. Two different answers to the same question. I fail to see how one answer is scientific and the other not. That being said, I’m sure someone is going to go off about the scientific method and how the IDers aren’t serious scientists, that they’re a bunch of liars, etc. But once again, that’s beside the point. Never mind their methods or their ethics. Is the question the ID community is asking scientific or not?
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 27 2008,10:44

What's evolution got to do with how life began, exactly?
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 27 2008,10:46

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
So my question is, why is one theory so controversial and the other not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


One "theory" is useful.

The other "theory" has not proved it's usefulness and as such cannot legitimately be called a theory. There are several steps below "theory".

If there is a "theory" of ID, just like there is a "theory" of gravity what URL does it live at please and what predictions does it make?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,10:46

You're dodging the question, oldman. You know as well as I do that evolutionary theory is supposed to explain the origin AND diversity of life. How about attempting a serious answer?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,10:48

How has the theory of Panspermia proved its usefulness?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,10:49

BTW: You're also shifting your ground. First you said evolutionary theory has nothing to say about the origin of life and then you turn around and say the theory of Panspermia is useful. Which is it?
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Feb. 27 2008,10:50

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
So my question is, why is one theory so controversial and the other not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Because one is consistent with current evidence and the other is evidence-free and seems to be untestable.

I'll note that you evaded the real question by asking another. That is a hallmark of the ID crowd, and will never lead to a genuinely useful discussion. So here's the question again.

What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested with the scientific method?
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 27 2008,10:50

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:49)
BTW: You're also shifting your ground. First you said evolutionary theory has nothing to say about the origin of life and then you turn around and say the theory of Panspermia is useful. Which is it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Apologies. My mistake. Thought we were talking about ID and evolution.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 27 2008,10:53

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:46)
You're dodging the question, oldman. You know as well as I do that evolutionary theory is supposed to explain the origin AND diversity of life. How about attempting a serious answer?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is it supposed to?
I always understood them to be 2 separate things.

Knowing the exact origin of life I don't believe is a prerequisite to evolution being able to explain diversity.

What difference do you think it would make to current evolutionary theory if we discovered that

a) Life arose via natural processes
b) Life was planted here by aliens that themselves arose via natural processes
c) Life was planted by a god.

What would change in the current understanding?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,10:54

Albatrossity: How is Panspermia consistent with the evidence? And exactly what evidence are you talking about? As for what the real question is, I'm accepting Mr. Christopher's invitation to ask questions today rather than answering them. As for your question, if you were really serious about finding an answer, a five-minute web search would give you more than enough information.

Oldman: You're dodging the question again. Is the question the IDers are asking scientific or not?
Posted by: carlsonjok on Feb. 27 2008,10:56

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:48)
How has the theory of Panspermia proved its usefulness?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They aren't saying that.

Oldman and Albie are assuming the comparison is between evolution and ID.

You are assuming the comparison is between panspermia and ID.

You are talking about different things.
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 27 2008,10:57

Panspermia does not exclude abiogenesis.
Posted by: Joy on Feb. 27 2008,11:03

This circus reminds me of what happened when Bobcat Goldthwait's "Shakes the Clown" was released. The COA, ISCA, SECA and all real or carpet clowns they could possibly enlist (yes, including the Shriners) set out to march in protest (in full dress dread complete with rubber noses and size 47 shoes). Seems they didn't much like the movie's sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll themes.

Which of course served to bring mass numbers of regular citizens and all their children right to the very door of the theater showing "Shakes," so they could watch the funny clown protest parade. Then most of 'em went on in to see the movie. Which, in case anyone missed it, is probably the funniest clown movie ever made. Just something about drunk, stoned, off-duty clowns stumbling out of the bar at 2 a.m. and piling into polka-dotted mini cars to drive home... or an impromptu mad rumble in the park, clowns vs. mimes ["Say uncle!"]...

Through it all (including Bad to the Bone clown make-over in a gas station bathroom on the way to the gig after a bizarre one night stand with Florence Henderson), Shakes proves again and again that he's the best clown ever. The movie did quite well at the box office thanks to all the free publicity the clown associations donated to the cause.

For "Expelled" I can't decide whether Stein's a Goldthwait-level marketing genius playing you all for free promo, or if you're on the kickback payroll. Either way it strikes me quite humorous. A whole heck of a lot more predictable (thus mostly ignore-able) than the "Shakes" spectacle, but semi-amusing in places just the same.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,11:03

"Is it supposed to?
I always understood them to be 2 separate things." (Sorry, haven't figured out the quote function yet.)

From reading people like Dawkins, Dennett, Stenger, Darwin, and others, evolutionary theory most definitely includes the origin and diversity of life.

I think you ask a very telling question here: What difference does the origin of life make to current evolutionary theory about the diversity of life? (I'm summarizing.) There are two ways to answer that question. First, if it makes no difference (as you seem to be saying) then what's all the fuss about ID? Second, I think it would make a huge difference. If we look at a cancer cell as nothing but a highly successful Darwinian accident, that assumption will affect how we attempt to combat it. But if we can assume it was designed, we can reverse-engineer the cancer cell and potentially develop much more effective ways of defeating it's internal programming. Not the best example, perhaps, b/c I'm sure someone is going to turn around and say, "How could a good God design cancer?" But that's a philosophical question about the nature of God, not a scientific one.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 27 2008,11:03

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:54)
Oldman: You're dodging the question again. Is the question the IDers are asking scientific or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The question might be scientific.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Do we need intelligence to explain things like the origin and diversity of life or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Their methodology is not.

I personally don't believe intelligence is required for self-replicators to arise. There are a number of reasons for this which I'll be happy to go into, from a non-expert perspective. However, you have experts here so ask away.

Could you tell me what scientific methodology IDers are using to determine if intelligence was required for origin of life? I did not realize there was any ID researching going on into the origin of life. Could you please supply details?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 27 2008,11:04



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You know as well as I do that evolutionary theory is supposed to explain the origin AND diversity of life. How about attempting a serious answer?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yes, I know this as well as you do.  And I know that it is false.  And so do you.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The way I see it, one reason ID is so controversial is that it argues mind precedes matter in the form of a creative intelligence; whereas classic evolutionary theory says that mind is a product of matter. Intelligence is one of the last things to appear on the scene.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is where the science stops.  Nowhere does ID argue this.  ID, as a legitimate scientific enterprise I have outlined above* does not mention this at all.  News Flash:  NEITHER DOES CLASSIC EVOLUTIONARY THEORY.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
classic evolutionary theory says that mind is a product of matter
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Putting 'classic' in front of it doesn't mean it is any less a steaming pile of bullshit.  That is a classic obfuscation technique from creationists and other rhetorical artistes.

You might argue that this is a consequence of the predictions of some people's metaphysical opinions (ie eliminative materialism, and many variants) but they would freely agree with you.  And box your ears for reifying definitions.  

After all, it's your own fault for erecting some mystical concept that cannot be investigated (like mind).  You're just upset because no one is seeing your invisible friend and they are asking where did the little bastard go.

It is typical for small minds to expect a simple answer for everything.  'Intelligently designed is one such answer.  So is 'it's all random meaningless chance'. Your homework:  find someone on the good guys team who actually says this**.

Panspermia to hitler to stalin to academic freedom.  But NEVER THE SCIENCE.

*  Note that this means I agree that a form of design detection could be in principle accomplished.  But has not.  Just hand waving from the agenda-tards.

**  good luck.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 27 2008,11:05

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:03)
But if we can assume it was designed, we can reverse-engineer the cancer cell and potentially develop much more effective ways of defeating it's internal programming.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Very well. Then do you have any examples of how presuming design helps understand how do defeat such things?

Or are we still only at the talking about stage? No lab work as yet? If not, how long will it take?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,11:05

I'm sorry these guys are confused, Carlsonjok, but if you go back to my original question, what I'm asking is, why is panspermia considered scientific and ID is not. I think I made it pretty clear there.
Posted by: ppb on Feb. 27 2008,11:06

Maybe I'm missing something, but panspermia does not say intelligence came before life.  It just posits that life may have started elsewhere first, like Mars, and come here via meteor, or comets, or some other means.  You can test these ideas by looking at meteorites or studying the chemistry on other bodies in the solar system.  

How do you test ID?  No one seems to be able to define it in a way that can be tested.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,11:08

Erasmus: You can't be serious in saying evolutionary theory has nothing to say about the origin of life. Have you ever read "The Blind Watchmaker?" "Darwin's Dangerous Idea"?
Posted by: carlsonjok on Feb. 27 2008,11:10

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:05)
I'm sorry these guys are confused, Carlsonjok, but if you go back to my original question, what I'm asking is, why is panspermia considered scientific and ID is not. I think I made it pretty clear there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, it is a minor point with fault lying on both sides of the equation.  But never mind that.  To the extent that panspermia is a legitimate scientific question (and I am not necessarily convinced it is*), it would be so because it makes no untestable appeals to supernatural intervention.

* But what do I know? I am neither a professional scientist nor an atheist.  YMMV.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,11:10

oldman said, "Very well. Then do you have any examples of how presuming design helps understand how do defeat such things? Or are we still only at the talking about stage? No lab work as yet? If not, how long will it take?"

I think this is a good question. Unfortunately, I'm not a scientist so I can't wheel out a stack of journal articles or anything like that. But I can say that several scientists we talked to in our film--especially cell biologists--are finding the assumption of design quite useful in their work. And I don't mean useful in terms of creating a grand explanation for life. Merely in their day to day lab work.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,11:13

Carlsonjok said, "To the extent that panspermia is a legitimate scientific question (and I am not necessarily convinced it is*), it would be so because it makes no untestable appeals to supernatural intervention."

But neither does ID!

That's not to say people don't hijack the theory to extrapolate to some sort of supernatural intelligence. But as I said in the lead up to my question, the nature of the supposed intelligence is beside the point. The question is, do we need to posit some sort of intelligence for the origin of life or not? I've yet to hear anyone attempt a full frontal answer to that question.
Posted by: LawnBoy on Feb. 27 2008,11:18

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:05)
"why is panspermia considered scientific and ID is not"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There are a couple of things here.

1) Your premise is flawed.  You equate two ideas that you claim both rely on an external intelligence.  In fact, that reliance is only in ID.  Panspermia does not assume an outside intelligence at all.
2) Panspermia is just a hypothesis.  It hasn't been proved enough to be considered a theory.  Considering it a valid scientific hypothesis is acceptable.  Calling it a valid scientific theory wouldn't be acceptable.  Trying to use political means to force Panspermia to be taught in public schools as equivalent to real scientific theories would be even less acceptable.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Feb. 27 2008,11:20

Now we're getting somewhere. Thanks, Lawnboy. I'll concede your first point--sort of. Certain versions of Panspermia don't require an external intelligence, but others do. Apart from that though, I agree that the best Panspermia can ever be is a hypothesis, because it doesn't answer the ultimate question of how life originated in the universe, just how it originated on earth.

As to your second point, I'm trying to cut away the religious and political baggage attached to this issue and focus on the scientific questions.
Posted by: carlsonjok on Feb. 27 2008,11:21

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:13)
Carlsonjok said, "To the extent that panspermia is a legitimate scientific question (and I am not necessarily convinced it is*), it would be so because it makes no untestable appeals to supernatural intervention."

But neither does ID!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Certainly not in public, it doesn't.  What they say is that they can use tools to infer design in biological systems*.  But, when it comes to any type of questioning as to the identity, means, or motive of the designer, ID is mum.  So, basically, they infer design and call it a day.  Doesn't that strike you as rather....umm....incurious?

* That they say they can do so hasn't exactly incented them to actually do so in practice.  Here is < a link > to a discussion where Uncommon Descent contributor Salvador Cordova was asked to provide a working example of Dembski's Explanatory Filter as applied to a biological system.  Read it for yourself and see if he succeeded in doing so.
Posted by: Paul Flocken on Feb. 27 2008,11:23

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:08)
Erasmus: You can't be serious in saying evolutionary theory has nothing to say about the origin of life. Have you ever read "The Blind Watchmaker?" "Darwin's Dangerous Idea"?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Science has a great deal to say about the origin of life, and in particular that branch of Chemistry/Organic Chemistry known as < Abiogenesis > has a very great deal to say.  If chemists coopt the word evolution to refer to the chemical interactions that led to life ("chemical evolution"), that still does not mean that biological evolution has anything to say about abiogenesis.  It just means that the word evolution has an explanatory utility outside of biology.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 27 2008,11:25

Hi kevin

Yes I have read blind watchmaker.  Richard Dawkin's personal metaphysical opinions should not be conflated with science.  I don't think he has this problem.  I do think that you guys have this problem.  You routinely misrepresent your religious presuppositions as empirical findings. Example:  'assuming' design helps scientists do X.  YOU HAVEN'T EVEN DESCRIBED WHAT DESIGN IS

This doesn't stop you guys from constructing a humongous marketing and political edifice upon this shifting sand where you refuse to go.
Posted by: sarion on Feb. 27 2008,11:25

Hi Kevin, I was following this thread and I noticed the nature of your posts. You seem to be a supporter of ID, however do not feel you can be expected to defend it, either saying you are not here to answer questions, or that you don`t know, but suggest that someone else does. However, you expect the others on the board to defend the theory of evolution by answering your questions on the subject.

Could you answer the, in my eyes, main question that has been posed of ID? It does not seem to me to be too much to ask.

What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested with the scientific method?
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 27 2008,11:31

Kevin, is there any chance you're going to respond to the earlier comments on the Templeton Foundation?

Or the Holocaust?

Or "cdesign proponentsists"?

Or answer the question, "what is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested with the scientific method?"
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 27 2008,11:32

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:05)
I'm sorry these guys are confused, Carlsonjok, but if you go back to my original question, what I'm asking is, why is panspermia considered scientific and ID is not. I think I made it pretty clear there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


For panspermia, people may offer mechanisms. "Design" is not a mechanism. You cannot test for it.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 27 2008,11:51

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:10)
oldman said, "Very well. Then do you have any examples of how presuming design helps understand how do defeat such things? Or are we still only at the talking about stage? No lab work as yet? If not, how long will it take?"

I think this is a good question. Unfortunately, I'm not a scientist so I can't wheel out a stack of journal articles or anything like that. But I can say that several scientists we talked to in our film--especially cell biologists--are finding the assumption of design quite useful in their work. And I don't mean useful in terms of creating a grand explanation for life. Merely in their day to day lab work.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course the "assumption of design" is useful, because cells were designed.

We just disagree on what process designed them.

RM+NS, which I'm aware is not the totality of evolutionary theory, can be said to have "designed" cells. Evolution "designed" life.

If you find an organ in the body it's a reasonable assumption that it's "designed" to do something. Perhaps it's vestigial, perhaps not. Most likely not.

However, if we take that tack then everything is designed then ID "theory" says nothing in specific about anything at all.

Is there any biological life that in your opinion is not designed?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 27 2008,11:55

wait a minute, old man, ain't DNA designed?

Seems like we can just stop there.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Feb. 27 2008,12:14

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:05)
I'm sorry these guys are confused, Carlsonjok, but if you go back to my original question, what I'm asking is, why is panspermia considered scientific and ID is not. I think I made it pretty clear there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not confused. Panspermia is a red herring. ID has set itself up as an alternative to evolutionary theory as an explanation for the diversity of life on this planet. The "conflict" in your movie is between ID and evolutionary theory. If you made a movie about panspermia, I missed the memo.

But you are dodging a question that was put to you several times. Here it is again.

What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested with the scientific method?

(chirp chirp)
Posted by: millipj on Feb. 27 2008,12:25

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:10)
But I can say that several scientists we talked to in our film--especially cell biologists--are finding the assumption of design quite useful in their work. And I don't mean useful in terms of creating a grand explanation for life. Merely in their day to day lab work.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Using an assumption of design is not the same as thinking that they (cells) were designed. To pretend that it does shows a misunderstanding of how most scientists work.

I work as a chemist. For much of my day-to-day job I can use a simple "ball and stick" model of how a molecule behaves. I can treat electrons as charges on the atoms.

When I need to consider how a molecule bonds to a surface I use a different model involving electrons filling bonding and anti-bonding molecular orbitals.

However, I know that these are both merely useful approximations but that neither of these models is a correct representation of the molecule as described by quantum mechanics.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 27 2008,12:34

Quote (Paul Flocken @ Feb. 27 2008,08:56)
When marketers want to publicize movies they want the public to go see, don't they usually, well, invite critics?  When I hear that a movie was not screened it always means they have a dud on their hands and they dont want people to know it.  I wonder how many non-disclosure agreements Lucas forced people to sign before watching the original StarWars?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In my professional experience, they are so eager for reviewers that they
1) Will let in anyone who says they’re a reviewer from such-n-such rag/paper (although I have never actually tried this, of course - I have ethics)
2) Give out free tickets to the public
3) Throw t-shirts at the crowd
4) Distribute press packets

Actually, non-disclosure agreements do have precedent – such as the secret audience preview of Gone with the Wind. However, I think that was verbal, simply to not reveal the plot, etc.
Posted by: JAM on Feb. 27 2008,12:56

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:05)
I'm sorry these guys are confused, Carlsonjok, but if you go back to my original question, what I'm asking is, why is panspermia considered scientific and ID is not. I think I made it pretty clear there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin,

Go back to my post here:

< http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....ry98561 >

It explains the vast differences between ID and real science.

Please stop fudging basic scientific concepts. Here are some examples:

Hypotheses:
abiogenesis (multiple, actively being tested)
prions in 1982
panspermia (multiple, not much activity)
ID (but only if they offer testable predictions; your comrades are afraid to test any of them)

Theories:
evolution (massive number of successful empirical predictions)
prion (since ~1995, as a result of hundreds of successful empirical predictions)

Do you get the basic picture, or are you being dishonest?
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 27 2008,13:00

Kevin is not a scientist nor does he play one on TV.  However, he is a writer who contributed to the soon-to-be blockbuster, Expelled!

So, Kevin is in an excellent position to tell us specifically who was expelled from what.  Expelled! is about expelling, not panspermia.  Let's get back to the explanations of the expellations.

Start with Sternberg since we're all very familiar with that piece of history.

From what was Sternberg expelled and by whom?

After Sternberg, Kevin, please regale us with Behe's heart-rending story.

Thanks.
Posted by: tacitus on Feb. 27 2008,13:06

I have never heard any serious scientist associate the hypothesis of panspermia with that of an alien intelligence seeding life on Earth.  I am sure the possibility has been discussed, but there is no serious scientific effort to develop the idea of panspermia along those lines, and certainly nobody is arguing that it should be taught in science class in high school.  Even the fans of panspermia accept this as the correct approach to take.

But panspermia is certainly a legitimate scientific hypothesis when it comes to the idea that simple lifeforms (that evolved elsewhere) may be able to survive the hardship of space for some long period of time.  Discoveries of extremeophiles here on Earth and the possibility of bacteria and other single cell organisms surviving on space-born missions are just two areas of related research (that already bear fruit).

It may not be much more than an interesting hypothesis (and it may well be wrong), but panspermia has already contributed to the scientific debate on the origins of life (but not evolution).  That is in stark contrast to ID, which has had no bearing on the scientific debate (as opposed to the political debate) at all.

So, Kevin, while in theory panspermia may hold out the tiniest of chances that alien intelligence was the agency of life on Earth it is no more likely than, say, aliens were responsible for carving the Face on Mars.  You can't rule it out completely but there is no useful scientific value to researching into it.  In fact, unless an alien species turns up on Earth's doorstep and to claim us as their own, there is no avenue of scientific research available. (And if those aliens do show up, it might be a victory for IDists, but they would be royally pissed off with the identity of the designer :) )

In that way, panspermia it is precisely like ID.  As soon as you invoke an intelligent agency, you leave the realm of science and into the realm of religion or fantasy or science fiction.  Conflating those two realms over the idea of panspermia is no help in making the case for ID as science. In fact, it proves the opposite.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 27 2008,13:35

Kevin M.:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

From reading people like Dawkins, Dennett, Stenger, Darwin, and others, evolutionary theory most definitely includes the origin and diversity of life.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Nobody's disputing "diversity". What's at issue is abiogenesis and its relation to evolutionary science.

My understanding is that the processes identified by evolutionary science aren't limited to acting upon life-originated-by-abiogenesis, and could be expected to produce the observed diversity of living organisms even if modifying life-originated-by-design. So far as understanding evolutionary science is concerned, abiogenesis is a big "don't-care" term. (Though I should note that if Kevin ever came within ten yards of Andrew Ellington, any argument Kevin would care to make on the topic of abiogenesis would be shredded in seconds.)

Now, if Kevin is claiming to be able to demonstrate an obligate dependence of evolutionary science upon abiogenesis and to base this upon consideration of the literature, it is his responsibility to share the supporting citations. Kevin seems to have overlooked doing that in his comment, but I'm sure he'll be by to rectify that shortly. Until then, though, I don't see a supported argument.

Still no response that I've seen on the main point as noted as pending at least since the 1997 DI conference: what would an ID hypothesis look like, and how would you test it?


Posted by: KimvdLinde on Feb. 27 2008,13:49

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
<
So my question is, why is one theory so controversial and the other not? What if you stripped away all of the religious and political baggage from ID? Would the theory be more acceptible then? And wouldn’t ID and Panspermia become nearly indistinguishable? After all, both argue that perhaps the best possibility for explaining how life began is a higher intelligence that seeded it on earth. We can argue all day about what the nature of that intelligence really is. But that’s beside the main point: Do we need intelligence to explain things like the origin and diversity of life or not? Classical evolution says no, ID and Panspermia say yes. Two different answers to the same question. I fail to see how one answer is scientific and the other not. That being said, I’m sure someone is going to go off about the scientific method and how the IDers aren’t serious scientists, that they’re a bunch of liars, etc. But once again, that’s beside the point. Never mind their methods or their ethics. Is the question the ID community is asking scientific or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So my question is, why is one theory so controversial and the other not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Because ID invokes a undefined non-materialistic source, while the other does not.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What if you stripped away all of the religious and political baggage from ID? Would the theory be more acceptible then?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ID is not a theory, it is a hypothesis. If you would strip away the undefined intelligent source that explains everything, there is no hypothesis left.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And wouldn’t ID and Panspermia become nearly indistinguishable?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, Panspermia is based on seeds of life being found in the universe, an it does not require an undefined non-materialistic intelligent designer. The causes for that can be very well purely materialistic, and as such, they differ in a key aspect, the need for a undefined NON-materialistic entity.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Do we need intelligence to explain things like the origin and diversity of life or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Origin of life: Out of the ream for evolution.
Diversity of life: No.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Classical evolution says no, ID and Panspermia say yes. Two different answers to the same question. I fail to see how one answer is scientific and the other not.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Origin of life hypothesis and Panspermia are scientific as they are limited to what we can test and measure. ID invokes a non-materialistic intelligent designer, and as such is outside the realm of science.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That being said, I’m sure someone is going to go off about the scientific method and how the IDers aren’t serious scientists, that they’re a bunch of liars, etc. But once again, that’s beside the point. Never mind their methods or their ethics. Is the question the ID community is asking scientific or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, invoking a non-materialistic source is not science.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Feb. 27 2008,13:52

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:13)
Carlsonjok said, "To the extent that panspermia is a legitimate scientific question (and I am not necessarily convinced it is*), it would be so because it makes no untestable appeals to supernatural intervention."

But neither does ID!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nonsense.

Google "cdesignproponentsists" if your education is really that incomplete. ID has no arguments beyond recycled creationist arguments; IDists merely sanitize them for constitutional purposes. If they had scientific arguments, surely you would be able to answer the outstanding question on this thread.

What is the theory of intelligent design and how can it be tested scientifically?

Oh, and if you need more proof that religion is the core of ID argumentation, see this recent < drivel from Casey Luskin (spokesgerbil for the Dishonesty Institute), > documenting his fantasy dialogues with folks who understand reality a bit better than he does. Note that it only takes 7 steps to get to the core of the ID argument - "you guys are wrong because you are atheists."

All science so far...

ETA - HT, FtK
Posted by: KimvdLinde on Feb. 27 2008,13:57

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:03)
"Is it supposed to?
I always understood them to be 2 separate things." (Sorry, haven't figured out the quote function yet.)

From reading people like Dawkins, Dennett, Stenger, Darwin, and others, evolutionary theory most definitely includes the origin and diversity of life.

I think you ask a very telling question here: What difference does the origin of life make to current evolutionary theory about the diversity of life? (I'm summarizing.) There are two ways to answer that question. First, if it makes no difference (as you seem to be saying) then what's all the fuss about ID? Second, I think it would make a huge difference. If we look at a cancer cell as nothing but a highly successful Darwinian accident, that assumption will affect how we attempt to combat it. But if we can assume it was designed, we can reverse-engineer the cancer cell and potentially develop much more effective ways of defeating it's internal programming. Not the best example, perhaps, b/c I'm sure someone is going to turn around and say, "How could a good God design cancer?" But that's a philosophical question about the nature of God, not a scientific one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think you ask a very telling question here: What difference does the origin of life make to current evolutionary theory about the diversity of life?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nothing.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There are two ways to answer that question. First, if it makes no difference (as you seem to be saying) then ered directly in how evolution was occurring. ID does not what's all the fuss about ID?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Because ID claims that during the long long evolutionary history of life in earth, the intelligent designer interfust claim that the first cell was made by God after which he did not interfere anymore.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Second, I think it would make a huge difference. If we look at a cancer cell as nothing but a highly successful Darwinian accident, that assumption will affect how we attempt to combat it. But if we can assume it was designed, we can reverse-engineer the cancer cell and potentially develop much more effective ways of defeating it's internal programming.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, you can unravel how things work whether they are designed or not, and that is exactly what molecular biologist etc do. As such, this is not something ID has anything to offer.
Posted by: KimvdLinde on Feb. 27 2008,14:03

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:13)
Carlsonjok said, "To the extent that panspermia is a legitimate scientific question (and I am not necessarily convinced it is*), it would be so because it makes no untestable appeals to supernatural intervention."

But neither does ID!

That's not to say people don't hijack the theory to extrapolate to some sort of supernatural intelligence. But as I said in the lead up to my question, the nature of the supposed intelligence is beside the point. The question is, do we need to posit some sort of intelligence for the origin of life or not? I've yet to hear anyone attempt a full frontal answer to that question.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Carlsonjok said, "To the extent that panspermia is a legitimate scientific question (and I am not necessarily convinced it is*), it would be so because it makes no untestable appeals to supernatural intervention."

But neither does ID!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ok, now I am curious, WHAT does ID then require?
Posted by: slpage on Feb. 27 2008,14:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:49)
BTW: You're also shifting your ground. First you said evolutionary theory has nothing to say about the origin of life and then you turn around and say the theory of Panspermia is useful. Which is it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, panspermia subsumes the existence of life.
Posted by: tsig on Feb. 27 2008,14:14

Quote (jeannot @ Feb. 26 2008,16:03)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,15:13)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:08)
I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My goodness.

(1) did he travel back in time to Sparta, as they culled the weak?
(2) Is it natural selection, *cough* "Darwinism" or artificial selection that mankind has known about through for example animal husbandry, for thousands of years?
(3) Is there any long debunked creationist canard you think we haven't heard?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And more to the point, Kevin: science tells us how the world works, not how it ought to work.
Had Hitler worshipped Darwin's name in his book, that wouldn't falsify the theory of natural selection.

Is it so hard to understand?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He wouldn't have killed 6 million of his best workers.
Posted by: tsig on Feb. 27 2008,14:17

Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,16:23)
Oh, Welcome Pharyngulans!

*waves*

PS KRISTINE HARTLEY IS TEH WITCH.  :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Have broom will travel
Posted by: rpenner on Feb. 27 2008,14:23

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
The way I see it, one reason ID is so controversial is that it argues mind precedes matter in the form of a creative intelligence;
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Does ID propose that one or more creative minds existed before matter? (Christian, Islamic, Classical Greek, etc.) Creationism asserts that, but for a scientific theory to assert that as a postulate, at a minimum it has to be written down. No one, not even Philip E. Johnson has seen it written down.

How many minds are we talking about? (Malaria and ID, parasitic wasps and ID imply the hypothetical mind(s) is/are not at all concerned with human or other suffering.)

Define intelligence. Should we expect to be able to infer anything about the level of this intelligence and its goals from the human eye having a blind spot, and the octopus eye not having a blind spot? Or what about the proximity of esophagus and trachea causing us to be able to choke to death on small things?

Define creative? What is the manner and operation of this creative power of this matterless mind? What signature does it leave behind?

What is the motivation for ID? What empirical basis even suggests that this creative intelligence exists or existed? Gravity, human evolution, and electromagnetism had hundreds of years of empirical evidence whose generalization resulted in the first theories.
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
whereas classic evolutionary theory says that mind is a product of matter.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I dispute this. Observation shows that non-human intelligence is associated in certain patterned material systems (rats in mazes, problem-solving crows, signing apes, to a very limited extent computers). In all known cases, allowing what amounts to surgical insertion for the largest cases, 100 grams of Semtex is sufficient to disrupt these patterns in matter such that the intelligence is damaged or rendered unavailable. Therefore the generalization which all science subscribes to is that intelligence requires patterns in matter. Obviously, demonstrating that this generalization is wrong would be world-wide news, but it is a necessary prerequisite to the postulate that such a non-material agent is actually responsible for human evolution.    
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
Intelligence is one of the last things to appear on the scene.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

According to the paleontological history of Earth, which is distinct from evolution, intelligence on Earth nearly certainly began in or before the Cambrian period. But if you mean ISO committees, KISS engineering rules, Baconian scientific methodology and it's successors, which is to say human-level intelligence, then you are probably correct. Can ID succeed if the hypothetical agent(s) cannot be demonstrated to have super-human intelligence? (For thousands of years, even without a comprehensive theory of heredity, humans have been evolving their livestock and food crops, but being a non-biologist, you probably think 250 gram potatoes and orange carrots are natural.) What are the attributes of the agent(s)?
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
But when confronted with the question of how life began, many evolutionary theorists allow that perhaps Panspermia had something to do with it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Correct. When there is no evidence, theoreticians invent more hypotheses and experimentalists look for more evidence. Panspermia (life on Earth started off world) can best be refuted by finding life off-planet and demonstrating it has low biochemical similarity to life on Earth.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
This theory is broadly accepted as a scientific possibility
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Which is to say a hypothesis in an area where the experimentalists have very little hard data.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
even though it also posits that mind came first and matter—at least the highly organized arrangements of matter we call living things—second.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

No it doesn't. It says life arose somewhere else in the first 10 billion years of the universe and spread to Earth. Matter came first.
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
So my question is, why is one theory so controversial and the other not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Neither is a theory. ID is controversial because it was intelligently designed by humans to replace the unconstitutional creation science which was intelligently designed to replace unconstitutional creationism. Panspermia is a hypothesis in an area where we are ignorant and may be strengthened or weakened if life is ever found on Mars or elsewhere in space.
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
What if you stripped away all of the religious and political baggage from ID?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

It's a little unfair for you to propose this while showing your film around to groups of ministers and excluding the mainstream press. But what if DI would shut up and the makers of ID textbooks would at least wait until there was a testable theory of ID proposed instead of just recycling creationist textbooks?  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
Would the theory be more acceptible then?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Philip E. Johnson says there is no scientific theory.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
And wouldn’t ID and Panspermia become nearly indistinguishable?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I have already indicated tests which would, depending on outcome, strengthen or weaken the case for Panspermia. Please tell me if the same tests would strengthen or weaken ID? Would any tests weaken the case for ID? What is the theory of ID?  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
After all, both argue that perhaps the best possibility for explaining how life began is a higher intelligence that seeded it on earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Panspermia (generic) is not a "best argument" but one hypothesis of many. Panspermia (aliens did it) has far less support. Panspermia (aliens did it on purpose) has far less support. But if any of these were in fact true, they predict that there would be evidence to find to support the theory. If ID (a god did it) is true, would there be any evidence to find? Why did this agent wait 10 billion years? Does that imply the agent's creative powers have strict limits?  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
We can argue all day about what the nature of that intelligence really is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

First you have to have a theory of ID. Then you can explore what the agent(s) can and cannot do. Then you can find evidence if the agent(s) actually exists/existed or if the biological evidence is consistent with the idea of even minimal intelligence. But such a theory of ID is not what is represented in the textbooks. The public face of ID is a story about human evolution, so talking about the origins of life and not the origins of species is a canard.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
But that’s beside the main point: Do we need intelligence to explain things like the origin and diversity of life or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Yikes, you agreed with me.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
Classical evolution says no, ID and Panspermia say yes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Panspermia and empirical evidence, does say no about the diversity of life. The most discussed form of Panspermia says no about the origin of life.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
Two different answers to the same question.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

As I noted above, you asked a complex question and failed to correctly describe Panspermia. Even in the case of Panspermia (aliens did it on purpose) or the very weak version of ID which you propose, human evolution is completely left up to naturalistic processes.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
I fail to see how one answer is scientific and the other not.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Neither rises to the level of a scientific theory -- they are just proposed patches of guesses to cover a gap in human knowledge. They aren't comprehensive like a theory needs to be, and they make no claims which would potentially prove them wrong, which theories need to have.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
That being said, I’m sure someone is going to go off about the scientific method and how the IDers aren’t serious scientists,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Well they do seem to do everything ass-backwards.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
that they’re a bunch of liars, etc.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

With respect to the DI, that is given.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
But once again, that’s beside the point.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

For me, it is beside the point, since I don't appeal to their goodwill and authority. But you seem quite credulous of people who have said in court that if their ID is science then so is Astrology and Water Dousing.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
Never mind their methods or their ethics.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Exclude the contents of the null set from consideration. Gotcha.  
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
Is the question the ID community is asking scientific or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

What question are they asking? If you mean "Do we need intelligence to explain the origin of life on Earth?" then science is ignorant of that answer. Opinions vary, but in all cases the scientific opinion would shift on the basis of evidence. If you mean "Do we need intelligence to explain the pattern of diversity of life on Earth?" then the answer is strongly no. All ID completely fails to explain this pattern. If you mean "Do we need intelligence to explain human origins?" Then the answer is even more strongly no.

One of the tactics of the pseudoscientist, and we have a lot of them in this world, is that they thrive on ignorance while actual scientists pursue evidence. Pseudoscientists desire the respect of science and emulate its form, but tend to use garbled logic, obscure or made-up references and try to force their opponents to defend the cutting edge of knowledge. For ID we have seen them retreat from human origins to the Cambrian explosion to the origin of the Metazoans to the origin of life itself. Actual science drove them to the edges of human ignorance just like good money drives out bad currency in economic theory.
Posted by: Henry J on Feb. 27 2008,14:28

Quote (Paul Flocken @ Feb. 27 2008,08:56)
When marketers want to publicize movies they want the public to go see, don't they usually, well, invite critics?  When I hear that a movie was not screened it always means they have a dud on their hands and they dont want people to know it.  I wonder how many non-disclosure agreements Lucas forced people to sign before watching the original StarWars?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Use the farce, Ben!
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 27 2008,14:38

Quote (tsig @ Feb. 27 2008,13:17)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,16:23)
Oh, Welcome Pharyngulans!

*waves*

PS KRISTINE HARTLEY IS TEH WITCH.  :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Have broom will travel
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Jealous. Dawkins is a-comin’ to Our Town in March, so “Surrender ID,” it’s not in Kansas anymore.

RichHughes just loves a chick-a-broom, chick-a-broom. ;)
Posted by: tsig on Feb. 27 2008,15:00

Quote (stevestory @ Feb. 27 2008,02:20)
Kevin should get hot on the case of why the ID scientists were EXPELLED from < their own ID journal >. I mean, they must have been expelled, right, no doubt by some horrible Darwinist. Now that's a hell of a conspiracy we're running, infiltrating their own journal and rejecting all their revolutionary research.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


We just don't tell everyone about our plans. We are the NWO.

Now that you have went public watch out for cats.
Posted by: Ogee on Feb. 27 2008,15:04

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:20)
Apart from that though, I agree that the best Panspermia can ever be is a hypothesis, because it doesn't answer the ultimate question of how life originated in the universe, just how it originated on earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I guess we needn't ask whether you understand the distinction between hypothesis and theory.
Posted by: tsig on Feb. 27 2008,15:11

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
Okay, here’s a question with an unfortunately long lead-up: The way I see it, one reason ID is so controversial is that it argues mind precedes matter in the form of a creative intelligence; whereas classic evolutionary theory says that mind is a product of matter. Intelligence is one of the last things to appear on the scene.

But when confronted with the question of how life began, many evolutionary theorists allow that perhaps Panspermia had something to do with it. This theory is broadly accepted as a scientific possibility even though it also posits that mind came first and matter—at least the highly organized arrangements of matter we call living things—second.

So my question is, why is one theory so controversial and the other not? What if you stripped away all of the religious and political baggage from ID? Would the theory be more acceptible then? And wouldn’t ID and Panspermia become nearly indistinguishable? After all, both argue that perhaps the best possibility for explaining how life began is a higher intelligence that seeded it on earth. We can argue all day about what the nature of that intelligence really is. But that’s beside the main point: Do we need intelligence to explain things like the origin and diversity of life or not? Classical evolution says no, ID and Panspermia say yes. Two different answers to the same question. I fail to see how one answer is scientific and the other not. That being said, I’m sure someone is going to go off about the scientific method and how the IDers aren’t serious scientists, that they’re a bunch of liars, etc. But once again, that’s beside the point. Never mind their methods or their ethics. Is the question the ID community is asking scientific or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you really want to know here's how it happened.

Two molecules were chemically attracted. They made a copy and here you are.

Replicators are a given in the right chemical environment.

Once there are replicators. Evolution.
Posted by: factician on Feb. 27 2008,15:18

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,12:08)
Erasmus: You can't be serious in saying evolutionary theory has nothing to say about the origin of life. Have you ever read "The Blind Watchmaker?" "Darwin's Dangerous Idea"?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I hope I can clarify for you.

The mistake you're making is that because scientists are interested in the origin of life, and because scientists generally think the theory of evolution is correct, that the theory of evolution speaks to the origin of life.  It does not, though these questions are related.

We're all interested in the origin of life (or many of us, anyway) but the theory of evolution doesn't even get started until the first replicating organism shows up on the scene.  How did this first replicating organism form?  That's an interesting question.

Panspermia doesn't even address the origin of life question (and please stop referring to it as the theory of panspermia - it hardly qualifies as a theory, more of a hypothesis with no data attached).  Panspermia addresses the origin of life on Earth.  It just moves the origin of life to another planet, and still leaves us the question of how life arose (on said other planet, galaxy, nebula, dark matter chunkoid, etc).  Intelligent design says that there's a Designer.  We don't know when, or where.  And please don't ask.  Oh, and He's pretty complicated.  And nothing came before Him.  But don't ask us how we know that.

But let's pretend for a moment that panspermia and intelligent design are equivalent.  I think they're both bs, but I can't prove that panspermia is bs.  It's just my personal prejudice.

Panspermia predicts several things that we can test experimentally.  1)  That life arose somewhere else, and we could find it somewhere else.  Okay, this one is difficult to detect, but NASA is ostensibly trying to ask this question by digging around on Mars with robots.  2)  That we might find life on asteroids.  3)  That the earliest life forms would be associated with periods of bombardment on Earth.  4) ???  These are what I can come up with off the top of my head.  I really don't spend a lot of time thinking about panspermia.

Intelligent design makes the prediction that:  1)  Things will be pretty complicated.  Except that evolution also makes the prediction that things will be complicated.  And how do you define complicated, anyway?  Cause it looks complicated?  So I guess that's not a really good predictor for intelligent design.  Well then, we have prediction number 1)  ???

Perhaps you can fill that in for me, Kevin?
Posted by: tsig on Feb. 27 2008,15:18

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 27 2008,12:34)
Quote (Paul Flocken @ Feb. 27 2008,08:56)
When marketers want to publicize movies they want the public to go see, don't they usually, well, invite critics?  When I hear that a movie was not screened it always means they have a dud on their hands and they dont want people to know it.  I wonder how many non-disclosure agreements Lucas forced people to sign before watching the original StarWars?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In my professional experience, they are so eager for reviewers that they
1) Will let in anyone who says they’re a reviewer from such-n-such rag/paper (although I have never actually tried this, of course - I have ethics)
2) Give out free tickets to the public
3) Throw t-shirts at the crowd
4) Distribute press packets

Actually, non-disclosure agreements do have precedent – such as the secret audience preview of Gone with the Wind. However, I think that was verbal, simply to not reveal the plot, etc.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It was the ending.
Posted by: Stanton on Feb. 27 2008,15:40

Quote (carlsonjok @ Feb. 27 2008,11:10)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:05)
I'm sorry these guys are confused, Carlsonjok, but if you go back to my original question, what I'm asking is, why is panspermia considered scientific and ID is not. I think I made it pretty clear there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Panspermia is regarded as a scientific hypothesis because it builds on the observed facts that a) water and organic molecules are found in outer space, b) spores of bacteria and fungi are capable of surviving intact in outer space-like conditions (whether or not they can remain viable has yet to be seen), and c) bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms are capable of living and thriving in Mars-like conditions, and then proposes that life, or certain lineages of organisms on Earth are descended from life and or organic molecules from outer space.

Panspermia can not progress beyond the hypothetical stage because no "alien" lifeform has been found and recognized with which to compare indigenous lifeforms with.

Intelligent Design proposes that, because biological systems are complicated, biological systems could not have appeared or evolved without the assistance of an "intelligent designer" that is beyond the scrutiny of mere mortal scientists.  Having said this, Intelligent Design proponents have been extremely hesitant to demonstrate how one can go about detecting "design."

Dembski alleges that his "Explanatory Filter" can detect design, but, he leaves very much to be desired, given as how he has never actually demonstrated how to detect design with his filter in a genuine organism.

Behe's idea of "irreducible complexity" has been repeatedly killed and butchered by the fact that all of the biological systems he labeled as being "irreducibly complex," including the vertebrate immune system, the blood-clotting cascade, and the eukaryote and bacterial flagella have all had their evolutionary histories discovered, as well as how the details of the mechanics of each system relate to related details in other biological systems, i.e., in that echinoderms have a similar immune system to chordates, or that the proteases used in blood clotting are the same proteases used in digestion, or even the documentation of the evolutionary history of the genes that produce the "antifreeze" glycoproteins in Antarctic icefish, or the appearance of the 2 versions of nylonase.

Then there is the fact that all Intelligent Design proponents have been extraordinarily hesitant in either explaining how Intelligent Design "theory" would help contribute to Science, or even how Intelligent Design "theory" is even science.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 27 2008,15:43

Quote (Stanton @ Feb. 27 2008,15:40)
[quote=carlsonjok,Feb. 27 2008,11:10][/quote]
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:05)
I'm sorry these guys are confused, Carlsonjok, but if you go back to my original question, what I'm asking is, why is panspermia considered scientific and ID is not. I think I made it pretty clear there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Panspermia is regarded as a scientific hypothesis because it builds on the observed facts that a) water and organic molecules are found in outer space, b) spores of bacteria and fungi are capable of surviving intact in outer space-like conditions (whether or not they can remain viable has yet to be seen), and c) bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms are capable of living and thriving in Mars-like conditions, and then proposes that life, or certain lineages of organisms on Earth are descended from life and or organic molecules from outer space.

Panspermia can not progress beyond the hypothetical stage because no "alien" lifeform has been found and recognized with which to compare indigenous lifeforms with.

Intelligent Design proposes that, because biological systems are complicated, biological systems could not have appeared or evolved without the assistance of an "intelligent designer" that is beyond the scrutiny of mere mortal scientists.  Having said this, Intelligent Design proponents have been extremely hesitant to demonstrate how one can go about detecting "design."

Dembski alleges that his "Explanatory Filter" can detect design, but, he leaves very much to be desired, given as how he has never actually demonstrated how to detect design with his filter in a genuine organism.

Behe's idea of "irreducible complexity" has been repeatedly killed and butchered by the fact that all of the biological systems he labeled as being "irreducibly complex," including the vertebrate immune system, the blood-clotting cascade, and the eukaryote and bacterial flagella have all had their evolutionary histories discovered, as well as how the details of the mechanics of each system relate to related details in other biological systems, i.e., in that echinoderms have a similar immune system to chordates, or that the proteases used in blood clotting are the same proteases used in digestion, or even the documentation of the evolutionary history of the genes that produce the "antifreeze" glycoproteins in Antarctic icefish, or the appearance of the 2 versions of nylonase.

Then there is the fact that all Intelligent Design proponents have been extraordinarily hesitant in either explaining how Intelligent Design "theory" would help contribute to Science, or even how Intelligent Design "theory" is even science.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Welcome Stanton. Epic 1st post!
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 27 2008,15:50

Quote (tsig @ Feb. 27 2008,14:18)
Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 27 2008,12:34)
 
Quote (Paul Flocken @ Feb. 27 2008,08:56)
When marketers want to publicize movies they want the public to go see, don't they usually, well, invite critics?  When I hear that a movie was not screened it always means they have a dud on their hands and they dont want people to know it.  I wonder how many non-disclosure agreements Lucas forced people to sign before watching the original StarWars?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In my professional experience, they are so eager for reviewers that they
1) Will let in anyone who says they’re a reviewer from such-n-such rag/paper (although I have never actually tried this, of course - I have ethics)
2) Give out free tickets to the public
3) Throw t-shirts at the crowd
4) Distribute press packets

Actually, non-disclosure agreements do have precedent – such as the secret audience preview of Gone with the Wind. However, I think that was verbal, simply to not reveal the plot, etc.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It was the ending.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*Brightens* Okay, smarty-pants! It was not the ending – after all, everyone knew that (and really, the last line in the film is rather like an ID “prediction,” no?). It was the “will they-won’t they” say that other line.

Yes, that famous line, which could also express the audience’s attitude toward Expelled when it finally opens, the possibility of which hovers like a vulture over Stein’s anguish over losing his money, doesn’t it? :D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 27 2008,16:19

I can't say that I have any desire to bother with Miller's droning cant (how many times have we heard the exact same mistakes?), but I thought there were a couple of somewhat interesting media remarks about Expelled.  And so, cross-posting plus modifying from Pharyngula, here:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
More Expelled news, and PZ ("Paul Zachary") mentioned again:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Everybody's favorite dead-pan teacher and game show host, Ben Stein, is the face of a new documentary to be released this April called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed". It's ostensibly a movie about attacks on freedom of speech in today's hostile climate among scientists in academia, but on closer inspection it really seems to be a thinly veiled screed for Intelligent Design.

A quick search of the web provides the background: the production company for the film is the same that produced The Passion of the Christ; its CEO and one of the film's producers recently questioned the Godliness of the administration at Baylor University over an ID-related incident; and the producers used Stein as the narrator specifically because he wasn't "overtly religious."

What's perhaps most dangerous about the film is not that it works to present Intelligent Design as a legitimate scientific theory, but that it tries to tear down Darwinism by equating it with Social Darwinism and therefore eugenics and racism (and Nazis; see Godwin's law).

Professor Paul Zachary Myers at the University of Minnesota is one of the scientists interviewed for the film. He's recently been caught up in a blog exchange with the film's producers regarding this and other topics to do with the movie. Read the arguments and decide for yourself whether you'll see the film. You can find the producer's first post here followed by Myer's response, followed by the producer's response. So, what do you think? Will you watch "Expelled" when it hits theaters?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Popular Science's remarks about Expelled >

I couldn't have hoped for better comments from Popular Science than those.

Expelled is increasingly becoming known, but the stench from that shitpile is the introduction that most seem to get from the media.

Human Events tries to make the flexibility of scientists out to be a bad thing, due to the fact that they won't accept meaningless, evidence-free "hypotheses":

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And, oh my God, scientists aren't opposed to "design," which supposedly is all that ID is about, they're simply opposed to "hypotheses" in science regarding magic beings who do something (we can't know what), at some time (we can't know when), for some purpose (which is undetectable), make life (we don't know why):

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The responses are amazing, even if you think you know what to expect. It turns out some of the most hardened, doctrinaire anti-design zealots in the scientific establishment -- people such as Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion" and consequently the de facto leader of the worldwide atheist movement -- aren't really opposed to the notion of design at all. They just can't accept God as the designer.

You will hear some of the world's most celebrated evolutionists admit design is possible -- just not by the hand of God.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< The rest at Human Events >

And no, liar, we don't say that design by the hand of God is impossible, we say that it is impossible to come up with any evidence that this supposed God exists, or that any magical beings have interfered with the laws of physics.

IOW, your only complaint, Farah, is that scientists want to keep science operating by honest standards and methods.

Glen D

P.S. Bill Buckley has died. Whatever one thinks of him, it's sad that one of the last acts he'll be remembered as making is his laudatory praise for Berlinski's most recent dumb book.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Reed on Feb. 27 2008,16:33

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:20)
Certain versions of Panspermia don't require an external intelligence, but others do. Apart from that though, I agree that the best Panspermia can ever be is a hypothesis, because it doesn't answer the ultimate question of how life originated in the universe, just how it originated on earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Aside from apparent confusion about what theory and hypothesis mean in science, you are making a couple of other fundamental errors.

1) Specific variants of the panspermia (or perhaps more properly exogenesis) hypothesis could be confirmed or disproven to a high degree of certainty. If we find life off Earth, there's a very good chance we could that figure out how it is related, if it all, to Earth life. Progress in understanding abiogenisis could also make the concept more or less attractive.

IOW, these hypotheses make testable predictions, and as such, are firmly in the realm of science. We don't have the data now, but as we explore the universe, we could find evidence. Until that time, panspermia/exogenesis will remain a speculative footnote. It's worth noting that no one is campaigning for the "panspermia controversy" to be taught in k-12 schools, and if there were, it the only proper reaction would be to reject it, since there is currently not enough data to warrant more than a passing mention if anything at all.

2) The panspermia hypothesis doesn't make any claim to explain < abiogenesis >,  the ultimate origin of life. To say that it can "never be more than a hypothesis" because of this is just nonsensical. Creationists like to make the same complaint against the "Theory of Evolution" but it similarly makes no such claim*. Neither explains gravity or star formation either, yet seems to care about how this might affect their credibility ;)

*One would expect chemical abiogenesis to have some very evolutionary qualities, but classical evolution doesn't depend on this about this.


/first post from a long time lurker
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 27 2008,16:51

Welcome Reed. Looks like we've picked up a couple of stars today.



WHERE IS MY COMISSION?
Posted by: LawnBoy on Feb. 27 2008,17:19

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:20)
Apart from that though, I agree that the best Panspermia can ever be is a hypothesis, because it doesn't answer the ultimate question of how life originated in the universe, just how it originated on earth.

As to your second point, I'm trying to cut away the religious and political baggage attached to this issue and focus on the scientific questions.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'll concede your first point--sort of. Certain versions of Panspermia don't require an external intelligence, but others do
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's true in a way, but it actually partially answers your questions.  There's an inverse correlation between how much a particular version of panspermia relies on external intelligence and how will respected that version is.  A version that says the precursors of life came and asteroid or a comet provide testability (we can look for forms of life in asteroids and comets), whereas a version that says that an intelligent alien colonized the earth gives us nothing testable.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Apart from that though, I agree that the best Panspermia can ever be is a hypothesis, because it doesn't answer the ultimate question of how life originated in the universe, just how it originated on earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I can't quite agree.  It's possible that we will find evidence of life on asteroids or comets or Mars in a form very similar to what evidence says earliest life on Earth was like.  If that combined evidence were strong enough (and resolved correlation/causation issues), then panspermia could be considered a valid Scientific Theory of how life started on Earth.

However, it wouldn't answer the question of how life started in the universe - it just pushes the question of original creation of life back.  In that case, it would be a valid Theory for one problem and irrelevant to another problem.
Posted by: Copernic on Feb. 27 2008,17:33

Kevin, I'm glad you are choosing to stick around.  You no doubt can see a lot of folks are fairly irate about how they are being portrayed by the IDists.  I hope you take that to heart but still engage with us.

I'd like to point out that tacitus did a bang up job of putting the Panspermia issue to rest.  
Panspermia is not an alternative to biological evolution.  No working scientist, that I'm aware of, thinks it is.

In fact, if there was the slightest chance that microbes had seeded the earth from "out there" they still would succumb to biological evolution to create the forms we see today and throughout biological history.   Additionally, evolutionary forces would have played a part on their home world as well.  So, it is not an alternative to evolution but rather an idea as to how biological systems might migrate between ecosystems...nothing more.  There, that's done.

As for evolution saying something about the beginning of life, I understand your frustration.  You'll hear people saying it doesn't address it.  What they mean is that the "fact" of biological evolution doesn't address it....and what they mean by that is "genetic change over generations" or "change in allele frequency within populations over time" doesn't talk to the origin of life.

However, the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection may say something about abiogenesis, in concept.

Within the  known operations of aquatic and organic chemistry, all you need is simple organic replicators, variations in stability, fecundity, concentration of and competition for available organics, etc.  Voila! simple life, and probably very different than what we'd recognize today.

Is abiogenic evolution a strong theory? No.  Is it tough to test?  Yes.  Is is logically consistant with science?  Yes.

Creation or ID is not a theory at all, is impossible to test, and is not logically consistant with science.

So, the concept of evolution does have something to say about abiogenesis and the scientists who are looking into it are using biological evolution (both fact and theory) as a tool kit to guide their own studies.

But, the "fact of biological evolution", by definition, says nothing about the beginning of life.    

J
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 27 2008,17:37

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 27 2008,16:50)
Yes, that famous line, which could also express the audience’s attitude toward Expelled when it finally opens, the possibility of which hovers like a vulture over Stein’s anguish over losing his money, doesn’t it? :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Frankly my dear, I won't give a dime"?
Posted by: Reed on Feb. 27 2008,17:57

A few questions I'd like to ask Kevin, related to the apparent belief there is a significant connection between Nazism/Stalinism and evolutionary theory:
1) Do you believe this perceived association affects the value or credibility of evolution as a scientific theory ?
2) Do you believe that other ideas used to justify these and similar atrocities should be rejected ?
2b) If yes to 2), should this rejection depend on the objective verifiability or usefulness of those ideas ?
3) Do you believe that if true, evolutionary theory provides an actual justification for the atrocities of the Nazis and Stalinists ?

I see a couple typos slipped into my earlier post, with no edit button in sight.
yet seems to should be yet no one seems to
and the final
about this is extraneous.
Posted by: abb3w on Feb. 27 2008,18:09

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 25 2008,23:33)
As for being mystified by "my cause," my main interest in this project is the whole philosophy of science angle. How do we conceptualize science and its implications? How can we know that we know anything?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


1) The foundations of mathematics were established by the Principia Mathematica and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, even though rocked by Goedel. Mathematics is a branch of philosophy, however, which does not necessarily have any connection to reality; looking up the Banach-Tarski sphere dissection (a mathematical proof where people's initial response resembles exposure to the infamously NSFW "goatse" JPEG :O ) will convince most people of this.

2) Turing machines may be developed via ZF. They helped lead directly to Goedel's proof. Similarly, one may develop the basis for probability using ZF (although no-one in their right mind would work that way directly).

3) The Strong Church-Turing Universe Thesis says that the Universe has a formal level of < complexity > that is no greater than an ordinary Turing machine. While uncertain, no-one's figured out how to create a "hypercomputer" yet. If SCTUT holds,it provides an anchor between the  perfectable-as-possible ideal of mathematics and the solidity of the Real Universe.

4) The Wallace and Dowe paper "Minimum Message Length and Kolmogorov Complexity" and closely related Vitanyi and Li paper "Minimum description length induction, Bayesianism, and Kolmogorov complexity" (both findable in PS or PDF on-line) establish a mathematical basis for Occam's razor; informally, that the simplest explanation that encodes all the available data (to within the data's uncertainty) that is output by a Turing Machine, is the one most likely to correctly predict future results and "be correct," even if subject to later disproof.

Ergo, if the SCTUT holds, and ZF does not contradict itself, the WDVL theorems hold in the Real World, and the simplest encoding is most likely the "truth", and allows for as solid a foundation for "science" as can be obtained until someone falsifies ZF or SCTUT.

By representing the evidence from individual fossils and species, one may reduce the encoding size by describing the evolving transformations from one species to another, much as video codecs compress information from one frame to the next. Ergo, evolution is much more probable to be correct than creationism.

As for Intelligent Design, the existence of the additional element of the Designer adds to the length of the encoding, and is thus less probably correct. Additionally, I point those interested to George Basalla's "The Evolution of Technology," which persuasively argues that human Design is an evolutionary process (of variation, reproduction, and competitive selection.) Or, in other words, the reason biology looks like design, is because design is a special case of evolution.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 27 2008,18:18

If Kev won't answer a simple question like from what was Sternberg expelled and by whom, how can anyone expect him to engage in a discussion, even at a 6th grade level, on science?

Insane.

Further insanity is to turn Ben Stein loose to do interviews.  Stein said, and I quote, "Where did thermodynamics come from?"

What?  WTF what?

Yes, I understand the words but sense not do they make.

No wonder they're keeping this docu-travesty under wraps.  It's going to need a health warning:  exposure to this kind of nonsense may cause burns and severe nausea.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 27 2008,18:21

Quote (Reed @ Feb. 27 2008,18:57)
I see a couple typos slipped into my earlier post, with no edit button in sight.
yet seems to should be yet no one seems to
and the final
about this is extraneous.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Wesley has asked > that missing edit buttons be brought to his attention by PM, Reed.

Welcome to the board.
Posted by: Richard Simons on Feb. 27 2008,18:37

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,11:03)
I think you ask a very telling question here: What difference does the origin of life make to current evolutionary theory about the diversity of life? (I'm summarizing.) There are two ways to answer that question. First, if it makes no difference (as you seem to be saying) then what's all the fuss about ID?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The fuss about ID is that it is an attempt to introduce religious, non-scientific notions into school science instruction. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support it, there is no theory, no predictions and no possible way to refute the idea that a god or gods had a hand in developing the great variety of life on Earth. In short, it is a completely empty concept.

You imply that ID is only concerned with the origin of life on Earth. I suspect many supporters of the concept would strongly disagree with you although it is hard to sure because it is a subject on which they stifle discussion.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If we look at a cancer cell as nothing but a highly successful Darwinian accident, that assumption will affect how we attempt to combat it. But if we can assume it was designed, we can reverse-engineer the cancer cell and potentially develop much more effective ways of defeating it's internal programming.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This sounds like hand-waving to me. Can you give an example of the kind of 'reverse-engineering' you have in mind and explain why it would not be possible unless we accept that 'goddidit'?

Something that I've always wondered about in connection with 'Intelligent Design' is that designing a car, a building or a dress does not result in the car, building or dress just popping into existence. Someone has to actually make it. Can you tell me how IDers envision the implementation of any design process? Sprites pushing around bits of DNA, angels zapping nuclei or what?

But before you answer any of these questions, what is the Theory of Intelligent Design?
Posted by: qetzal on Feb. 27 2008,20:17

Let's remind ourselves and Kevin what the Discovery Institute says the "theory" of ID is < (link) >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

[T]he dominant theory of evolution today is neo-Darwinism, which contends that evolution is driven by natural selection acting on random mutations, an unpredictable and purposeless process that "has no discernable direction or goal, including survival of a species." (NABT Statement on Teaching Evolution). It is this specific claim made by neo-Darwinism that intelligent design theory directly challenges.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In other words, Kevin, ID isn't just about where the universe came from, or even where the first life came from. ID claims that evolution cannot account for the current diversity of life, no matter where the first life form came from, and that an intelligence must have repeatedly intervened.

This claim is directly contrary to the actual evidence, which shows that evolution can account for existing diversity, existing biological complexity, etc.*

ID is like claiming that the first humans in North America must have been teleported here, because the existing explanations involving land bridges are impossible.

*Of course, the fact that evolution can account for biology is not proof that evolution does correctly account for biology, but that's beside the point here.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 27 2008,20:42

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,12:13)
Carlsonjok said, "To the extent that panspermia is a legitimate scientific question (and I am not necessarily convinced it is*), it would be so because it makes no untestable appeals to supernatural intervention."

But neither does ID!

That's not to say people don't hijack the theory to extrapolate to some sort of supernatural intelligence. But as I said in the lead up to my question, the nature of the supposed intelligence is beside the point. The question is, do we need to posit some sort of intelligence for the origin of life or not? I've yet to hear anyone attempt a full frontal answer to that question.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh come on.  Let's stop playing the disingenuous BS game of "We don't know anything about The Designer - it could be Space Aliens!!!11!!!"

The real scientists don't buy it, and even the sycophants can't repeat it for ten minutes without waxing poetic with “2,000 years ago someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for him?” and breaking into spontaneous choruses of Amazing Grace.

Where the hell is Lenny when you need him?

You want a "full frontal answer"?

No.

Happy?
Posted by: Paul Flocken on Feb. 27 2008,20:53

Where is Lenny?

Not that I am complaining.  I am one of those who thought there was just a little too much Lenny at times, but zero Lenny is not much better.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 27 2008,20:56

Quote (Paul Flocken @ Feb. 27 2008,21:53)
Where is Lenny?

Not that I am complaining.  I am one of those who thought there was just a little too much Lenny at times, but zero Lenny is not much better.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Last I heard, he's on hiatus until such time as he feels his services are once again necessary.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  Only the Lenny knows.
Posted by: Zarquon on Feb. 27 2008,21:07

Lenny's hanging out in news:talk.origins if you need a fix. He seems to have lost his pizza guy, though.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 27 2008,21:10

Well Christ on a cracker if the stuff Septic has been spouting today is not an open invitation to the good reverend Flank nothing is.

I just want to say that I am excited about the new members on the board, and I'm glad to see you guys here, even if it took a smarmy intellectual whore selling out the fruits of enlightenment for thirty shekels of silver, to make it happen.

here's to less navel gazing solipcist all opinions are equal and to more sciencing!!*

*stick around fellers you'll see it all.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Feb. 27 2008,21:26

This Disko Whore seems to think that they know something about origin of life research.

In a very short form;

Short amino acid chains (10> X < 20) have been shown to easily form abiotically.

Even better, alternating D- and L- amino acids in short peptides forms a helical molecule.

Better yet, such molecules are easily found as membrane pores in archaea, and marine bacteria.

Membranes readily form from abiotic lipids.

Still more better, these pores can establish charge gradients. These are metabolisms.

Mapping these peptides into a PNA, or RNA establishes a genome.

Holding a genome within the membrane establishes a cell.

There is no particular problem with terrestrial abiogenesis, even with the far more demanding criteria used in the sciences as opposed to creationism.

However, there is nothing in evolutionary biology that depends on knowing the origin of life.

Here is all that Darwin had to say about the origin of life in his Origin of Species.  



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
“ I believe that animals are descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lessor number.

Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype.  But analogy may be a deceitful guide.  Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their cellular structure, their laws of growth, and their liability to injurious influences.  ...  Therefore, on the principle of natural selection with the divergence of character, it does not seem incredible that, from some such low and intermediate form, both animals and plants may have been developed; and, if we admit this, we must likewise admit that all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth may be descended from some one primordial form.  But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted.  No doubt it is possible, as Mr. G. H. Lewes has urged, that at the first commencement of life many different forms were evolved; but if so, we may conclude that only a very few have left modified descendants.”

And, from the book’s last sentence;

“There is grander in this point of view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one ; ....”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So I note that Darwin was consistent in his opinion that there were few first life forms, and merely a possibly that  there could have been only one.  Also note that Darwin is little interested in the issue using well under one page of text from a 450 page book.

From the 6th edition,
< http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/ >

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. “

Charles R. Darwin, in a letter to the botanist Joseph Hooker (1871) wrote, "It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are present, which could ever have been present. But if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed. "

Later in the same letter, he observed,

"It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter."


Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 27 2008,21:38

but gary how does all these chemical reackshunz explain how come it feels so good to get drunk and eat puppies and be nazis and hump grandmaws and burn teh churches?

we gotta keep our story straight.  I know facts are irrelevant just wondering how I should hold my mouth.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 27 2008,22:23

Getting back to the theme of the movie, Expelled, for the life of me I just can't figure out who's been expelled for what by whom.

I've seen the trailers, I've read the blog, I've read the pre-reviews and I just can't figure it out.  I mean, all the people interviewed in the film have jobs and seem to be OK, so is Expelled some kind of big secret?

Too bad we don't have anyone who, like, was involved in writing the script or something to enlighten us.
Posted by: tsig on Feb. 27 2008,22:34

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 27 2008,15:50)
Quote (tsig @ Feb. 27 2008,14:18)
 
Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 27 2008,12:34)
   
Quote (Paul Flocken @ Feb. 27 2008,08:56)
When marketers want to publicize movies they want the public to go see, don't they usually, well, invite critics?  When I hear that a movie was not screened it always means they have a dud on their hands and they dont want people to know it.  I wonder how many non-disclosure agreements Lucas forced people to sign before watching the original StarWars?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In my professional experience, they are so eager for reviewers that they
1) Will let in anyone who says they’re a reviewer from such-n-such rag/paper (although I have never actually tried this, of course - I have ethics)
2) Give out free tickets to the public
3) Throw t-shirts at the crowd
4) Distribute press packets

Actually, non-disclosure agreements do have precedent – such as the secret audience preview of Gone with the Wind. However, I think that was verbal, simply to not reveal the plot, etc.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It was the ending.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*Brightens* Okay, smarty-pants! It was not the ending – after all, everyone knew that (and really, the last line in the film is rather like an ID “prediction,” no?). It was the “will they-won’t they” say that other line.

Yes, that famous line, which could also express the audience’s attitude toward Expelled when it finally opens, the possibility of which hovers like a vulture over Stein’s anguish over losing his money, doesn’t it? :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


edited for common sence
Posted by: snaxalotl on Feb. 28 2008,00:09



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kevin, sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but consciousness is material.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



sorry to break the news to you, but consciousness is one of the most fuzzily defined concepts in all of philosophy. I would agree that all mental phenomena are constructed from material phenomena, but to me almost any statement of fact involving the word consciousness wouldn't look less silly if you replaced consciousness with sticktuitiveness
Posted by: Cubist on Feb. 28 2008,07:42

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:40)
Okay, here’s a question with an unfortunately long lead-up: The way I see it, one reason ID is so controversial is that it argues mind precedes matter in the form of a creative intelligence; whereas classic evolutionary theory says that mind is a product of matter. Intelligence is one of the last things to appear on the scene.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I kinda doubt that that has anything to do with why ID is so 'controversial'. Somehow, I rather suspect that ID's 'controversial' nature has just a teensy bit more to do with the facts that science is all about testable ideas, that ID simply doesn't have any testable ideas, and that IDists still insist that ID is just as good as real science.
But regardless of whether or not I am correct about why ID is 'controversial', I note that your remarks here don't come within a country megaparsec of answering one simple question:
What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But when confronted with the question of how life began, many evolutionary theorists allow that perhaps Panspermia had something to do with it. This theory is broadly accepted as a scientific possibility even though it also posits that mind came first and matter—at least the highly organized arrangements of matter we call living things—second.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, panspermia is, indeed, accepted as a "scientific possibility". The main reason for this is, we have good ideas on how we could go about testing panspermia. Of course, the necessary tests (stuff like "go searching on other planets to see if there's life there") are just a tad impractical, which is why panspermia is generally accepted as a scientific possibility, and not as a scientific theory. ID differs from panspermia in that there really isn't any way to actually test the son of a bitch. Which reminds me that this paragraph of yours, like the one before, does not come anywhere near answering my simple question:
What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So my question is, why is one theory so controversial and the other not? What if you stripped away all of the religious and political baggage from ID?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know, Kevin. What if you did "strip... away all of the religious and political baggage from ID]? And shouldn't you really be asking ID's supporters why the heck they haven't "stripped away all of the religious and political baggage from ID"? One way to go about stripping away said baggage would be if ID's supporters would quit whining about how Teh Evil Darwinianismists are so horribly unfair to ID, and instead answer, in plain language, one simple question:
What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Would the theory be more acceptible then? And wouldn’t ID and Panspermia become nearly indistinguishable? After all, both argue that perhaps the best possibility for explaining how life began is a higher intelligence that seeded it on earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


as has already been pointed out, panspermia does not "argue that perhaps the best possibility for explaining how life began is a higher intelligence that seeded it on earth". All panspermia does argue is that however life in the universe began, it happened someplace other than Earth.
Be that as it may, I note that you still haven't yet come within a country gigaparsec of answering one simple question:
What is the scientific theory of intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
We can argue all day about what the nature of that intelligence really is. But that’s beside the main point: Do we need intelligence to explain things like the origin and diversity of life or not? Classical evolution says no, ID and Panspermia say yes. Two different answers to the same question. I fail to see how one answer is scientific and the other not.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you don't see why ID is not scientific, you must surely have an answer to my simple question:
What is the scientific theory of intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?
So why haven't you, like, answered that simple question, Kevin? Why have you chosen to go off on a tangent about a speculative hypothesis like panspermia, rather than just answering this simple question:
What is the scientific theory of intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That being said, I’m sure someone is going to go off about the scientific method and how the IDers aren’t serious scientists, that they’re a bunch of liars, etc. But once again, that’s beside the point. Never mind their methods or their ethics. Is the question the ID community is asking scientific or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You're assuming that the "ID community" is asking a question, Kevin. As far as I can tell, those guys ain't asking jack shit; rather, they're asserting "Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, someway, evolution is wrong." don't know, Kevin. What if you did "strip... away all of the religious and political baggage from ID]? And shouldn't you really be asking ID's supporters why the heck they haven't "stripped away all of the religious and political baggage from ID"? One way to go about that would be to ask ID's supporters one simple question:
What is the scientific theory of intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?
Posted by: Cubist on Feb. 28 2008,08:04

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Feb. 27 2008,08:46)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The trouble is, nobody else in the ID movement seems to know, either!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Cubist, I'd say that they do know.  And I'd agree with them partway (separating for the moment the messengers).  If you take what some of these demonstrated liars say at face value, their claim is that sometimes we can analytically deduce some property of some features of some objects as being 'designed' by some agents.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's the ID claim, yes. But that claim is false. Consider that the class of "Designed entities" covers everything from a ham sandwich to a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to a F-18 fighter jet; exactly what 'signature of Design' do all Designed entities share in common? Hell, what 'signature of Design' can all Designed entities share in common? Thus, looking for Design is a fool's game. So what real scientists do is, they note that every Designed object known to Man must necessarily have been manufactured, and therefore, real scientists look for signs of Manufacture. And if they find signs of Manufacture, that how they know whatever-it-was is a Designed entity.
ID, of course, is absolutely silent on the question of how the Designer implemented His/Her/Its/Their Design(s)...
Posted by: Cubist on Feb. 28 2008,08:11

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:46)
You're dodging the question, oldman. You know as well as I do that evolutionary theory is supposed to explain the origin AND diversity of life. How about attempting a serious answer?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


By now, Kevin, you know that evolutionary theory doesn't care about the origin of life, because evolutionary theory would work just as well regardless of whether life originally arose via abiogenesis, or via some sort of intervention by an Intelligent Designer, or via a Divine 'poof', or what. So now that you're aware of your error, how about you take a shot at answering this one simple question:
What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?
Posted by: Cubist on Feb. 28 2008,08:14

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:48)
How has the theory of Panspermia proved its usefulness?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Beats the heck outta me, Kevin. How has the soi-disant 'theory' of ID proven its 'effectiveness'? I say ID has zero 'effectiveness', because it's not even a theory. But if you disagree, feel free to answer this one simple question:
What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?
Posted by: Cubist on Feb. 28 2008,08:23

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 27 2008,10:54)
Albatrossity: How is Panspermia consistent with the evidence? And exactly what evidence are you talking about? As for what the real question is, I'm accepting Mr. Christopher's invitation to ask questions today rather than answering them. As for your question, if you were really serious about finding an answer, a five-minute web search would give you more than enough information.

Oldman: You're dodging the question again. Is the question the IDers are asking scientific or not?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You got me, Kevin. Is the question the IDers are asking scientific? I can't say, because as far as I can tell, the IDists are not, in fact, asking any question at all; rather, the IDists are making an assertion, said assertion being "somehow, somewhere, somewhen, someway, evolution is wrong." If you think the IDists are, in fact, asking any kind of question, I'm sure you'll have no trouble at all answering this one simple question:
What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, and how can this theory be tested by means of the scientific method?
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 28 2008,08:27

Quote (Cubist @ Feb. 28 2008,09:04)
Consider that the class of "Designed entities" covers everything from a ham sandwich to a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to a F-18 fighter jet; exactly what 'signature of Design' do all Designed entities share in common? Hell, what 'signature of Design' can all Designed entities share in common?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They all have an external purpose.

But for some reason the IDists don't seem to like that answer.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 28 2008,08:33

Cubist I agree that so far that claim is false.  I'll go further and say that even if it is true then there is still no merit for making the ontological leap that 'design = proof of designer' that is really the heart of their argument.

But that shouldn't matter.  This is really the only scientific claim that these magicians and charlatans are making, and it is worth keeping it at the forefront of criticism.  Everything is else is silly buggers piled on top of the whole book of logical fallacies, because at bottom it is a political-religious collusion for a power play.  Kevin, do you really believe this stuff you are spouting, or are you just along for the ride like Stein?
Posted by: olegt on Feb. 28 2008,08:56

From Ben Stein's op-ed < Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology? >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let's be humble about what we know and what we don't know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Shorter Ben Stein: I no nuttin' and iz proud of it.
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 28 2008,09:17

Quote (olegt @ Feb. 28 2008,09:56)
From Ben Stein's op-ed < Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology? >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let's be humble about what we know and what we don't know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Shorter Ben Stein: I no nuttin' and iz proud of it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Too bad Ben has zero humility when it comes to his ignorance of evolution.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 28 2008,10:02



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Let's make this short and sweet. It would be taken for granted by any serious historian that any ideology or worldview would partake of the culture in which it grew up and would also be largely influenced by the personality of the writer of the theory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let me be short and sour because a dose of reality always is. Some professional historians actually hold nonacademic, for-profit jobs that require them to know history from their own ass and to apply it every day. I have worked for them. Ben Stein is no historian, academic or otherwise.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
No less a genius than the evil Karl Marx noted
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What an ignorant statement! "Evil," stuff and nonsense. Marx was no Marxist any more than Christ was a Christian. I observe that Marx is good enough for Stein to refer to, whereas he rarely if ever quotes Darwin and certainly never accurately represents him.
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In other words, major theories do not arise out of thin air.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Duh, and children don't come from the stork. You don’t get away with this fluff in sophomore composition class, honey, so you shouldn’t get away with it now.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Darwinism, the notion that the history of organisms was the story of the survival of the fittest and most hardy, and that organisms evolve because they are stronger and more dominant than others, is a perfect example of the age from which it came: the age of Imperialism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, come on. This is Lamarckism! Individuals don't evolve, and evolution is not a ladder toward perfection or Aryan qualities or any of that rot. Those species that have an advantage from a mutation that happens to be beneficial in their particular environment and circumstance will produce more offspring than those that do not. Those that do not still produce offspring and still largely succeed. Even the strongest, best “fit” animal can die from a freak accident before reproducing. Everything dies – death is not the mechanism, differential reproduction is. Ben Stein, this is not rocket science.
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
When Darwin wrote, it was received wisdom that the white, northern European man was destined to rule the world. This could have been rationalized as greed - i.e., Europeans simply taking the resources of nations and tribes less well organized than they were. It could have been worked out as a form of amusement of the upper classes and a place for them to realize their martial fantasies. (Was it Shaw who called Imperialism "...outdoor relief for the upper classes?")
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwin loathed slavery and while on the HMS Beagle argued vehemently with Captain FitzRoy, a devout Christian, about it. FitzRoy was pro-slavery and racist.

It would be taken for granted by any serious historian that someone who purports to speak for the history of a theory should have at least a fucking clue about 1) that theory, and 2) its history. Stein does not.
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But it fell to a true Imperialist, from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was "owned" (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism. By explaining that Imperialism worked from the level of the most modest organic life up to man, and that in every organic situation, the strong dominated the weak and eventually wiped them out.
Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature. In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself. He was the ultimate pitchman for Imperialism.
Now, we know that Imperialism had a short life span. Imperialism was a system that took no account of the realities of the human condition. Human beings do not like to have their countries owned by people far away in ermine robes. They like to be in charge of themselves.
Imperialism had a short but hideous history - of repression and murder.
But its day is done.
Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media. Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.
Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.
Now, a few scientists are questioning Darwinism on many fronts. I wonder how long Darwinism's life span will be. Marxism, another theory which, in true Victorian style, sought to explain everything, is dead everywhere but on university campuses and in the minds of psychotic dictators. Maybe Darwinism will be different. Maybe it will last. But it's difficult to believe it will. Theories that presume to explain everything without much evidence rarely do. Theories that outlive their era of conception and cannot be verified rarely last unless they are faith based. And Darwinism has been such a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies, maybe we would be better off without it as a dominant force.
Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let's be humble about what we know and what we don't know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Such nonsense. Simple-minded, fallacious arguments following a weak premise. Evolution was around long before Darwin - he came up with natural selection. Why is Imperialism being laid at his door? Why not lay imperialism on FitzRoy, whose voyage was itself partly a racist mission? And was this not also the Victorian age, the steam age, etc.? My God, let's ban all mention of steam engines in front of the children, they might run out and become "imperialist," perhaps by invading Iraq. Twice. (You remember Iraq, right Ben?)

Ben Stein is a fine person to speak of “imperialism,” being that he only got to where he is on his own family’s money and privilege. If he had had to work his way up by walking in my shoes while writing garbage like this, he would have flunked high school.

Must be nice to be a preppy blowhard and get paid for churning out this low-brow e-mail hoax (containing all the elements - the hook, the threat, and the promise - of those silly mental viruses) that are forwarded by terrorized church ladies. "Let's be humble," indeed. But then, I figured out long ago that there will always be fools ready to argue with you – and they win at being fools because they have much more experience.

Oh, and what does this have to do with the [in]validity of intelligent design? Is ID the only "alternative" offered by this great intellect?

Ironically, Ben Stein has changed my mind about him. He cannot be this stupid. He is writing lies about Darwin and he knows it. But I do think there is something sincere lurking behind this and it is, as I said before, fear.

Stein invokes Hitler but it is not Hitler that he fears. Fascism is not, as I said earlier, America’s bugabear – apocalyptic thinking is, and that is what he engages in here. And the gullible will believe him – they’ll believe anyone who does not have the guts to tell them that the future is unknown, that life offers one mostly uncertainty, and that while science doesn’t have many answers yet there are some questions for which science may never have an answer, which means we can never know these answers, and you have to learn to live with that.
Posted by: Paul Flocken on Feb. 28 2008,10:16


Posted by: olegt on Feb. 28 2008,10:31

And if Darwin is behind both Marxism and imperialism, it follows that he also gave us Denyse O'Leary.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 28 2008,11:35

Quote (olegt @ Feb. 28 2008,09:31)
And if Darwin is behind both Marxism and imperialism, it follows that he also gave us Denyse O'Leary.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, wasn’t it the pro-intelligent design Kansas school board member Kathy Martin who asserted that “We need more imperialism in science”? :p

What do you make of that? Anyone? Anyone? Ben?
Posted by: RBH on Feb. 28 2008,11:52

Quote (Cubist @ Feb. 28 2008,08:04)
   
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Feb. 27 2008,08:46)
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The trouble is, nobody else in the ID movement seems to know, either!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Cubist, I'd say that they do know.  And I'd agree with them partway (separating for the moment the messengers).  If you take what some of these demonstrated liars say at face value, their claim is that sometimes we can analytically deduce some property of some features of some objects as being 'designed' by some agents.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's the ID claim, yes. But that claim is false. Consider that the class of "Designed entities" covers everything from a ham sandwich to a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to a F-18 fighter jet; exactly what 'signature of Design' do all Designed entities share in common? Hell, what 'signature of Design' can all Designed entities share in common? Thus, looking for Design is a fool's game. So what real scientists do is, they note that every Designed object known to Man must necessarily have been manufactured, and therefore, real scientists look for signs of Manufacture. And if they find signs of Manufacture, that how they know whatever-it-was is a Designed entity.
ID, of course, is absolutely silent on the question of how the Designer implemented His/Her/Its/Their Design(s)...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll repeat what I've posted many times over the years.  The "theory" of ID is this:    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Sometime or other, something(s) or other designed something or other, and then somehow or other manufactured that thing in matter and energy, all this occurring while leaving no independent evidence of the design process or the manufacturing process, and while providing no independent evidence for the presence, or even the existence, of the designing and manufacturing agent(s).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Now a question for Kevin is whether he can fill in even one of the placeholders (some       ) in that statement.  My bet is no.


Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 28 2008,11:56

I think Kevin is gone.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 28 2008,12:00

Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 28 2008,11:56)
I think Kevin is gone.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That can be read in many ways.
Posted by: steve_h on Feb. 28 2008,13:25

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 28 2008,16:02)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But it fell to a true Imperialist, from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was "owned" (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism. By explaining that Imperialism worked from the level of the most modest organic life up to man, and that in every organic situation, the strong dominated the weak and eventually wiped them out.
Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature. In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself. He was the ultimate pitchman for Imperialism.
Now, we know that Imperialism had a short life span. Imperialism was a system that took no account of the realities of the human condition. Human beings do not like to have their countries owned by people far away in ermine robes. They like to be in charge of themselves.
Imperialism had a short but hideous history - of repression and murder.
But its day is done.
Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media. Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.
Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.
Now, a few scientists are questioning Darwinism on many fronts. I wonder how long Darwinism's life span will be. Marxism, another theory which, in true Victorian style, sought to explain everything, is dead everywhere but on university campuses and in the minds of psychotic dictators. Maybe Darwinism will be different. Maybe it will last. But it's difficult to believe it will. Theories that presume to explain everything without much evidence rarely do. Theories that outlive their era of conception and cannot be verified rarely last unless they are faith based. And Darwinism has been such a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies, maybe we would be better off without it as a dominant force.
Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let's be humble about what we know and what we don't know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Such nonsense. Simple-minded, fallacious arguments following a weak premise. Evolution was around long before Darwin - he came up with natural selection. Why is Imperialism being laid at his door?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin Miller has a you tube video of Ben Stein in which he says    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Darwinism is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant theory, beyond words, brilliant but it only takes you part of the way
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Imperialism and genocide are, apparently, not quite enough. He also adds    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Believe me, none of us have anything but respect for Darwin, we just think that there are lot of questions that should be asked that aren't being asked
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Admittedly I'm doing a bit of a "Slimey Sal" here, because Imperialism and Genocide didn't come up in that interview.  It just astounds me (it shouldn't, I know) that he can flip between "Darwin the brilliant" and "Darwin is teh evil" depending on who he is talking to.
Posted by: rhmc on Feb. 28 2008,16:34

sigh.

ya'll done run off another one.
Posted by: Richard Simons on Feb. 28 2008,16:52

Quote (rhmc @ Feb. 28 2008,16:34)
sigh.

ya'll done run off another one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I wonder if it will count as another IDer being expelled?
Posted by: Cubist on Feb. 28 2008,16:57

Quote (RBH @ Feb. 28 2008,11:52)
Quote (Cubist @ Feb. 28 2008,08:04)
     
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Feb. 27 2008,08:46)
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The trouble is, nobody else in the ID movement seems to know, either!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Cubist, I'd say that they do know.  And I'd agree with them partway (separating for the moment the messengers).  If you take what some of these demonstrated liars say at face value, their claim is that sometimes we can analytically deduce some property of some features of some objects as being 'designed' by some agents.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's the ID claim, yes. But that claim is false. Consider that the class of "Designed entities" covers everything from a ham sandwich to a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to a F-18 fighter jet; exactly what 'signature of Design' do all Designed entities share in common? Hell, what 'signature of Design' can all Designed entities share in common? Thus, looking for Design is a fool's game. So what real scientists do is, they note that every Designed object known to Man must necessarily have been manufactured, and therefore, real scientists look for signs of Manufacture. And if they find signs of Manufacture, that how they know whatever-it-was is a Designed entity.
ID, of course, is absolutely silent on the question of how the Designer implemented His/Her/Its/Their Design(s)...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll repeat what I've posted many times over the years.  The "theory" of ID is this:      

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Sometime or other, something(s) or other designed something or other, and then somehow or other manufactured that thing in matter and energy, all this occurring while leaving no independent evidence of the design process or the manufacturing process, and while providing no independent evidence for the presence, or even the existence, of the designing and manufacturing agent(s).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Now a question for Kevin is whether he can fill in even one of the placeholders (some       ) in that statement.  My bet is no.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


[nods] I came up with my own formulation of ID: "Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, somebody intelligent did something." Says pretty much the same thing as yours, but it's hopefully got more rhetorical punch for being pithier...
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 28 2008,17:02

Quote (Richard Simons @ Feb. 28 2008,16:52)
Quote (rhmc @ Feb. 28 2008,16:34)
sigh.

ya'll done run off another one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I wonder if it will count as another IDer being expelled?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Since ID persecution emcompasses hurt feelings (see the Sternberg case), I'm afraid that it has to count among the countless Expelled victims.

Glen D
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 28 2008,17:30

You all want to know why this is so messed up?

In the town in which I grew up, among the kids with whom I attended class, which I think was pretty representative of "just folks" middle America, being expelled was an ambition.

They knew they could always talk their way back in so that they could play football.

I'm afraid that poor Ben, poor privileged, preppy Ben, doesn't understand his target audience at all. Sure, few people want to learn about science, evolution, and Darwin - he's got that right. But that doesn't mean they want to learn something else in its place. That means they want to be told that throwing a football does more for a kid than any book, that NASCAR teaches you everything you need to learn in life, that listening to Led Zeppelin in the warehouse for forty straight years after your wild youth makes you just as cultured as the snooty twits (like you and me, Ben Stein) who go to the symphony. ;)

Ben loves God, and that's nice, and these people do, too - but they don't like God very much! He's still your Old Man, right? :D

I think Ben's in for a big surprise. You have to use special effect to make things real for the ordinary viewer. Giving your audience Talking Head is just going to make them ask, "If this shit is true, how come Rush [the other Rush] didn't write a song about it?" :)
Posted by: Chayanov on Feb. 28 2008,17:32

It's really something, to watch the Religious Right transferring their fear of Communism over to "Darwinism." Didn't you know that both Hitler and Stalin were Darwinists? Did you know that it was a Darwinist who ran over your puppy when you were a child? That it's the Darwinists who are trying to take Christmas away from you? It's like the 1950s, but without the catchy slogans. "Do you now or have you ever accepted natural selection as a mechanism of evolutionary change?" Stein just can't resist bringing up Marx whenever he talks about Darwin, as if the two sat down together to figure out how to bring about the destruction of civilization. There weren't Communists hiding under our beds and there aren't Darwinists lurking in our closets.
Posted by: Chayanov on Feb. 28 2008,17:38



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben loves God, and that's nice, and these people do, too - but they don't like God very much! He's still your Old Man, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's probably why we're seeing the abandonment of Intelligent Design in favor of old-fashioned Creationism at the grassroots level. To the layperson, ID is still academic eggheads talking down to them, only now they're talking down about both religion and science. This public doesn't understand or care about the science, and they don't need or appreciate Dembski, Behe, or Wells telling them about religion.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 28 2008,18:05

Quote (Chayanov @ Feb. 28 2008,18:32)
There weren't Communists hiding under our beds and there aren't Darwinists lurking in our closets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you sure?  Have you checked your closet?  You really should wear these argyle socks more often, but this shirt here really needs to go.  It's so not your color.
Posted by: Chayanov on Feb. 28 2008,18:19

You know, I was going to add a joke about who might be hiding in our closets, but left it up to someone else to make the comment. Thanks! :)
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 28 2008,18:24

I see Kevin!



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
>Richardthughes >theloneliestmonk >rhmc >Paul Flocken >kevinmillerxi >Reed >ppb >Louis >creeky belly >Annyday >Lou FCD >Thought Provoker >angst >Venus Mousetrap >C.J.O'Brien >Dr.GH >dochocson
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



*waves*

Hi Kevin. Please don't be researching for your new film, "Meanies - nasty science types"
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 28 2008,18:25

Quote (Chayanov @ Feb. 28 2008,19:19)
You know, I was going to add a joke about who might be hiding in our closets, but left it up to someone else to make the comment. Thanks! :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, the real joke is these plaid bell-bottoms.  You really need to go shopping.

:p

HTH
Posted by: Chayanov on Feb. 28 2008,18:32

Considering what's in my closet that you could have commented on, I should consider myself lucky...
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 28 2008,18:37



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Please don't be researching for your new film, "Meanies - nasty science types"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I bet Kevin would tell you it was called something else, with a catchier name.  Like I dunno off the top of my head "Crossroads" or maybe something to catch the skeptic/FtK demographic "Opinions:  Are they all equal, or are some more or less equal".  I could also imagine "God:  Dinin't He or Unh UNh No He Dininin't"

What do you think Kevin?  I done copyrighted this shit you little bitch.  Don't be interviewin' my homeboys and be frontin' all up on my tip you lil' ho.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 28 2008,19:27

In the expelled trailer (15 seconds in) Ben walks to the podium, being vacated by TED HAGGARD. Why did god teh designer design TEH GAYNESS?
Posted by: khan on Feb. 28 2008,19:29

Quote (olegt @ Feb. 28 2008,09:56)
From Ben Stein's op-ed < Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology? >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let's be humble about what we know and what we don't know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Shorter Ben Stein: I no nuttin' and iz proud of it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"I know plenty o' nuthin
And nuthin's plenty for me"
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 28 2008,21:16

You know, this is pretty sad, but if Ben Stein had gone all the way in selling his soul and blamed "Darwinism" on the Jews, all these goyum that he is bribing with discounted tickets to see his film would willingly flock (something that they know how to do) to it. Because despite all the late-hour embrace of Zionism by right-wing evangelicals they still believe that the Jews control the international banking system and that "the Lord God does not hear the prayers of a Jew." (Hell, they probably thought of Jews when Stein wrote that piece about the market being manipulated by traders.)

As I said - it's sad, and it's disgusting. But Stein should have known better. What does he think of the idiots who are praising his film for "leading people to Jesus"?
Posted by: Reed on Feb. 28 2008,22:18

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 28 2008,21:16)
As I said - it's sad, and it's disgusting. But Stein should have known better. What does he think of the idiots who are praising his film for "leading people to Jesus"?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Especially since most of the backing for ID comes from evangelical protestants. Think for a moment about what the founder of that movement had to say about jews, and which group of genocidal nutjobs was so fond of quoting him. Yet somehow "Darwinism" is hopelessly tainted by Darwins imperialist upbringing, while a religious sect created by someone who outright advocated discrimination, abuse, and ethnic cleansing (if not outright genocide) is A-OK ?

If "Darwinism" is evil because it was used (however vaguely and illogically) by madmen to justify mass murder, wouldn't that also apply to someone who's writings, read literally by the same madmen, were explicitly used to justify the same acts ?

While we are on the subject of rejecting ideas which were used (or abused) rationalize atrocities, would Mr. Stein care to discuss the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Salem witch trials ? Once we're done with those, maybe we could have a look through the old testament and see if there's any ideas guilty by association there ?

Are you sure you want to throw that particular rock next to your lovely glass house there Mr. Stein ? Anyone ? Bueller ?

This, BTW, was the point of my < earlier questions > for Kevin, which he has so far, to my great surprise, declined to answer.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 28 2008,23:44

Well, Reed, to be fair to the little showman, he has been piled upon.  And I'm sure he likes it.  Why else would skeptic FtK Daniel Smith VMartin Keith Robinson Kevin Miller come here, if not to renew teh scientz and cultyoor?
Posted by: bystander on Feb. 29 2008,04:36

Kevin was a bit of a disappointment. He was happy to discuss philosophy but nothing about the specifics of the movie. You would think a movie maker would be interested in the "other side" of the whole expelled thing. I know that I would be nervous that I may have been taken in by the DI crowd, and appear as a fool.

The only thing that I can derive from what Kevin has written is that he thinks that Science is not including the supernatural it doesn't matter that they are promoting liars (Well he didn't seem interested in defending any of the ID gang here) and slandering scientists.
Posted by: Richard Simons on Feb. 29 2008,07:56

I wonder if Kevin, who clearly knows very little about science, thought that the IDers had a case when he made the film but but now knows, or suspects, that they took him for a ride. I imagine it would be a very difficult situation as there is no way to back out gracefully and without being attacked.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 29 2008,09:24

Quote (Richard Simons @ Feb. 29 2008,07:56)
I wonder if Kevin, who clearly knows very little about science, thought that the IDers had a case when he made the film but but now knows, or suspects, that they took him for a ride. I imagine it would be a very difficult situation as there is no way to back out gracefully and without being attacked.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Plus the cash would be committed and work would be done.

Kevin's diary, day 134:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I can't believe it, they still haven't shown me their labs! That nimrod Dembski was busy talking up research at the start but all he does is write books. These fellas seem great at press releases, but I don't think they have any scientists on board. Plus it's 'Jesus this and Jesus that' when they think no-one is looking. We're going to give up the "ID isn't religious" angle - shit the fundies will love it more if there's a sprinkling of god in there..
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 29 2008,09:36

Quote (Richard Simons @ Feb. 29 2008,06:56)
I wonder if Kevin, who clearly knows very little about science, thought that the IDers had a case when he made the film but but now knows, or suspects, that they took him for a ride. I imagine it would be a very difficult situation as there is no way to back out gracefully and without being attacked.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, no, I think he knows better than that - I think he had what he thought was a finger to the wind.

It's pretty sad when someone brags about a good < review by Tom Bethell >. Miller also wrote the film After… about urban infiltration. I should like to see it, although from what I’ve read the story about urban explorers gets muddled with supernatural elements. (Groan.) The film industry has really run out of ideas.

However, in my opinion it is the ID crowd that is being taken for a ride here! I speculate that we have had a whole generation of people grow up on special effects, and who as a result are quite underwhelmed by reality – and they, not necessarily because they are of the same religious persuasion as the ID activitsts, but because of the mental habits they have formed, wish to jazz science up a little with some “supernaturalism,” i.e., special effects and these shallow “philosophical questions,” but not necessarily any religious agenda – and certainly not Dembski’s or Bethell’s or Coulter’s.

< From indb: >
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In a controversial new satirical documentary, author, former presidential speechwriter, economist, lawyer and actor Ben Stein travels the world, looking to some of the best scientific minds of our generation for the answer to the biggest question facing all Americans today: Are we still free to disagree about the meaning of life? Or has the whole issue already been decided... while most of us weren't looking? The freedom to legitimately challenge "Big Science's" orthodoxywithout persecution.

The debate over evolution is confusing and to some, bewildering: "Wasn't this all settled years ago?" The answer to that question is equally troubling: "Yesand no."

The truth is that a staggering amount of new scientific evidence has emerged since Darwin's 150-year-old theory of life's origins. Darwin had no concept of DNA, microbiology, The Big Bang, Einstein's Theory of Relativity or of the human genome.

Each of these discoveries has, in one way or another, led a growing number of scientists to reconsider the simple view espoused by Darwin that life is a random, purposeless, chance occurrence. The universe, and life itself - is turning out to be far more complex and mysterious - than Darwin could possibly have imagined.

Darwin's theory isn't a single idea. Instead, it is made up of several related ideas, each supported by specific arguments. Of the three, only Evolution #1 can be said to be scientifically "settled."

- Evolution#1: First, evolution can mean minor changes in features of individual species - changes that take place gradually over a (relatively) modest period of time.

- Evolution # 2: The Theory of Universal Common Descent - the idea that all the organisms we see today are descended from a single common ancestor somewhere in the distant past. This theory paints a picture of the history of life on earth as a great branching tree, from a single cell that "somehow" materialized.

- Evolution#3: A cause or mechanism of change, the biological process Darwin thought was responsible for this branching pattern. Darwin argued that natural selection had the power to produce fundamentally new forms of life. Together, the ideas of Universal Common Descent and natural selection form the core of Darwinian evolutionary theory. "Neo - Darwinian" evolution combines our knowledge of DNA and genetics to claim that mutations in DNA provide the variation upon which natural selection acts.

When you see the word "evolution." You should ask yourself, "Which of the three definitions is being used?" Because arguments and evidence supporting #1 do not support #2 or #3!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is just manufactured "drama" - that's what Kevin's selling.
Posted by: carlsonjok on Feb. 29 2008,10:00

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 29 2008,09:36)
The film industry has really run out of ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not true!  Coming soon is a < new Spiderman >, < new Terminator >, < new Batman >, and a < new X-Men >.

Added in Edit:  < Batman Begins >, the fifth movie in the series, was a radical departure from it's predecessors.  Enough to be considered a different franchise. IMO. YMMV.
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 29 2008,12:14

Ben is going to be on < Larry King Live > tonight.  There's a link on that page where you can submit questions for the guests.  I'm thinking that maybe if enough people ask one particular question, it will get used on the show.

Bonus: Penn Jillette will also be on the show.  Maybe he'll be able to hold Ben's feet to the fire.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 29 2008,12:42

Quote (improvius @ Feb. 29 2008,12:14)
Ben is going to be on < Larry King Live > tonight.  There's a link on that page where you can submit questions for the guests.  I'm thinking that maybe if enough people ask one particular question, it will get used on the show.

Bonus: Penn Jillette will also be on the show.  Maybe he'll be able to hold Ben's feet to the fire.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not that Stein will answer whatever question is asked.  He'll bring up his stale, "no one knows where gravity comes from," and "Darwinism doesn't tell us how life originated."  

Thank the Designer that Penn will be there.  Still, that's typical, no scientist or any other person who thoroughly knows the scientific method and exactly why ID fails, the best we have opposite ignorant Stein is a smart magician, whose intelligence won't make up for lack of considerable knowledge of the subject.  

But then that might be due in part to Stein et al., since all of the Expelled people play hooky the moment they're invited to give us some evidence that ID is science, or that it is treated at all badly.  Isn't that right, Kevin?

Glen D
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 29 2008,12:47

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Feb. 29 2008,13:42)
Thank the Designer that Penn will be there.  Still, that's typical, no scientist or any other person who thoroughly knows the scientific method and exactly why ID fails, the best we have opposite ignorant Stein is a smart magician, whose intelligence won't make up for lack of considerable knowledge of the subject.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


On the contrary, Penn is < quite knowledgeable > on this particular topic.  I think Ben is in for a rough ride.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 29 2008,13:03

Quote (carlsonjok @ Feb. 29 2008,10:00)
Edit:  < Batman Begins >, the fifth movie in the series, was a radical departure from it's predecessors.  Enough to be considered a different franchise. IMO. YMMV.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Filmed in my neighbourhood!
Posted by: J-Dog on Feb. 29 2008,13:46

Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 29 2008,13:03)
Quote (carlsonjok @ Feb. 29 2008,10:00)
Edit:  < Batman Begins >, the fifth movie in the series, was a radical departure from it's predecessors.  Enough to be considered a different franchise. IMO. YMMV.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Filmed in my neighbourhood!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I want to hear stories about you stealing Katie Holmes away from Scientolonut Tommy Boy Cruise.

I have a vision of you holding on to his head with one hand, as he is swinging wildly and ineffectually at you.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Feb. 29 2008,18:12

Quote (J-Dog @ Feb. 29 2008,13:46)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 29 2008,13:03)
Quote (carlsonjok @ Feb. 29 2008,10:00)
Edit:  < Batman Begins >, the fifth movie in the series, was a radical departure from it's predecessors.  Enough to be considered a different franchise. IMO. YMMV.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Filmed in my neighbourhood!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I want to hear stories about you stealing Katie Holmes away from Scientolonut Tommy Boy Cruise.

I have a vision of you holding on to his head with one hand, as he is swinging wildly and ineffectually at you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


During the first film, they closed La Salle street leading up to the Chicago board of trade (Wayne towers) to film some helicopter footage that was later enhanced with CGI to become the monorail end chase. I stood on the side of the street screaming "Dana Nananana Dana Nananana BATMAN!!!11111oneone" as loud as my wickle lungs would let me. I got moved along. I did not make the final edit.  ???  :angry:
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Feb. 29 2008,18:30

What do you know, Kevin Miller finally responded to what I wrote, only I had to hit him elsewhere before he babbled incoherently:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I see Glen D. has been having a heyday with the following statement that I made on antievolution.org: "I see ID as a challenge not just to Darwinian evolution but to the very foundation of the scientific enterprise itself."
Somehow he takes that to mean I oppose the very foundation of science, which is patently untrue. What I meant to communicate is that one of the reasons I think ID is so controversial is that it doesn't just represent an evidential challenge to evolutionary biology, it also represents a philosophical challenge to our current definition of science. That's why I find this whole controversy so interesting, b/c it forces us to ask a number of fundamental questions about the nature of science that we wouldn't be asking if the IDers weren't around. I fail to see how this observation pits me against science in any way.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is what he wrote on Colorado Confidential, which is where I'd respond in turn, if their server would let me.

Kevin is such a jerk.  Ooh, ID is so lovely, because it lets uneducated dolts like him stick their noses into epistemological issues that they don't understand.

The news for you, Kevin, is that these issues are discussed all of the time, but never profitably by those who understand neither science nor philosophy.  You've never told me that you'd be willing to submit yourself to the "standards" of ID if you were accused of some crime, and I'm sure that's in part because you wouldn't be willing to be subjected to such dishonest "standards" (and in part because you refuse to engage in honest discussions).

Besides which, why aren't you bothering physics with your middle school relativism?  Why are you only troubling biology with your low-level prattle?  The fact of the matter is that it is in physics where epistemological issues truly do come up.  Biology sticks largely with classical science, and is as nearly unproblematic as Newton's laws in the questions of what constitutes evidence, and what does not (sure, biology is more complex, but what is evidence is not a problem).

Glen D
Posted by: Doc Bill on Feb. 29 2008,18:41

I think Ben Stein has a point.

Where DID thermodynamics come from?

I think it came from the fiery bowels of Hell and rose up and belching a sulfurous breath, threw down a slide rule, and demanded, "Solve me!!  To four decimal places."

I cursed, "Thermodamnics ye be!"

But, I was saved in the end by Saint Hewlett who sent down HP-45's from heaven.  I solved and was absolved.  To NINE decimal places!

I was an athermodynamithist from that day forward.
Posted by: Chayanov on Feb. 29 2008,19:12



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What I meant to communicate is that one of the reasons I think ID is so controversial is that it doesn't just represent an evidential challenge to evolutionary biology, it also represents a philosophical challenge to our current definition of science.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Darn those scientists. If they'd just admit that God did it, astrology tells the future, and prayer trumps penicillin then we'd all get along.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Feb. 29 2008,19:13

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 29 2008,07:36)
The film industry has really run out of ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My next door neighbor is a film editor.  They wrapped the next Indiana Jones movie today, and he starts working next week on a horror flick.  Maybe the idea is “Do What Works.”

Reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and Chaucer has convinced me that there really are no new plots.  (Well, the murder mystery was new when Edger Allen Poe wrote one).
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Feb. 29 2008,20:30

If I heard that right, Penn Gillette is off in the next half hour. The first half was all about the presidential campaign.
Posted by: improvius on Feb. 29 2008,21:12

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 29 2008,21:30)
If I heard that right, Penn Gillette is off in the next half hour. The first half was all about the presidential campaign.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


As was the second half.  Bah.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Feb. 29 2008,21:15

Fran Drescher belongs with Ben Stein.  I think.  Maybe she doesn't deserve that.  He probably doesn't deserve a live human.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 01 2008,05:14

Interesting that Stein plugged his new book during the program, but AFAICT there was no mention of the movie.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 01 2008,14:18

Quote (Dr.GH @ Feb. 29 2008,18:13)
     
Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 29 2008,07:36)
The film industry has really run out of ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My next door neighbor is a film editor.  They wrapped the next Indiana Jones movie today, and he starts working next week on a horror flick.  Maybe the idea is “Do What Works.”

Reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and Chaucer has convinced me that there really are no new plots.  (Well, the murder mystery was new when Edger Allen Poe wrote one).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Reading the same convinced me that there are few new plots...but also that there are such things as, you know, plot, when you have interesting characters.

 
Quote (Glen Davidson @ Feb. 29 2008,17:30)

What do you know, Kevin Miller finally responded to what I wrote, only I had to hit him elsewhere before he babbled incoherently:    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I see Glen D. has been having a heyday with the following statement that I made on antievolution.org: "I see ID as a challenge not just to Darwinian evolution but to the very foundation of the scientific enterprise itself."
Somehow he takes that to mean I oppose the very foundation of science, which is patently untrue. What I meant to communicate is that one of the reasons I think ID is so controversial is that it doesn't just represent an evidential challenge to evolutionary biology, it also represents a philosophical challenge to our current definition of science. That's why I find this whole controversy so interesting, b/c it forces us to ask a number of fundamental questions about the nature of science that we wouldn't be asking if the IDers weren't around. I fail to see how this observation pits me against science in any way.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No argument about the incoherence, Glen. ("I'm not questioning the very foundations of science, I'm just questioning what science is founded on.") But, the thing is, to Kevin, this is all about Kevin. Kevin speaks like most of the thespians I've shared a stage with, or the "It was a dark and stormy relationship" novels I reviewed. He may be truly confused about the science, but he's mostly bullshitting anyway. This is sales. You have to sell yourself in the writing industry and in the film industry, and that's what he's doing. This is the generation that gets its philosophical "questions" from films like The Matrix. Oooh, everything we think we know may be WRONG! :)
Posted by: Freelurker on Mar. 01 2008,16:07

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 01 2008,15:18)
       
Quote (Glen Davidson @ Feb. 29 2008,17:30)

What do you know, Kevin Miller finally responded to what I wrote, only I had to hit him elsewhere before he babbled incoherently:          

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I see Glen D. has been having a heyday with the following statement that I made on antievolution.org: "I see ID as a challenge not just to Darwinian evolution but to the very foundation of the scientific enterprise itself."
Somehow he takes that to mean I oppose the very foundation of science, which is patently untrue. What I meant to communicate is that one of the reasons I think ID is so controversial is that it doesn't just represent an evidential challenge to evolutionary biology, it also represents a philosophical challenge to our current definition of science. That's why I find this whole controversy so interesting, b/c it forces us to ask a number of fundamental questions about the nature of science that we wouldn't be asking if the IDers weren't around. I fail to see how this observation pits me against science in any way.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The way I read it, his defense is that it's not him who's challenging science; it's those IDists who are doing it. He's just observing selling the controversy.

[Edit: "who's" rather than "that's"]
Posted by: celdd on Mar. 01 2008,17:45

A poster on Dailykos (< linky >) gives a heads-up that Mark Mathis, producer of Expelled, will be on the Coast to Coast radio show tonight - 11 pm to 2 am PST (check your local listings).

Wednesday night, the main guest was Uncle Walt with his views about Noah's Ark. (< linky >) However, he did get to mention many other topics in his book, including hydroplates, and how for over decades, no one will accept his debate terms.  Ugh.  What's worse, they took about ten calls at the end, and all but two thought he was wonderful.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 03 2008,10:40

Does anyone have the history on how Ben came to be involved in the film?
Posted by: carlsonjok on Mar. 03 2008,11:14

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 03 2008,10:40)
Does anyone have the history on how Ben came to be involved in the film?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My guess is that they probably needed a conservative entertainer-type and their first choice was busy.



EDIT: Fixed grammar not so good.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 03 2008,11:22

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 03 2008,09:40)
Does anyone have the history on how Ben came to be involved in the film?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, that's a documentary in itself, is it not? I am certainly interested in doing a little digging. :)

This "two sides to every story" let's-debate hogwash in popular discourse needs to be replaced with the fact that "there's always a story behind the story."

P.S. I just saw Sicko last night, and while Moore gets on my nerves in a major way the personal stories, plus the footage in Europe (and my experience of Europe) really drove home how irresponsible at best Stein is to scare people with Nazis when in fact we are practicing not eugenics ("good birth") in this country, but lousy birth and shitty treatment and rotten death. We are waging a medical war against the poor and middle class, while Stein (and Kevin et al) are jerking themselves off about Hitler.

How selfish.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 03 2008,11:43

I'm not sure where I read it, maybe it was in one of his interviews, but according to Ben he's already been paid for his work in the film (and it wasn't much says he).  That leads me to believe the film wasn't his idea.  

I'm just curious who sold him.  Well and how he began his new career as a fundamentalist, anti-science toady.

Simply tragic that he never spoke to any legit biologists but I suppose in his tiny world biologists are demon posessed liars that suck up to "big science" anyhow.  Did they even try and interview Ken Miller?  I know Barbara Forrest spotted a rotten pig right off the bat and declined to be interviewed.

random thoughts:

Interesting that the outfit who's promoting the film is the same one who promoted the mel gibson christian snuff film.  

I have a feeling we'll see more taunting from the crossroads expelled blog like they did last week with PZ Myers.  I bet they'll do more adolescent stuff like that thinking this will create buzz that will result in more ticket sales.  

Final question - Does any self-respecting person plan to actually pay money to see it?

ediztd:

Has everyone read < New mutation in Darwin debate: Doc 'Expelled' aims to discredit evolution > at Variety?   The DI just left their usual dishonest crap in the comments section.  Maybe a few folks here might want to leave comments.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 03 2008,13:04

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 03 2008,10:43)
I'm not sure where I read it, maybe it was in one of his interviews, but according to Ben he's already been paid for his work in the film (and it wasn't much says he).  That leads me to believe the film wasn't his idea.  

I'm just curious who sold him.  Well and how he began his new career as a fundamentalist, anti-science toady.

Simply tragic that he never spoke to any legit biologists but I suppose in his tiny world biologists are demon posessed liars that suck up to "big science" anyhow.  Did they even try and interview Ken Miller?  I know Barbara Forrest spotted a rotten pig right off the bat and declined to be interviewed.

random thoughts:

Interesting that the outfit who's promoting the film is the same one who promoted the mel gibson christian snuff film.  

I have a feeling we'll see more taunting from the crossroads expelled blog like they did last week with PZ Myers.  I bet they'll do more adolescent stuff like that thinking this will create buzz that will result in more ticket sales.  

Final question - Does any self-respecting person plan to actually pay money to see it?

ediztd:

Has everyone read < New mutation in Darwin debate: Doc 'Expelled' aims to discredit evolution > at Variety?   The DI just left their usual dishonest crap in the comments section.  Maybe a few folks here might want to leave comments.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stein says this in the < Variety > article itself, too. I've heard this before - it's not me, it's the Lord.

Interesting now that the DI is focusing on, through Stein, changing school curricula after denying that they wanted this during the Dover trial. A timeline with the DI's contradictory statements - there's another documentary film. Instead of "healthy debate," healthy context.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 03 2008,17:53

Has anyone posted this lecture by Crossroads Expelled producer Logan Craft yapping about Church and State at a 2006 Centre for Cultural Renewal Renewal conferance?  

Watch it < here >
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on Mar. 04 2008,08:46

Ben Stein writes in today's WingNutDaily: < Charles Darwin:  Imperialism's pawn >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Imperialism had a short but hideous history – of repression and murder.

But its day is done.

Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media. Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.

Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.

Now, a few scientists are questioning Darwinism on many fronts. I wonder how long Darwinism's life span will be. Marxism, another theory which, in true Victorian style, sought to explain everything, is dead everywhere but on university campuses and in the minds of psychotic dictators. Maybe Darwinism will be different. Maybe it will last. But it's difficult to believe it will. Theories that presume to explain everything without much evidence rarely do. Theories that outlive their era of conception and cannot be verified rarely last unless they are faith-based. And Darwinism has been such a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies, maybe we would be better off without it as a dominant force.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Jason Spaceman on Mar. 04 2008,08:49

And WingNutDaily publisher Joseph Farah is all giddy about the upcoming release of Expelled:  < I can't wait to be 'Expelled' >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It turns out some of the most hardened, doctrinaire anti-design zealots in the scientific establishment – people like Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion" and, coincidentally, the de facto leader of the worldwide atheist movement – aren't really opposed to the notion of design at all. They just can't accept God as the designer.

You will hear some of the world's most celebrated evolutionists admit design is possible – just not by the hand of God.

They will attribute the possibility of design to visitors from other planets and even to crystals. The two things they cannot tolerate are consideration of God's role and any of their colleagues deviating from their own ideas about origins.

It's not so much the architects of evolution are opposed to religion. It's that they have formed their own religion – absent the God of Christianity and Judaism.

As Ben Stein explains it: "Big Science in this area of biology has lost its way. Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it's anti-science. It's anti-the whole concept of learning."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 04 2008,10:05

Back in the day if biology or science had been a topic on "Win Ben Stein's Money", he'd be broke.

What a total dumb ass.  I still have such a hard time accepting the fact that Ben Stein is a complete dumb ignoramous who toadies for the Discovery Institute.  I mean the Wingnut Daily are the guys who said consuming soy makes you gay.  If that were true most every Asian on the planet would be gay.  Maybe Ben can do a propaganda piece about "Big Soy Industry" who's purpose is to make all men gay.

For some reason I still find Ben's stupidity shocking.

Silly me...

edit:

Ben's < Stanford Review interview > is somewhat telling.  Here Ben demonstrates what a hypocritical ignoramous he is when he mumbles,



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"When you say that “everyone knows” something, that doesn’t prove anything at all. We’ve never seen a species evolve; we have no idea how life started; we have no idea where the laws that govern the universe came from; Darwin doesn’t explain any of these. All these gigantically big issues still can only really be answered by saying, “well, some intelligent guy or gal or being had just done this; some being that always was and always will be…Part of the problem I have with both Christopher Hitchens’ and Jay Richards’ observations is that I don’t think it’s up to man to judge God. God’s not on trial, God isn’t a defendant, God’s the boss. It’s not up to us to judge him. God’s the boss!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Even juicier than his obvious god of the gaps ignorance is his hypocricy - note where on one hand Ben howls about Big Science suggesting "everyone knows something" without having to prove it.  The he goes on to suggest everyone knows god is the boss and no one should question that.  WTF?

What a tard.

Hey Ben, if you're going to push your ignorant god of the gaps theory in science class guess what?  Science relies on evidence and testing.  You're going to have to prove your god is science theory.  First prove god exists, then prove he's the boss.  

Please show your work, and no cheating Benjamin Stein.

Like it or not, if you shove god into science class then he's fair game for being judged and keep in mind, ignorance is not evidence.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 04 2008,20:18

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 04 2008,09:05)
Back in the day if biology or science had been a topic on "Win Ben Stein's Money", he'd be broke.

What a total dumb ass.  I still have such a hard time accepting the fact that Ben Stein is a complete dumb ignoramous who toadies for the Discovery Institute.  I mean the Wingnut Daily are the guys who said consuming soy makes you gay.  If that were true most every Asian on the planet would be gay.  Maybe Ben can do a propaganda piece about "Big Soy Industry" who's purpose is to make all men gay.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Except in Korea. There are no < gay people in Korea >! :p
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 04 2008,21:17

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 04 2008,20:18)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 04 2008,09:05)
Back in the day if biology or science had been a topic on "Win Ben Stein's Money", he'd be broke.

What a total dumb ass.  I still have such a hard time accepting the fact that Ben Stein is a complete dumb ignoramous who toadies for the Discovery Institute.  I mean the Wingnut Daily are the guys who said consuming soy makes you gay.  If that were true most every Asian on the planet would be gay.  Maybe Ben can do a propaganda piece about "Big Soy Industry" who's purpose is to make all men gay.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Except in Korea. There are no < gay people in Korea >! :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I dunno Kristine...Kim Jong II looks pretty gay to me, and Sung Myung Moon, ain't no doubt about it for sure.

I think you are on to something with your Big Soy Theory.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 05 2008,09:34

Kristine, the Korea thing just shows you how deep the BS (Big Soy) Industry conspiracy lurks. They are making us all ghay!  In fact I had sushi last night and without thinking I used low sodium soy sauce.  Now all the sudden I'm finding J-Dog's logo to be very handsome, what's up with that?

It's just a matter of time before Ben Stein champions the BS cause!  I heard a rumor they are going to promote his BS documentary at men's bath houses.  The films motto is going to be "STOP the BS Ben!"

Thank god for intellectual heavy weights like Ben Stein who are unafraid to take on a BS cause!  

Down with Big Soy!


edit:

J-Dog, do you have plans Friday night?  I thought we might grab some sushi and see Brokeback Mountain if you haven't seen it yet.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 06 2008,12:04

Speaking of the WingNutDaily publisher Joseph Farah, he gives us a glimpse into his views on science < here > and < here. >

Here are some of the juicier tidbits, and we can thank propagandists like Kevin Miller XI and Ben Stein for helping wingnuts like this come out of the woodwork.  

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The primary reason I believe, of course, is because the Bible tells me so. That's good enough for me, because I haven't found the Bible to be wrong about anything else.

The evolutionists insist the dinosaurs lived millions and millions of years ago and became extinct long before man walked the planet.  I don't believe that for a minute. I don't believe there is a shred of scientific evidence to suggest it. I am 100 percent certain man and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. In fact, I'm not at all sure dinosaurs are even extinct!

And what about the not-so-unusual sightings of contemporary sea monsters? Some of them have actually been captured.

There are also countless contemporary sightings of what appear to be pterodactyls in Asia and Africa.

You know what I think? I think we've been sold a bill of goods about the dinosaurs. I don't believe they died off millions and millions of years ago. In fact, I'm not at all convinced they've died off completely.

Evolutionists have put the cart before the horse. They start out with a theory, then ignore all the facts that contradict the theory. Any observation that might call into question their assumptions is discounted, ridiculed and covered up. That's not science.

How could all the thousands of historical records of dragons and behemoths throughout mankind's time on earth be ignored? Let's admit it. At least some of these observations and records indicate dinosaurs were walking the earth fairly recently ? if not still walking it today.

If I'm right about that ? which I am ? then the whole evolutionary house of cards comes tumbling down.

This is the evidence about which the evolutionists dare not speak

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yes indeed, evilutionists dare not speak of all that evidence of sea serpants living amongst us, and say nothing about all that evidence of pterodactyls in Asia and Africa currently flying about the treetops, and of course NOTHING in the bible is wrong.  Nothing at all.  

If evilutionists began admitting they've been hiding all the dinosaurs all these years (in their basements no less!) their little charade would crumble faster than the Berlin wall!

And these guys wonder why they're ridiculed. Kevin wonders why he and Ben are ridiculed.  What a bunch of complete tards.

Um, Joeseph (and Ben and Kevin Miller XI), believing the bible is correct because it tells you to is not science.  Complaining that your ideas are ridiculed when you make fantastic claims (dinosaurs currently flying around Asia/Africa) without providing a shred of evidence is not science and it begs ridicule.

Seeing who enjoys this movie is so freaking hilarious to me.  Nothing but flat earther and wingnuts.  Nice job Ben!  I wonde rhow long it will be before Ben Stein starts marketing healing magnets and power crystals and subsequently starts whining because he's ridiculed for it.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 06 2008,16:45

I've mostly sworn off subjecting myself to Expelled's censorious blog, but couldn't resist trying to get one of the first posts in jeering at their triumph in fooling a carefully-picked audience of fools.  Since I don't trust them, though, I'm cross-posting to here:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Blast, let’s try that again [mistake made in first attempt]:

So, you kept competent critics (scientists, etc.) out of the preview, stacked the audience with religiously-biased poorly educated sorts, and played your Godwin’s Law-evoking, science-avoiding, and ignorant-of-scientific-methods diatribe. And wow, you were cheered by the ignorant folk whom you intend to bamboozle with your snake-oil.

You must be so proud.

You can manipulate the ignorant and the prejudiced by displaying ignorance and prejudice. It’s one of those Kodak moments.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 06 2008,21:02

Likely my last post on that particular blog topic is in response to an egregious, stupid, and ignorant concern troll who doesn't mind that IDists haven't had the decency to engage our points, yet whines when we call them the ignorant clotheads that they are:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
<blockquote>Belittling your opponents, and using crude colloquialisms to insult them results in nothing. If you wish to change hearts, use the balm of charity, not the flamethrower of outrage and disgust.

Honestly, please debate courteously. Yelling down opponents, no matter how idiotic you think they are, is never the right thing to do. Listen, and respond intelligently to your opponents.</blockquote>

Dear Geoffrey, try to learn something before you go off accusing falsely as you did.  

We have answered Ben and the rest copiously and well.  They have not had, choose one or more:  the courtesy, decency, intelligence, knowledge, or the evidence, to give us a decent and intelligent response.

The fact is that the audience is as tilted, biased, and ignorant as I wrote.  You only complain because you don't like the truth.  

If you wish to actually debate something, look at my past posts, tell me how ID accounts for the fact that all vertebrate wings happened to be modified legs of their apparent ancestors, why taxonomy closely fits the predictions of (non-teleological) evolutionary theory, and why it is that the macroevolutionary patterns of prokaryotes and of eukaryotes look so different, as would be expected of a combination of clonal/conjugating evolutionary processes in the first case, and as expected of sexual processes in the second case.

I have asked that repeatedly here, and the IDists/creationists have been too rude, too ignorant, or most likely, far too fundamentally wrong, to give me a fair and honest answer to those questions.  

You, too, have failed to engage with me properly, or to fault the endlessly dishonest prattle of the IDists on these forums.  Not that I'm surprised, since I have yet to meet an IDist who will engage with the issues in an intellectually honest fashion.

And I'm already probably out of this thread (not a promise, a present intention).  The fact is that I have properly characterized the dishonesty of the blog article posted here, the evidence that supports this fact has been presented copiously by myself and others on these forums, and the mere fact that you prefer not to engage the substantive posts does not give you warrant to complain when I simply repeat the judgment that has been rendered in so minute detail in former posts.  

I really lack the patience to deal with someone who won't engage with the many issues I and others have brought up, but only faults us for dealing with IDists/creationists as they have exhibited themselves to be, at least on this blog.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 06 2008,21:23

Every time he had a chance to back up his lies and false accusations, brave Sir Kevin courageously ran away.  The moment that some mindless concern troll (perhaps Kevin) decided to show how partial and stupid he was, Kevin came back to scold (on TalkOrigins):

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Here's a good word for good old Glen D. taken from today's Expelled
blog. Just in case you missed it there, Glen!

Dear Glen Davidson,


Belittling your opponents, and using crude colloquialisms to insult
them results in nothing. If you wish to change hearts, use the balm of
charity, not the flamethrower of outrage and disgust.


Honestly, please debate courteously. Yelling down opponents, no matter
how idiotic you think they are, is never the right thing to do.
Listen, and respond intelligently to your opponents.


And no, just in case anyone has the idea in mind, mentioning that
idiotic, childish, annoying, and downright stupid "spaghetti monster"
is not an intelligent response. It doesn't do anything. It's like a
kid sticking his tongue out and saying, "you're stupid!" There are
more charitable and effective ways to communicate a point.


Don't be mean, don't be nasty. Okay? Now, play nice.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's official, he's incapable of doing anything but faulting others while he turns a blind eye to the colossal dishonesty of the movie he helped to write, and his failure to engage the issues.

Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 06 2008,22:14

I ran across a review of  Expelled that tells us a bit more about it.  Here's what I posted at Pharyngula:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This seems something like an open thread, and I think I have something good for a bit of bar talk.  It has some of the specifics of the Expelled film, and the ignorant blather of an engineer who thinks it's a "revealing" movie:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I attended a screening of EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED yesterday in Dallas.  We got struck in traffic, and arrived about twenty minutes into the picture.  It was still wonderful.  My son Joshua, a business major at Baylor, and Charley, my long time retired air force father in law, came too.  On about three hours each of sleep the previous night, we watched the movie with unwavering interest.  Wow. I want everybody to see this important film.  I now know where I will do my Christmas shopping.
 
 John Sullivan, one of the movie’s producers, said EXPELLED will open on about a thousand screens in February.  This is about the same number of screens for Michael Moore’s last documentary.There is sooooo much great stuff in this movie.  Here are some bullets.
 
 Like many great movies do, EXPELLED takes you on a roller coaster from belly laughs about some of the ridiculousness of Scientism, to anger at the manner Scientism treats good people, to alarm that atheism is being forced down our throats by the Academy, to hope that this problem can be corrected, and back to a belly laugh at one of Ben Stein’s quips.
 
 The identity of Scientism as atheism dressed in a cheap tuxedo (my words) came across strongly in the movie – especially in the interviews with atheists Richard Dawkins,  PZ Meyers, and Michael Ruse.  These men may have to change their occupation descriptions in 2008 to “Punch line for EXPELLED.”  
 
 There are great animations of the inside workings of a cell.  I’m not a biologist, but seeing this as an engineer invariably causes my jaw to drop.
 
 The contribution of  Darwinism to Nazi atrocities was addressed.  This could have been over the top – but came off well.   Parallel quotes from Hitler and Darwin were appropriately tempered by Berlinski saying something like “Of course Darwinism does not always lead to Nazism.  It is, though, a necessary albeit not sufficient component.”  There was a chilling visit to a Nazi “hospital” where the “unfit” were gassed by Hitler’s cult.  The contribution of the euthanasia movement to the founding of  Planned Parenthood was identified.
 
 Old B&W movie clips were sprinkled throughout the film.  One showed a 1950’s middle school bully (Big Science) sitting on the stomach of a victim (ID proponent) pinning his arms back.  The bully boy keeps saying “OK.  Now you’re on our side.  Say you’re on our side!”  It was hilarious.  
 
 There are also a bunch of short custom animated cartoons.  One is an animation of Richard Dawkins frustrated at the low probabilities emanating from a bank of slot machines.  The audience roared.
 
 There is plenty for the cerebral from both the scientific and political perspective.   Dr. Richard von Sternberg, Dr. Doug Axe, Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Dr. William Dembski, Dr. Jonathan Wells, Dr. Walter Bradley, Dr. Alister McGrath, Dr. Stephen Myer, Dr. Carolyn Crocker, Dr. David Berlinski, Dr. John Polkinghorn and yours truly were on screen.  (I KNOW I’m missing some. Sorry.)   Doug Axe and Stephen Myer did a lot of the heavy lifting concerning biology.
 
 Here’s a teaser.  How do Michael Ruse and Richard Dawkins explain the origin of life?  Be prepared to grin.  I am reminded of Richard Feynman’s explanation of all that is bogus:  The closer you look, the more it goes away.  
 
 The Berlin wall is used as a metaphor for the divide between ID and the Academy.  On one side of the wall are researchers who are required to conform to an ideology in order to get funding and tenure.   Near the end of the movie, there is a back and forth between Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech and Ben Stein giving an speech on academic freedom.  (a part of Ben Stein’s speech is in the EXPELLED Teaser Trailer.)  I admit getting a wonderful shiver.
 
 This is the ice berg tip.  There is so much wonderful stuff in the movie.  Co-Producer Mark Mathis said there are a lot of fantastic scenes that could not be included in the movie.  When the EXPELLED DVD is released, there will be a second DVD with these extras. This takes care of my Christmas shopping for next year.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 
< The wisdom of an engineer brought to bear on biology >

There you are, Berlinski saying what he doesn't know, the old bugabear of atheism, a bunch of cheesy animations to get around the fact that they can't make a case out of their sad little morons.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 06 2008,22:34

Sorry for the repetition, but after posting the last comments I decided to go ahead and try to post at Expelled, since the idea of anyone on the side of that bit of dishonest maligning of what they don't know telling somebody else to "play nice" is the height of hypocrisy:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Oh yeah, intentions change, things are found, and I decided I'd point out how <em>Expelled</em> fits Geoffrey's prejudicial "concerns" to a T, you know, "Belittling your opponents, and using crude colloquialisms to insult them results in nothing."

Here, it's should be interesting both to those who like the belittling that <em>Expelled</em> engages in (but doesn't trouble the hypocritical Geoffrey), and those who do not:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I attended a screening of EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED yesterday in Dallas. We got struck in traffic, and arrived about twenty minutes into the picture. It was still wonderful. My son Joshua, a business major at Baylor, and Charley, my long time retired air force father in law, came too. On about three hours each of sleep the previous night, we watched the movie with unwavering interest. Wow. I want everybody to see this important film. I now know where I will do my Christmas shopping. John Sullivan, one of the movie's producers, said EXPELLED will open on about a thousand screens in February. This is about the same number of screens for Michael Moore's last documentary.There is sooooo much great stuff in this movie. Here are some bullets.

Like many great movies do, EXPELLED takes you on a roller coaster from belly laughs about some of the ridiculousness of Scientism, to anger at the manner Scientism treats good people, to alarm that atheism is being forced down our throats by the Academy, to hope that this problem can be corrected, and back to a belly laugh at one of Ben Stein's quips.

The identity of Scientism as atheism dressed in a cheap tuxedo (my words) came across strongly in the movie - especially in the interviews with atheists Richard Dawkins, PZ Meyers, and Michael Ruse. These men may have to change their occupation descriptions in 2008 to "Punch line for EXPELLED."

There are great animations of the inside workings of a cell. I'm not a biologist, but seeing this as an engineer invariably causes my jaw to drop.

The contribution of Darwinism to Nazi atrocities was addressed. This could have been over the top - but came off well. Parallel quotes from Hitler and Darwin were appropriately tempered by Berlinski saying something like "Of course Darwinism does not always lead to Nazism. It is, though, a necessary albeit not sufficient component." There was a chilling visit to a Nazi "hospital" where the "unfit" were gassed by Hitler's cult. The contribution of the euthanasia movement to the founding of Planned Parenthood was identified.

Old B&W movie clips were sprinkled throughout the film. One showed a 1950's middle school bully (Big Science) sitting on the stomach of a victim (ID proponent) pinning his arms back. The bully boy keeps saying "OK. Now you're on our side. Say you're on our side!" It was hilarious.

There are also a bunch of short custom animated cartoons. One is an animation of Richard Dawkins frustrated at the low probabilities emanating from a bank of slot machines. The audience roared.

There is plenty for the cerebral from both the scientific and political perspective. Dr. Richard von Sternberg, Dr. Doug Axe, Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Dr. William Dembski, Dr. Jonathan Wells, Dr. Walter Bradley, Dr. Alister McGrath, Dr. Stephen Myer, Dr. Carolyn Crocker, Dr. David Berlinski, Dr. John Polkinghorn and yours truly were on screen. (I KNOW I'm missing some. Sorry.) Doug Axe and Stephen Myer did a lot of the heavy lifting concerning biology.

Here's a teaser. How do Michael Ruse and Richard Dawkins explain the origin of life? Be prepared to grin. I am reminded of Richard Feynman's explanation of all that is bogus: The closer you look, the more it goes away.

The Berlin wall is used as a metaphor for the divide between ID and the Academy. On one side of the wall are researchers who are required to conform to an ideology in order to get funding and tenure. Near the end of the movie, there is a back and forth between Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech and Ben Stein giving an speech on academic freedom. (a part of Ben Stein's speech is in the EXPELLED Teaser Trailer.) I admit getting a wonderful shiver.

This is the ice berg tip. There is so much wonderful stuff in the movie. Co-Producer Mark Mathis said there are a lot of fantastic scenes that could not be included in the movie. When the EXPELLED DVD is released, there will be a second DVD with these extras. This takes care of my Christmas shopping for next year.

<a href="http://www.interstructure.ca/pipermail/truth/2007-December/000296.html">An account how "Expelled" attempts to make fun of scientists and of science</a>
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Well, there you are, Kevin Miller, Ben Stein, and the rest spend a great deal of time simply trying to belittle and make fun of scientists and what they have done.  IDists, on the other hand, are empty-handed on the science front.  

Still, Kevin Miller tried to shame me with Geoffrey's concern troll post on the TalkOrigins forum, after he has participated in a film which is little more than a nasty attempt to belittle science.  

The hypocrisy is astonishing, but not unusual for ID.

And yes, I expect that I'll most likely be out of here, since I have yet to have an intellectually honest engagement with an IDist.  But this was just too much to pass up, imagine Kevin Miller and Geoffrey telling others to "play nice," when <em>Expelled</em> does quite the opposite, and did so well before we noted what a mean little bunch of dishonesty it turns out to be.

Glen D

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 07 2008,10:16

You're in the heart of the beast, Glen.

Ben Stein says < give Exxon a hug >!


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Exxon Mobil, in fact, is owned mostly by ordinary Americans. Mutual funds, index funds and pension funds (including union pension funds) own about 52 percent of Exxon Mobil’s shares. Individual shareholders, about two million or so, own almost all the rest. The pooh-bahs who run Exxon own less than 1 percent of the company.

When Exxon Mobil earns almost $12 billion in a quarter, or $41 billion in a year, as it did in 2007, that money does not go into the coffers of a few billionaire executives quaffing Champagne in Texas. It goes into the pension and retirement accounts of ordinary citizens. When Exxon pays a dividend, that money goes to pay for the mortgages and oxygen tanks and in-home care of lots of elderly Americans.

So, Mr. Obama, which union pension plans — and which blue-collar workers who benefit from them — will be among the first you would like to deprive of the income that flows from Exxon’s rich dividends?

When Mr. Obama or his Democratic rival, my fellow Yale Law School graduate Hillary Rodham Clinton, go after the oil companies and want to take away their profits, they are basically seeking to lower the income of the ordinary American. Why do that? It’s just cutting off one end of a blanket and sewing it to the other.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Notice how he always gets “and by the way, I went to Yale” in there?

At this point, his "opinions" are buckshot - still aimed, but flailing. Stein is not so much expressing opinions as shoring up his various justifications for a NY Times column and other innoculations against obscurity. That’s the real Brownshirt stomping across his American dream – obscurity. He, like Ann Coulter, are trying desperately to be known for being known. That’s what I’ve concluded about Ben Stein thus far.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go annoint my arms in petroleum to give that hug. ;)
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 07 2008,13:01

That reminds me, Kristine, that I was flipping through news channels last night and on Glenn Beck (change your first name from Glenn, buffoon) was Ben Stein.  So I thought I'd watch a bit, and yes, I heard that we're all just Exxon, and we ought to love it.

The rationale was more interesting, I thought.  A lot of his point (which I've heard previously) was that oil companies are not conspirators jacking up the price of oil.  I do actually agree with that (OPEC took over from the Texas rail commission, or something like that), but it struck me as odd that someone who thinks there's an overwhelming and comprehensive conspiracy to prevent any questioning of "Darwinism" disagrees with those who think oil companies are conspiring against us (which they have at times, occasionally being caught at it).

One other "idea" from Ben's lips--capitalism has made us the richest and most free nation on earth.  Um, what did you say Ben?  Supposedly the Marxists of academia prevent anyone from asking the most fundamental questions of life (as Ben so ignorantly construes a mere scientific theory), and yet we're the most free nation on earth?  Did Hitler win, that other nations are even less free than the one in which, "Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator"?

The guy makes no sense in his own mind, holding incompatible beliefs on the same subjects.  How could he possibly make sense in his blogs, in Expelled, in his columns, or anywhere else?

He didn't talk about Expelled while I was watching, only Glenn Beck mentioned it in passing.  And "Expelled:  No Intelligence Allowed" was displayed under the identifier "Ben Stein".

An intelligent interviewer would have pointed out what an incoherent mess Stein's claims are.  Unfortunately, the interviewer was Beck, one of the least competent talking heads on television.

Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 07 2008,16:39

I have seen April 11 as the debut date for Expelled previously, but it seemed not to be the prevailing wisdom, and no certain authority seemed known.  A recent source makes April 11, rather than April 18, seem more likely:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
April 11

"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" (PG) -- Comedian/pundit Ben Stein hosts this pot-stirring documentary that questions science and evolutionary theory.

"Prom Night" (PG-13) -- Hello, "Carrie"? We need to borrow some of your pig's blood for this high-school horror flick. But not too much -- this is PG-13, after all.

"College" ® -- Hello, "Animal House"? We need to borrow some of your raunch for this comedy about high-school kids visiting a college campus. We need all the help we can get -- Drake Bell is the only recognizable person in the production.

"Street Kings" ® -- Gritty drama stars Keanu Reeves as a cop facing all sorts of tangled conspiracies after being accused of killing a co-worker. Also stars Forest Whitaker and Chris Evans.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Grand Rapids Press movie release schedule >

I'm sure some people are planning to see it as soon as possible (I might wait until TBN runs it), so be advised that it may very well be a week earlier than it has been expected.

Glen D
Posted by: rpenner on Mar. 07 2008,16:54

Maybe it is just "premiering" in Grand Rapids, with official opening in the rest of the country the next week. They clearly have spared no expense: I had no idea that forcing academics to compete in a meritocracy required documentary footage of Nazi Germany.

Anyway, more Expelled Blog fun is coming up on March 8 from "Guest Lecturer" -- no idea who it is -- their site seems sticky and broken right now.
Posted by: rpenner on Mar. 07 2008,16:56

Sorry - it looks like it's dated March 6, not 8. 23 comments filed but I can't read the post "Ben Stein Smart Bombs Darwinian Bunker" yet.
Posted by: Assassinator on Mar. 07 2008,17:25

It's actually pretty funny to see how people follow a comedian/actor on a subject like this. I still wonder how those minds work, makes me want to study psychology.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 08 2008,14:32

Thanks to the link catch from John Lynch, we can all look forward to this new site dedicated to exposing the lies of expelled, the movie:

< http://expelledexposed.com/ >
Posted by: bystander on Mar. 08 2008,16:29

All those with websites and blogs will have to make sure they link to it so it goes up the google charts.
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on Mar. 10 2008,08:49

Yet another < WingNutDaily columnist > reviews Expelled:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Atheists are enraged. The politically correct academic nomenclature is upset. A reporter in Florida even posed as a minister to sneak into a church screening to stop actor, pundit and financial guru Ben Stein's new movie about the totalitarian attempts by Darwinian scientists to suppress dissent, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."

The totalitarian left should be upset because "Expelled" is a wry, funny, well-crafted documentary. The juxtaposition of popular music, dramatic vignettes, documentary footage and Ben Stein's quest for truth is often laugh-out-loud funny. At the same time, it is heart-rending, convincing and transformational. Like any documentary, of course, there are a few moments when the tension relaxes, but most of the movie, especially the last third, is captivating because Ben Stein takes on atheists and Darwinian evolutionists like Richard Dawkins and exposes the fact that they are logically challenged.

Ben Stein starts out talking about the fact that the United States was built on freedom. He quotes the Founding Fathers and juxtaposes the freedom of the United States with the Communist Berlin Wall in Germany. Meanwhile, Pink Floyd is singing about the "crack" in the wall.

Carefully, Stein makes the case that the academic community has become as oppressive of freedom as that same community oppressed freedom in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He interviews professor Richard Sternberg, who lost his long-term job at the Smithsonian Institute because he dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with two or three references to intelligent design. The article did not endorse intelligent design, but the very mention of intelligent design brings severe repression from the pseudo-scientific academic community. He then talks to Dr. Caroline Crocker, who lost her professorship at George Mason for having one reference to ID.

One by one, Stein introduces us to prestigious scientists at major universities who were expelled because they dared to mention intelligent design and open up the academic discussion to non-Darwinian viewpoints. He moves from there to questioning the institutions and the administrators who expelled these academics. The administrators squirm under his interrogation but eventually admit that the academic community has no room for freedom and honest intellectual inquiry.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 10 2008,09:40

Atheists are enraged.

How quick they are to conflate evolution with Atheism, agnosticism, immorality, dogma, faith, Hitler, Stalin...
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 10 2008,09:43

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 10 2008,08:40)
Atheists are enraged.

How quick they are to conflate evolution with Atheism, agnosticism, immorality, dogma, faith, Hitler, Stalin...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I hereby suggest that we all stay on message and burst into hysterical laughter whenever anyone mentions Expelled. :) *expel*
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 10 2008,10:30

There's a bit more regarding the Roger Moore invite/disinvite/accusation story, plus some transparent lies ("not polished enough") for why critics are carefully kept from seeing their dishonest production.  NYT:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The film, which takes a position on intelligent design shared by President Bush, has also been shown at California Baptist University and the Dallas Theological Seminary. Glowing reviews have popped up on AnswersInGenesis.org, whose co-chief executive, Ken Ham, founded the Creation Museum, and in The American Spectator, whose senior editor, Tom Bethell, said that the movie evoked “tears of joy.”

Mr. Lauer said the marketing strategy was “about finding and serving people with deep-seated motivations” and then hoping those people would talk up the movie to their friends. The general media will be invited to screenings in early April, he said.

Logan Craft, executive producer of “Expelled” and chief of Premise Media, said he thought Mr. Moore had been wrong to attend the screening after being disinvited, but both he and Mr. Lauer denied any involvement in an online “media alert” that purported to be from a backer of the film. The alert accused Mr. Moore of posing as a minister to gain admission, calling his actions a “security breach.” Mr. Moore said he never represented himself as other than a reporter.

After Mr. Moore’s review, Mr. Stein commented, “Oh well. This will probably happen a lot more times.”

< New York Times >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Moore's take:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
My position on this is that I am not going to let Lauer and company sneak another movie out with lots of like-minded preachers and lay-people "reviewing" it before I do, aka The Passion of the Christ. A whole lot of conservative Christians endorsed that movie prior to its release and apparently didn't recognize its anti-Semitism. They praised Mel Gibson to the high heavens (sorry) until he was outed as the raving anti-Semite that he actually is. Real critics, even non-Jews (like myself) spotted the film's hateful caricatures of Jews right off.

On another note, it is odd that, by strange coincidence, much of the anti-Golden Compass mass-emailing that I wrote about back last fall, some of it very nasty, with return-email addresses from Nashville churches, comes from the same town as Lauer's company. Is Motive behind these nasty astro-turf "grass-roots" chain letters? If so, who paid them? Bill Donohue and the Catholic League? Just wondering.

< Roger Moore >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yeah, it just wasn't polished enough.  How the hell did all that stuff about Nazis and the Berlin wall get in there?  They should be given enough time to clear out what those vile hackers did, putting in all that nasty defamation that no Christian would stoop to commit, before the critics see it.

Or, uh, were the problems Moore addressed possibly deliberate?

Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 10 2008,10:53

On Mar 10, 6:38 am, jspace...@linuxquestions.net wrote:
> From the article:
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Posted: March 10, 2008
> 1:00 am Eastern
>
> © 2008
>
> Atheists are enraged. The politically correct academic nomenclature is
> upset. A reporter in Florida even posed as a minister to sneak into a
> church screening to stop actor, pundit and financial guru Ben Stein's
> new movie about the totalitarian attempts by Darwinian scientists to
> suppress dissent, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."
>
> The totalitarian left should be upset because "Expelled" is a wry,
> funny, well-crafted documentary. The juxtaposition of popular music,
> dramatic vignettes, documentary footage and Ben Stein's quest for
> truth is often laugh-out-loud funny. At the same time, it is heart-
> rending, convincing and transformational. Like any documentary, of
> course, there are a few moments when the tension relaxes, but most of
> the movie, especially the last third, is captivating because Ben Stein
> takes on atheists and Darwinian evolutionists like Richard Dawkins and
> exposes the fact that they are logically challenged.
>
> Ben Stein starts out talking about the fact that the United States was
> built on freedom. He quotes the Founding Fathers and juxtaposes the
> freedom of the United States with the Communist Berlin Wall in
> Germany. Meanwhile, Pink Floyd is singing about the "crack" in the
> wall.
>
> Carefully, Stein makes the case that the academic community has become
> as oppressive of freedom as that same community oppressed freedom in
> Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He interviews professor Richard
> Sternberg, who lost his long-term job at the Smithsonian Institute
> because he dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with two or three
> references to intelligent design. The article did not endorse
> intelligent design, but the very mention of intelligent design brings
> severe repression from the pseudo-scientific academic community. He
> then talks to Dr. Caroline Crocker, who lost her professorship at
> George Mason for having one reference to ID.
>
> One by one, Stein introduces us to prestigious scientists at major
> universities who were expelled because they dared to mention
> intelligent design and open up the academic discussion to non-
> Darwinian viewpoints. He moves from there to questioning the
> institutions and the administrators who expelled these academics. The
> administrators squirm under his interrogation but eventually admit
> that the academic community has no room for freedom and honest
> intellectual inquiry.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------­---------
>
> Read it athttp://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58473
>
> J. Spaceman

"Even so, however, this movie proves the truth of what the Psalmist says in the Bible, "Only a fool says in his heart there is no God" (Psalm 14:1)."

So, let's see, ID is kept out of the science journals because "Big Science" (and anyone who can think) considers it to be religion.  The point of these liars is that, well, ID is religion and irreligion is simply wrong and the viewpoint of a fool.

Damn we're evil.  We said that ID was religion when the IDists were lying and saying that it wasn't, and that religion shouldn't be taught as science.  Now they're pointing out that ID is religion and that we prevented it from being taught as science, and, of course, we're evil for being correct about what ID was and because we agreed with the IDists' claims that religion shouldn't be taught as science.

There's one consistancy running through the IDiots' jumble of inconsistent claims:  We're wrong because we want science to be taught as science, not religion being taught as science.

Glen D
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 10 2008,11:09

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Mar. 10 2008,09:30)
Yeah, it just wasn't polished enough.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There's another meaning to such unending "polishing" of one's product, if you get me. :p Poor Ben. And in front of all those < pretty girls >, too.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein is a publicity hound with a taste for girls younger than George Soros's. His intellect is lighter than yogurt and just as uninformative.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

:D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 10 2008,16:43

This is OT, but as it comes from the Expelled thread, I'll still archive it here:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
<blockquote>Hey Glen Davidson, I read your book. IT SUCKS!</blockquote>

I doubt that you did read it, buffoon.

Anyway, it's not for the stupid.  And apparently you are far too stupid to do anything but write "IT SUCKS."  I have yet to receive a single competent criticism of my book, though dumb hatred such as yours is something I've encountered previously.

You see, it is actually true that science could be a lot more open than it is at present.  That is not a problem with respect to evolution, which is a very well established theory whose primary detractors are religious bigots who have no alternative science at all.

But stupidity will do what it must, hate the intelligence it lacks.  And so it goes with stupid little Ralphie.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 10 2008,17:21

A "George Lange" popped up in comments on PT, my blog, and Jim Lippard's blog claiming that everything on "Expelled Exposed" was wrong. I went through the current set of links at "Expelled Exposed" and showed how the specifics of what was being said was verifiable stuff. Lange hasn't shown up again at my blog.

There's obviously some touchiness when it comes to criticism over on the antievolution side.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 11 2008,10:32

< All conspiracies, all the time >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The New York Times is working on it's THIRD negative story covering this independent film.
Doesn't that seem even a little bit ODD to anyone?
What is going ON???
Anyone? Anyone?
geo
Posted by: george lange | March 10, 2008 at 02:58 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Somebody page Flaubert. We have someone who needs a couch on which to faint. :)
Posted by: Chayanov on Mar. 11 2008,12:49

It's so obvious that the producers don't care how the film does, just so long as it has the strongest opening weekend ever. They can't hide the movie forever -- it has to be released eventually. And as soon as the film hits the screen, an outporing of negative reviews will ensue, but by then they'll have had their opening numbers to crow over. As has been constantly noted, if they really believed they had an important message to deliver, wouldn't they want to ensure the sustainability of that message? Why is it so important for them to say, "Expelled opened at #3 in the box office, even though it dropped off the charts the following week"?
Posted by: JohnW on Mar. 11 2008,13:19

Quote (Chayanov @ Mar. 11 2008,10:49)
It's so obvious that the producers don't care how the film does, just so long as it has the strongest opening weekend ever. They can't hide the movie forever -- it has to be released eventually. And as soon as the film hits the screen, an outporing of negative reviews will ensue, but by then they'll have had their opening numbers to crow over. As has been constantly noted, if they really believed they had an important message to deliver, wouldn't they want to ensure the sustainability of that message? Why is it so important for them to say, "Expelled opened at #3 in the box office, even though it dropped off the charts the following week"?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's better than that.  After the fundies see it on opening day*, the negative reviews will come out, no-one else shows up, and they'll start showing it in church basements.  The marketing will then be "Expelled was #7 on opening weekend, before the Evil Darwinist/Atheist/Nazi/Stalinist Conspiracy produced all those scathing reviews and got it thrown out of commercial cinemas.  See the film THEY don't want you to see."  Ka-ching! Thank you very much!





* I'm not convinced this will be enough people to give it more than a half-decent opening weekend.  "The strongest opening weekend ever" is going to be well out of reach.


[edit - fixed a couple of sloppy word choices.  Either too much coffee this morning, or not enough.]
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 11 2008,13:47

If only we had saved the video of Gonzalez getting burned at the stake, Sternburg getting beheaded, Dembski getting pantsed and Behe being forced to publish a joke of a book*.

Then, we could open up our competing Darwinista Martyr-Drama the same weekend as Expelled and distract their target  demographic.


Added in edit:  *Ah yes, good times...
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 11 2008,14:35

Quote (JohnW @ Mar. 11 2008,12:19)
 
Quote (Chayanov @ Mar. 11 2008,10:49)
It's so obvious that the producers don't care how the film does, just so long as it has the strongest opening weekend ever. They can't hide the movie forever -- it has to be released eventually. And as soon as the film hits the screen, an outporing of negative reviews will ensue, but by then they'll have had their opening numbers to crow over. As has been constantly noted, if they really believed they had an important message to deliver, wouldn't they want to ensure the sustainability of that message? Why is it so important for them to say, "Expelled opened at #3 in the box office, even though it dropped off the charts the following week"?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's better than that.  After the fundies see it on opening day*, the negative reviews will come out, no-one else shows up, and they'll start showing it in church basements.  The marketing will then be "Expelled was #7 on opening weekend, before the Evil Darwinist/Atheist/Nazi/Stalinist Conspiracy produced all those scathing reviews and got it thrown out of commercial cinemas.  See the film THEY don't want you to see."  Ka-ching! Thank you very much!

* I'm not convinced this will be enough people to give it more than a half-decent opening weekend.  "The strongest opening weekend ever" is going to be well out of reach.
[edit - fixed a couple of sloppy word choices.  Either too much coffee this morning, or not enough.]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Makes me want to help these poor Darwinian Abolitionists out and get a hold of the film, and make as many pirated copies to distribute far and wide so that The Film They Won’t Let You See gets as much exposure as possible! That’s what they want, isn’t it? This isn’t about $$$ - this is about ideals! Freedom! Of! Speech! and all that. People will lose their jobs if they see this film, unless they get a pirated copy from me for them to safely view in their own home – and to copy themselves and distribute! I’m sure my efforts would make Ben Stein very happy. ;) I’m sure he’d write a grateful NY Times column about brave, activist me. :p
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 12 2008,12:43

Cross-posts from Talkorigins:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"Stein also joined John Stemberger, head of the Florida Family Policy
Council, and Casey Luskin, a lawyer from the Seattle-based Discovery
Institute, in defending a private screening of Stein's new film that
has been arranged tonight for legislators. They showed a brief preview
of the film, in which Stein recounts his meetings with teachers and
scientists who have been shunned for questioning evolutionary theory.

...


"Two bills by Rep. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, and Sen. Ronda Storms, R-
Brandon, would forbid school districts or state authorities to punish
teachers or students in any way for raising questions about evolution.
Stemberger said the new law is needed because of "dogmatic" new
science standards adopted by the State Board of Education last month,
which allow teaching of evolution as "a theory."


"Stein said all scientific approaches ought to be protected in
classrooms, not just evolution or creation-based theories.


""This bill is not about teaching intelligent design," said Stein.
"It's about freedom of speech.""


The rest is here:


< http://www.news-press.com/apps....S012... >


Only problem, liar Benjamin, ID and creationism aren't scientific
theories.


And the reason you can tell your lies, Stein, is that there is freedom
of speech.  If you could be prosecuted or sued for lying, your ass
would have been in prison long ago.


Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >


[A follow-up post I made]

   
> "Stein said all scientific approaches ought to be protected in
> classrooms, not just evolution or creation-based theories.



OK, all scientific approaches should be protected, according to
Stein.

But the Expelled producers write that belief in the designer is a
worldview, or essentially, not science:


"Belief in atheism, agnosticism and belief in a designer are real
beliefs - let's not pretend that they don't exist, can be side stepped
or pretend that it is fair, constitutional or intellectually rigorous
to favor one such worldview over another... especially in the realm of
science. To oppose such academic freedom - especially at the
taxpayer's expense - is simply wrong. If you agree, look here."


This is found at:


< http://expelledthemovie.com/chronicle.php?issue=2&article=1 >


OK, so atheism, agnosticism, and belief in a designer are beliefs.
Why should beliefs be taught in a classroom?  Lord knows, agnosticism
and atheism aren't permitted to be, so why should belief in the
designer be permitted to be taught in the classroom?


They're shooting themselves in the foot, and are too stupid to realize
it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 12 2008,20:16

Anyone live near Chicago, and want to see Expelled?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This might interest some people:

<blockquote>You are invited to a FREE PRIVATE SCREENING of Ben Stein’s upcoming, history-making film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Opening in theaters April 2008).


....
<br /><br />

The private screening details are as follows:<br />

Date: Tuesday, March 18, 2008<br />

Time: 7:00PM<br />

Location: AMC Lowes Streets of Woodfield 20, 601 N. <br />Martingale Rd., Suite 185, Schaumburg, IL 60173


RSVP: < http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled > <br /><br />

For some reason this takes you to the list of all of the private screenings for Expelled, which is not where I was when I copied the address.  But then, that's all the better [this paragraph was added in edit]



< Source for the above >
Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Peter Henderson on Mar. 13 2008,11:06

Well, I still don't know if Mr. Stein is a young Earth creationist:

< http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/03/13/meeting-of-minds >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Two of the better-known challengers of the evolutionary belief system met in Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday to discuss ways that the upcoming movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed can have a major impact on the creation/evolution debate.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
While his film arrives at American movie theaters on the weekend of April 18, Mr. Stein came to Nashville for a special preview showing of Expelled for several hundred attendees at the annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). The audience leapt to its feet with generous applause at the film’s conclusion—moved by the undaunted attempts of the Darwin-doubters (and their filmmaking allies) as they challenge the elites in America’s educational and scientific establishments. Many of these Darwin challengers find themselves pitted against powerful evolutionists who despotically protect their evolution belief system, and sometimes expel those who would dare question Darwin.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Before Tuesday’s film preview, Mr. Stein spent 15 minutes chatting with AiG-U.S. President Ken Ham, who informed Mr. Stein that he had seen a director’s cut of Expelled last month at AiG’s Creation Museum. Ben told Ken that he was aware of the “wonderful” facility near Cincinnati and hoped to visit one day
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



At the very least he's sypathetic to their cause:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ken noted that while Stein is not a biblical creationist, the film he hosts provides a valuable service, as it exposes the tyranny of leaders in the evolutionist community. The film, notes Ken, also reveals the massive scientific problems with evolution theory.

“Freedom is the essence of America,” Stein declares in his narration. He adds that science is supposed “to pursue any line of inquiry,” but when it comes to evolution, that practice is not just ignored, but the freedoms of Darwin-questioners are trampled upon. Several such examples are presented in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 13 2008,14:09

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Mar. 12 2008,20:16)
Anyone live near Chicago, and want to see Expelled?

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This might interest some people:

<blockquote>You are invited to a FREE PRIVATE SCREENING of Ben Stein’s upcoming, history-making film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Opening in theaters April 2008).


....
<br /><br />

The private screening details are as follows:<br />

Date: Tuesday, March 18, 2008<br />

Time: 7:00PM<br />

Location: AMC Lowes Streets of Woodfield 20, 601 N. <br />Martingale Rd., Suite 185, Schaumburg, IL 60173


RSVP: < http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled > <br /><br />

For some reason this takes you to the list of all of the private screenings for Expelled, which is not where I was when I copied the address.  But then, that's all the better [this paragraph was added in edit]



< Source for the above >
Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am tempted to go, since it is my neck of the woods, BUT I would be hard-pressed to maintain a polite silence.  I would probably laugh when they were trying to be serious and boo whenever Stein or other DI hack was on screen.  

I would be very worried about giving all the ID Creationist's the wrong impression that all Atheistic God-Hatin' Darwinistas were as rude as me.

added in edit:  That said, Pastor J-Dog will attend and bring 3 guests (the upper limit of allowed guests on their site).

added in edit: Everyone here could help me out by also signing up for 3 tickets.  That way I can stretch out, and not have to worry about the theater getting too crowded.
They are not actually using tickets per the email I received back from them, they are only screening with a list of approved names at the door.

ps:  The site Glen linked to requires a "Title", so maybe a few Bishops, or Cardinals or Warlocks could also sign up for tickets.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 13 2008,14:32

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Mar. 12 2008,20:16)
Anyone live near Chicago, and want to see Expelled?

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This might interest some people:

<blockquote>You are invited to a FREE PRIVATE SCREENING of Ben Stein’s upcoming, history-making film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Opening in theaters April 2008).


....
<br /><br />

The private screening details are as follows:<br />

Date: Tuesday, March 18, 2008<br />

Time: 7:00PM<br />

Location: AMC Lowes Streets of Woodfield 20, 601 N. <br />Martingale Rd., Suite 185, Schaumburg, IL 60173


RSVP: < http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled > <br /><br />

For some reason this takes you to the list of all of the private screenings for Expelled, which is not where I was when I copied the address.  But then, that's all the better [this paragraph was added in edit]



< Source for the above >
Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crap. I would, but I'm in Houston. J-Dog?
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 13 2008,14:35

< Source for the above >
Glen D[/quote][/quote]
Crap. I would, but I'm in Houston. J-Dog?[/quote]
I just PM'd you dude - Nomad?
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 13 2008,14:56

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 13 2008,14:32)
 
Quote (Glen Davidson @ Mar. 12 2008,20:16)
Anyone live near Chicago, and want to see Expelled?

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This might interest some people:

<blockquote>You are invited to a FREE PRIVATE SCREENING of Ben Stein’s upcoming, history-making film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Opening in theaters April 2008).


....
<br /><br />

The private screening details are as follows:<br />

Date: Tuesday, March 18, 2008<br />

Time: 7:00PM<br />

Location: AMC Lowes Streets of Woodfield 20, 601 N. <br />Martingale Rd., Suite 185, Schaumburg, IL 60173


RSVP: < http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled > <br /><br />

For some reason this takes you to the list of all of the private screenings for Expelled, which is not where I was when I copied the address.  But then, that's all the better [this paragraph was added in edit]



< Source for the above >
Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crap. I would, but I'm in Houston. J-Dog?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not to worry, there will be a showing in Houston:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

AZ Tempe Harkins Arizona Mills April 3 7:00 PM  RSVP  
CA Dublin Regal Hacienda Crossings 21 March 26 7:00 PM  RSVP  
CA Santa Clara AMC Mercado 20 March 27 8:00 PM  RSVP  
CO Broomfield (Denver) AMC Flatiron Crossing April 2 7:00 PM  RSVP  
FL Lake Buena Vista (Orlando) AMC Pleasure Island 24 March 18 7:00 PM  RSVP  
GA Decatur (Atlanta) AMC North Dekalb Mall 16 March 25 7:00 PM  RSVP  
IL Deerfield Trinity International University March 18 1:00 PM  RSVP  
IL Schaumburg (Chicago) AMC Loews Streets of Woodfield 20 March 18 7:00 PM  RSVP  
KY Louisville National Amusements Showcase Cinemas Stoneybrook March 31 7:00 PM  RSVP  
MA Cambridge AMC Loews Harvard Square 5 March 19 7:00 PM  RSVP  
MD Owings Mills (Baltimore) AMC Owings Mills 17 April 1 7:00 PM  RSVP  
MI Grand Rapids Grand Rapids First March 4 3:30 PM Done  
MI Livonia (Detroit) AMC Livonia 20 March 26 7:00 PM  RSVP  
MN Bloomington AMC Mall of America 14 March 20 7:00 PM  RSVP  
MO Creve Coeur (St. Louis) AMC Creve Coeur 12 March 12 7:00 PM Done  
MO Kansas City Ward Parkway Theater March 4 7:00 PM Done  
NC Charlotte AMC Carolina Pavilion 22 March 10 7:00 PM Done  
NM Albuquerque Century Rio 24 March 6 2:00 PM Done  
OH Brooklyn (Cleveland) AMC Ridge Park Square 8 March 19 7:00 PM  RSVP  
OR Portland PENDING - CLICK BUTTON TO BE ADDED TO OUR WAITLIST March 25 TBD Waitlist  
PA Plymouth Meeting (Philly) AMC Plymouth Meeting March 27 7:00 PM  RSVP  
TN Franklin Carmike Thoroughbred 20 March 10 7:00 PM Done  
TX Houston River Oaks Theatre March 13 7:00 PM Full  
TX San Antonio Santikos Palladium IMAX March 12 7:00 PM Done  
WA Seattle PENDING - CLICK BUTTON TO BE ADDED TO OUR WAITLIST March 24 TBD Waitlist  
WI Milwaukee AMC Mayfair Mall 18 April 8 7:00 PM  RSVP  
 

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Added in edit:

Oh, damn, the Houston showing is today, but already full.  Well, there are still other possibilities, they're just farther away.

Glen D
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 13 2008,14:59

Ha Ha - Kristine !

Mall of America on March 20!  Let me know if you will need some more room - I have a couple of puppets that are ready to take Holy Orders and get you some space.

Maybe someone should contact P Zed about the date and time?
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 13 2008,16:52

Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 13 2008,13:59)
Ha Ha - Kristine !

Mall of America on March 20!  Let me know if you will need some more room - I have a couple of puppets that are ready to take Holy Orders and get you some space.

Maybe someone should contact P Zed about the date and time?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


SSSShhhhhhhhh! :)
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 13 2008,19:34

IL Schaumburg (Chicago) AMC Loews Streets of Woodfield 20 March 18 7:00 PM  RSVP  


Might be able to do that one.
Posted by: Fross on Mar. 13 2008,20:46

Quote (JohnW @ Mar. 11 2008,13:19)
It's better than that.  After the fundies see it on opening day*, the negative reviews will come out, no-one else shows up, and they'll start showing it in church basements.  The marketing will then be "Expelled was #7 on opening weekend, before the Evil Darwinist/Atheist/Nazi/Stalinist Conspiracy produced all those scathing reviews and got it thrown out of commercial cinemas.  See the film THEY don't want you to see."  Ka-ching! Thank you very much!





* I'm not convinced this will be enough people to give it more than a half-decent opening weekend.  "The strongest opening weekend ever" is going to be well out of reach.


[edit - fixed a couple of sloppy word choices.  Either too much coffee this morning, or not enough.]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It will make for a good sequel.

"Expelled Expelled"
Posted by: Fross on Mar. 13 2008,20:52

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ Mar. 04 2008,08:46)
Ben Stein writes in today's WingNutDaily: < Charles Darwin:  Imperialism's pawn >

[quote]

Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.

quote]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd suggest that the misunderstanding of evolution gave rise to these atrocities.  Just like the same misunderstandings give rise to the ID movement and movies hosted by D list actors.
Posted by: Nomad on Mar. 13 2008,22:40

I'm in.  I can't let the rest of the Chicago crew have all the fun...  or, alternatively, I can't in good conscience stay at home while you sacrifice your sanity by looking upon the unholy image of Ben Stein wearing shorts and knee high socks.

I'm just not sure that they'd buy it if I registered as Cardinal Nomad and showed up in full regalia.  Suspicions might be raised, no matter how much fun it might be to try.  I admit that it'd be a kick and a half to claim to represent a local pagan church, but I don't think I want to push my luck.
Posted by: Chayanov on Mar. 13 2008,22:53

At the Mall of America on March 20? That's tempting.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 14 2008,08:10

Quote (Nomad @ Mar. 13 2008,22:40)
I'm in.  I can't let the rest of the Chicago crew have all the fun...  or, alternatively, I can't in good conscience stay at home while you sacrifice your sanity by looking upon the unholy image of Ben Stein wearing shorts and knee high socks.

I'm just not sure that they'd buy it if I registered as Cardinal Nomad and showed up in full regalia.  Suspicions might be raised, no matter how much fun it might be to try.  I admit that it'd be a kick and a half to claim to represent a local pagan church, but I don't think I want to push my luck.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cardinal Nomad - What's the matter - You couldn't get an altar boy to attend you on a school night?  

Or alternatively, you could show up without the altar boy, and then they would know for sure you weren't a Cardinal...

However, bad news from me - My son, who IS altar boy age, has a baseball practice, and since I am part of the coaching fraternity, we really can not skip it, and he's been out with an injury, and needs the practice to help him recover.  

Much as I would really enjoy tweaking Ben Stein's nose, I would rather take care of the kid.   I am tempted to ask them if they would rent the theater for Wed night too, so Pastor Joe and his flock can view it.  Damn.  If only I weren't the only damn atheist in the world with morals.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 14 2008,12:03

A cross-post from Expelled (post is pending over there at this time):



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Science protects dogs, but why should it protect kids’ minds?

Your dog’s foods and drugs have to be vetted by scientific methods, for your sake and for their protection.

But hey, why should science be used to vet the information taught to children in science classes? I mean, why should children’s minds be protected from untested ideas using at least the same standards used
for dog food? Sure, science is proper to keeping dog’s lives safe and whole, but children’s minds aren’t worthy of any such protections.

No, tested ideas, and ideas which have either failed the test, or carefully avoided tests altogether (as ID at least attempts to do), are all equal for teaching to children. Their minds can be filled with any kind of rot and abracadabra, but we’ll sue if you put scientifically unproven ingredients in our dogs’ food.

So yeah, it’s all science for our dogs. Florida’s kids? Get real, we’ll tell them anything in science class. It’s all the same to us whether those ideas have passed scientific tests or not.

A child’s mind is not such a terrible thing to waste after all. What is put into it hardly merits the same scrutiny that the food put into a dog’s belly does.

And you know, ID is all about the children–treating their minds as more expendable than our dogs.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is cross-posted (by the author) from Talkorigins.

And no, don’t tell me that the difference is that children can decide what is science. They cannot, they must be taught science in a legitimate fashion in the first place, and then they can choose between a science that they understand and anything else that they might prefer to it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 18 2008,14:48

So, are any of us going to attend the Schaumburg Showing tonight?
Posted by: Assassinator on Mar. 18 2008,15:41



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But hey, why should science be used to vet the information taught to children in science classes?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ofcourse, it would be completly ridiculous if science would teach science! I mean, science is best learned from people who've got nothing to do with science, isn't that SO obvious?
With things like that, I even start thinking if people in the project aren't starting to back off. Even those people have limits.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 18 2008,16:00

Well I see that the Schaumberg showing is full--and so is the Florida showing (I mention that because I brought up that showing on the FCS site, and at least one person signed up).  I just hope it's not nearly all people rooting for the anti-science side.

Perhaps none of this information is new to those who are going to go to the advance showings, but I thought I'd reproduce a list of the people who do come up in the movie in case anyone is interested:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Peter Atkins

David Berlinski

Michael Behe

Walter Bradley

Bruce Chapman

Caroline Crocker

William Dembski

Daniel Dennett


Michael Egnor

Steve Fuller


Maciej Giertych


Guillermo Gonzalez


Richard Dawkins


Robert Marks

Stephen C. Meyer

PZ Myers

Paul Nelson


Philip Pettit

William Provine

Gerald Schroeder


Jeffrey M Schwartz

Eugenie Scott

Michael Shermer

Richard Sternberg

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Jonathan Wells

Richard Weikart

< http://www.arn.org/expelled/ >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It could be useful to know whose names will come up in the movie, I figure.  One review said that William Provine has one of the longer interview times in Expelled.

Glen D
Posted by: Nomad on Mar. 18 2008,16:10

Let's say I'm going to make a concerted effort to go.  I don't know what sort of traffic I may encounter, if it gets bad enough I may turn around since, let's just face it, my desire to see this movie isn't exactly sky high to begin with.

Having to put up with Ben Stein in shorts and knee high socks pretending to be a rebel while defending established dogma is bad enough.  I don't want to have to deal with gridlock in order to get that privilege.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 18 2008,19:41

Ben has tried to hide his moronic movie from scientists and others competent to judge.  But what do you know, he isn't so chary with a big fat blowhard who doesn't understand any aspect of the issues involved.  Cross-posted from Talkorigins:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein's Film Blew Rush Away

March 18, 2008


Listen To It!  WMP | RealPlayer

Audio clips available for Rush 24/7 members only -- Join Now!

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Ben Stein has a new movie out.  He brought it by my house Friday afternoon to screen it for me.  It's called Expelled.  It is powerful.  It is fabulous.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Good idea, Stein, bringing it by the egregious Rush.  Much better than showing it to anyone who understands science, history, truth.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And here's the premise of his movie.  The premise is that Darwinism has taken root, taken hold at every major intellectual institution around the world in Western Society, from Great Britain to the United States, you name it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



My God, so has QM and General Relativity.  The bastards at Big Science!



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Rush, the Catholic, doesn't know his own religion, let alone anything else.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
His interviews with some of the professors who espouse Darwinism are literally shocking.  The condescension and the arrogance these people have, they will readily admit that Darwinism and evolution do not explain how life began.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The condescension, the arrogance, to actually admit that MET doesn't address the beginning of life (at least not the earliest stages of abiogenesis).  This contrasts with the humility of Limbaugh and Stein, who'll insist that unknown causes were responsible, sans any evidence whatsoever (don't get me wrong, I don't pretend that Dawkins is humble.  He's not, but he's hardly the blowhard that either Stein or Limbaugh is).



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
One of these professors said it might have been that a hyper-intelligence from another planet came here and started our race.  This from some professor either in the UK, I forget where it was, but can't be God.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Geez, Rush, even I know that was Dawkins, and I didn't see the stupid movie yet.  

It can't be God (as a scientific cause) for epistemological reasons, because although we have reason to believe that aliens might exist, we have none that God ...[could]--at least no scientific evidence.  That doesn't mean that we rule out God in an absolute sense, we just recognize our limits.  You belligerent morons recognize few if any limits, no matter how legitimate.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
These people are so threatened by the existence of God,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



No, we are constrained by our limitations.  Would that you were as conservative with respect to making claims as scientists are.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
they will not permit intelligent design to be discussed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Is this why it is discussed a great deal (including by scientists), despite the fact that there is no merit [in ID] for said discussions?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Professors have been fired, blackballed, and prevented from working who have deigned to try to combine the whole concept of evolution with intelligent design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In other words, pseudoscience is not allowed in, due to its evidentiary and methodological failings.

The rest, and the article sans my own commentary, is here:

< http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home....st.html >

Glen D

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Nomad on Mar. 19 2008,01:14

Well.. that was an experience.  I know there are differing thoughts on whether we should patronize this movie, but I took the approach that I'd spent enough time reading about the fundagelicals and their behavior and it was time I went out and experienced them in reality.  A free chance to see the movie was sort of the putrid icing on the moldy cake.

I'm still trying to digest the experience, but figure that I'd better try to get the details out while they're still fresh in my mind.  I'm terrible at sorting this sort of thing out and laying it down in an organized fashion, and I also am pretty much incapable of being brief.  You have been warned.

The first thing that I noticed when walking towards the theater from the parking lot was the police car parked immediately outside the theater entrance.  Surely that couldn't have anything to do with this movie, I figured.  I walked in, suddenly feeling embarrassed to even be there and too ashamed to ask anyone where I was supposed to go for the Expelled screening.

But I found the group, we were being corralled into several lines.  We were told that no bags or purses would be allowed in to the theater.  At least one woman sent her purse back to her car.  After a while we were fed over to another area, where we were told to sign small paper forms that explained that the movie was not in final release form yet and that also, in bold and underlined text, stated that recording the movie was a federal offense, blah blah blah.  I guess they figured that if they only bolded it or only underlined it people might ignore it, but nobody can resist bolded and underlined text.

At that time it was restated that no bags would be allowed, and that everyone would need to show a photo ID, causing the woman who sent her purse back to her car to have to go back out to get her ID.

As I was filling out my name and giving them the email address I created specifically for this endeavor I couldn't help but notice the pair of night vision goggles sitting on the same table.  This was not the cheapo $300 first generation monocle that you might have seen in an optics store.  This was a binocular, dual tube (I specify that because some NVGs have one input but split it so both eyes can see) setup with a band so that it could be warn on the head, military style.

My suspicions about the NVGs were fulfilled when the guy leading the sign in process announced that they'd seen on the web that "some group" was going to try to sneak someone in to record the whole movie.  Later he explained further that somewhere online a group had suggested a challenge to try to get a copy of the movie so that it could be distributed via torrent.  It was explained that the police officer (described as being off duty but still wearing official uniform and using a police car) would be walking around the theater using the NVGs to look for anyone trying record the movie secretly.  He further asked the audience to be on the look out for anything suspicious around them.  In other words, rat on your neighbors.

Earlier a woman had opted not to see the movie because she didn't want to leave her purse in her car, explaining that she knew of instances where cars had been broken into and robbed in that same parking lot.  She protested, the guy doing the sign-in process explained that it was the rule and he couldn't break it.  Fine.

But once inside the theater, with the woman gone, a representative from the production company (I wish I could remember his name, but it totally slipped my mind, he appeared to be fairly high ranking though) made a joke that only one person had complained about the process, and the policeman hand cuffed her and took her away.

A mild chuckle passed through the audience.

Way to go, Mr Two Face, I'm thinking to myself.  A woman is concerned about her purse being stolen from her car, and as soon as she's gone he's joking about her being a dissident and having the cops haul her away.

One of the things I was interested in was seeing what sort of audience would come to see this movie.  Of course I had my expectations, but I wanted to find out.  Since I was alone I waited quietly and listened to all the conversations going on around me.  Some were talking about the problems of church finance, someone mentioned in particular that an estimated 80% of all church donations come from elderly women.  Also there was mention of Narnia, talk of how it supposedly showed that theologically based movies can do well in secular society.  Oddly enough they were also talking a lot about Lord of the Rings and the impending production of The Hobbit.

In the theater sat near different people and I started hearing someone else talking about some meeting he was going to be attending soon.  The topic of it was to be "the theological implications of the multiverse".  He explained the multiverse to someone unfamiliar with the concept by saying that once the Anthropic Principle had "proved" that the universe was designed scientists had to come up with the multiverse to explain it away.

I sort of felt like Bruce Banner trying to fight down the rage, except that in my case it wasn't really rage, it was just a tendency to want to blurt out various things because I'm a know-it-all.  I wanted to explain that many worlds theory was a mathematical result of string theory which he would never be able to get his tiny little mind around if he lived to be a thousand.  I say this with near certainty that I will never adequately understand anything about it either, the math will always be beyond me as well.

There was also a little complaining about how kids believe in dinosaurs and that it's impossible to know that they lived millions of years ago, further lamenting that some dinosaurs have been constructed from only four teeth.

He told a story about how he had once been asked whether he was for the Earth being 300 million years old or 6000.  Causing me to wonder just who thinks the Earth is 300 million years old?  He was fully in the 6000 year group, further extolling the evidence of a young Earth like the evidence that a flood made the Grand Canyon.  I had to chuckle (very quietly) at comments like this.  It was the only way to remain sane in that insane environment.  I wanted to try to remain undercover, I wanted to observe the fundie in it's native environment without altering it's behavior.

There was also at least one token comment against global warming.  It was just the sort of crowd you'd expect, all that was missing was a little whispered holocaust denial.


The movie was played through a digital projector clearly fed by a laptop, using what looked like Itunes!  The frame rate wasn't even smooth, they couldn't be bothered to get hardware that could adequately play it back!  It started off with black and white footage, possibly some genuine but certainly some was shot more recently and then made to look old, of what looked like the Berlin Wall being built interspersed with children playing in an old timey way, bouncing around a small ball.  Yes, I get the oh so subtle metaphor.  Won't somebody think of the children.  Very clever.  This was a metaphor that they'd return to later in the film.  While the credits appear on screen string music is played.  It took me a moment to recognize that it was Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall".  A perhaps somewhat ironic choice, given the well known lyrics "we don't need no education" and the current approach of ID.  I guess it's ironic to me, but apropos to those who were meant to see the movie.  One man's crappy science education is another man's religiously motivated ideal.


I don't need to tell many specifics of what was in the movie.  You all know, you could have written the movie yourselves.  All the usual martyrs are trotted out and tell their story of oppression and suffering and claim that their right to free thought and free speech was violated.  "If only", I think to myself as they whine on and on about how mean their colleagues are.  They're getting in an awful lot of talking despite being unable to speak freely.  The accusation of violation of freedom of thought is as absurd as it ever is unless the evil Darwinist alliance is implanting mind control devices in all dissidents.  And if they are.. someone needs to tell them that they're not working properly.

Somehow the issues such as Gonzalez' failure to secure research grants or Crocker's telling outright lies in class to her students are...  no, I won't say "expelled" from the movie, it's too predictable, let's just say creatively ignored.

I laughed out loud when Robert Marks and the "evolutionary informatics lab" were mentioned.  Marks is there on screen talking about how that's what researchers do, they make "labs" by putting a name on a website and hosting it on a computer and use that entity to try to get funding.  He didn't even attempt to claim that there was a REAL laboratory associated with it, he just passed it off as standard practice.  Then he claims that it was shut down by the evil Baylor establishment.  That's funny, I thought I remember reading that all he had to do was add a disclaimer that the website wasn't officially associated with Baylor... I guess I must not have read that, because the makers of this movie wouldn't be lying to their audience now would they?

I will say my one nice thing about the movie by saying that they don't seem to have used a great deal of creative editing in distorting the interviews with real scientists.  What they did do was catch a few people with a few awkward questions, the results certainly played into the hands of the filmmakers.  In particular I will say that the well known anti theistic stance of Richard Dawkins was just eaten up by the audience.  I'm not making a value judgment here, I LIKE Dawkins, but in this situation his approach has helped the ID movement.  He spoke out against religion and the filmmakers parlayed that into attempting to portray that the entire scientific world is anti religion.  I'm aware of the framing argument and I'm not taking sides in it, I won't say that he shouldn't say those things.

There was one moment in particular where the interview led to him stating what he thought would be the one way in which intelligent design might be proven correct in reality.  His explanation was that we might find evidence of aliens visiting the Earth and either intentionally or not leaving behind seed life forms.  The audience sputtered with mirth at this as Ben Stein's narration announced that this proved that Dawkins would accept SOME forms of intelligent design but not others.

For those Pharyngula fans out there I can say that I don't think PZ's remarks were at all abused.  He explains that he started out believing in religion but that the more he learned about science the less he felt the need for it.  I can actually say that I learned something (go ahead, quote mine that you dishonest hacks!) because I didn't know that he was formerly a theist.  They even mention the name of his blog, so it's possible that he may get some new readers from this.

It once again says something to their intended audience that they even put that interview segment into the movie.  If they were not religiously motivated then what relevance would that have on the merit of a scientific theory?



I don't know about actual percentages, but a good deal of the movie was taken up by the well known "Darwin led to Nazis" argument.  Ben Stein goes to a memorial site where thousands of prisoners were executed and looks all pained and holds his head in his hands to emphasize how terrible it was, and I just wanted to yell into his wrinkled old ear that Hitler was guided at least as much by religious doctrine as he may have been by a mistaken interpretation of science.  Does the fact that the Nazi soldiers wore belt buckles with "God with us" engraved on them in German mean that I can go around saying that religion is to blame for the Holocaust?

This obsession with the holocaust just went on and on.  It even lead to Planned Parenthood of all places.  This was among the most disturbing moments of the film.  The PP logo appears on screen and the audience collectively sucked in their breath as if they'd unexpectedly come face to face with the devil himself.  The movie goes on to suggest that Planned Parenthood is proof that Eugenics is alive and well in society today (because of evolution, of course).  Why, pray tell?  Because they provide birth control to the poor, of course.  Allowing the poor to not have children if they so wish qualifies as Eugenics to these people!  It goes on to suggest that abortion and euthenasia, both of which we're told devalue human life (yeah, letting a terminally ill patient end his life with dignity instead of wasting away in a haze of suffering until, finally, mercifully, his biological functions cease to operate, that devalues human life), are also the results of evolution.

It's all there in some form or another.  The idea that scientists are motivated by dogmatic belief in Darwin's specific theory, with no suggestion that a few changes might have occurred through the years.  Preach the controversy, proved by people saying that since the scientists disagree with them there must be a controversy.

Even a most curious suggestion that the US is the "worst" in the world in terms of governmentally censuring ID.  Could this be because the US is the primary place where religiously motivated people are trying to damage the scientific education of other people's children in order to spread their own beliefs?

They also had some CG that looked very much like the famous XVIVO video that Dembski stole and then lied about.  I'm not saying it was the same, it looked similar but it may well have been a different animation made specifically for the movie.  But it contains the same well known flaws that serve to make the workings of a cell look much more machine-like than they really do, and the audience gasped in awe as they were told how a single cell is like a complex machine.


The movie makes a token effort to say "this isn't about religion" at the beginning.  But the best they can do is ask the leading lights of ID if it's about religion and have them say "no it isn't".  This fails to be convincing since so much of the movie harps on and on about how all evolutionists are atheists bent on destroying religion (including the claim that Eugenie Scott is preaching atheism to religious groups) and hits on all the fundamentalist high points like abortion.  It demands that evolution is in contradiction with religion and scorns any who suggest otherwise.  Yes, I know that that means that they're rejecting the Vatican.  Let's face it, this movie was not made for Catholics.  They don't have to try hard to deny the association between ID and religion because their target audience is religious.


This was sort of rammed home after the movie when the production company representative started up a Q&A session with the audience.  At one point he mentioned the websites for the movie, and specified that one was more for the promotion of the movie itself and one was more for the religious people to get information to assist in spreading the message.


Two audience members slightly redeemed themselves in my opinion by asking slightly intelligent questions or making statements to that effect.  One mentioned that the movie kinda sorta might just maybe have gone too far in the beginning as painting the evolution supporters as representing Stalinist Germany before they showed their true nature later in the movie.  He went on to say that he was certain that some people would use scenes from the movie as an illustration of ad hominem attacks.

To illustrate the fast and loose definition of science that the producers were playing with: the man that asked that question identified himself as someone who teaches "origin studies".  After that description the representative called him a scientist and flattered him by saying that he was certain that this man knew much more than he did.  Ultimately the issue of possible dishonesty was dodged with the explanation that, after all, the purpose of the movie was to entertain.

A woman asked about the scene where Ben Stein and the film crew barge in to the Smithsonian and are told to leave by security.  She said that that's the sort of thing that Michael Moore would do, staging things like that for effect.  She asked if an attempt was made to set up a real interview before doing that.

She never really got an honest answer from that, the rep weaseled his way out without saying anything specifically.


These incidences give me hope.  Not much hope, mind you, but still to me it shows that at least some of these people are still willing to critically analyze these things to at least some degree.  Or perhaps they were darwinist conspiracy plants, who can say.  If that woman was willing to point out that the filmmakers used that dishonest tactic now, perhaps she'll be interested enough to research the issues beyond what she's told by the ID supporters themselves.

I did not ask the film rep any questions.  I thought about it, but the fact is I think I'd be poor at PR work like that.  I'm too high strung to be calm when situations like that demand it, and I'm prone to acting elitist which would turn everyone against me instantly.  There were some questions which deserved to be asked, but I didn't want to take the responsibility of asking them in such a high profile situation.


As a final comment, I'm curious about the story about a group trying to infiltrate and record the movie.  I know that in this thread it has been suggested that we could just wait and watch the movie once it shows up on bittorrent, and I know that the filmmakers are aware of this forum since one of them ran away from it after he was asked too many questions he couldn't answer (this despite proudly declaring that what they want is an open exchange of ideas tonight, that he wants people to disagree with him).  That's hardly a conspiracy to infiltrate and record, but...  come on, look at their established level of honesty.  What would play out better than requiring police protection of their (pseudo)intellectual property?
Posted by: Lou FCD on Mar. 19 2008,07:33

Quote (Nomad @ Mar. 19 2008,02:14)
Earlier a woman had opted not to see the movie because she didn't want to leave her purse in her car, explaining that she knew of instances where cars had been broken into and robbed in that same parking lot.  She protested, the guy doing the sign-in process explained that it was the rule and he couldn't break it.  Fine.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thank you, Nomad, for taking one for the team like that.

It must have taken a great force of will to not tease the inmates.

Odd how they go to such lengths to protect their own property, but don't give a rat's ass about anyone else's.

Oh wait.  That's not at all odd for them, it's par for the course.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Mar. 19 2008,07:58

Quote (Nomad @ Mar. 19 2008,01:14)
I know that in this thread it has been suggested that we could just wait and watch the movie once it shows up on bittorrent
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's out already on bittorrent. I would link to it but no doubt the next headline would be "ATBC pirates EXPELLED".

I can't verify that the torrent contains what it says it does however, but I doubt anyone would bother to lie. .

As I say, I'm not linking to it but if you really want it then search for "bittorrent" and "expelled" and you'll soon find it!

And if you've never used torrents before the I recommend < utorrent > as the client.
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 19 2008,08:03

Thank you so much Nomad!

I have informed the ADL of 'EXPELLED'.  They might ignore it, but Im hoping they < officially denounce the film >.

We slaughter the science, ADL slaughters the 'philosophy'.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 19 2008,08:07

Nomad - I salute you!

Outstanding report, thank you for going, and reporting on it.

Maybe the most important information is the likelihood of them using the stolen cell-footage in the film...

Thanks again.
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 19 2008,08:21

J-Dog-- Its a possibility.  I wasnt in on it-- but an individual contacted me several months ago for Harvard/XVIVOs contact information... Thats is all I know.  So it is a possibility.  Its also possible they changed it to 'Unlocking the Mysteries of Life' animation, like they did with 'Design of Life'.

Nomad-- was it a flagella lighting up like a video game?  Twirling and flashing lights?  Nice looking, but kinda mid-1990s-ish?  'Unlocking'.  Super smooth resolution, quick changes from one part of the cell to another, lots of action?  'Inner Life'.

Just a refresher, cause now Im interested again:
< http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007....sm.html >
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 19 2008,09:14

Nomad, you're my hero!  Did they mention if any mainstream theaters are going to show the film or will it all be church basements and strip malls?

Chris
Posted by: deejay on Mar. 19 2008,09:29

Nomad-

Great report!  I think you did the right thing by focusing on the whole "event" of the screening rather than going into the details of the movie itself.  It's no surprise to hear that much of the substance of the movie is the same old, same old.  It was good to hear the critical questions some members of the audience asked.  Those questions are quite telling: the reason this movie will be a flop is that a decent enough percentage of the intended audience will see right through it.  

ERV-

That's a great idea about contacting the ADL.  My pessimistic side takes a Lenny Flank view on this one; Lenny always liked to say that people who support ID weren't persuaded by the science, so it's futile to try to dissuade them through the science.  Similarly, I have serious doubts that anyone who is sympathetic to the movie's message will be persuaded by the anti-Semitism angle, so it follows that debunking the anti-Semitism angle will only go so far.  Still, I like the idea of people here taking on the science while others, like the ADL, take on the philosophy.  If Stein gives a TV interview promoting the movie, it can be tough to pin him down on the science in that format.  But it would be very easy to make him squirm by being able to point out that the ADL rejects the argument that makes up a huge percentage of the movie.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 19 2008,10:08



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

but I doubt anyone would bother to lie

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



There are instances where movies are offered as torrents where you not only get some other movie given a bunch of different titles, but are told to install a special codec to decrypt the movie. The codec is very likely to be spyware at the least and may be malware.

There's plenty of lying in the peer-to-peer networking world.
Posted by: JohnW on Mar. 19 2008,11:18

Many thanks, Nomad - outstanding report.  I hope most of your neurons survived.

I think the silly "security" and air of paranoia you experienced is part of a deliberate marketing campaign.  We all know this movie will be disappearing from real cinemas and heading for the DVD-in-church-basement circuit after a week - if they can blame this on the nefarious doings of the Church-Burnin' Ebola Boys, so much the better.  A large chunk of their target audience already thinks the Great Atheist Conspiracy is responsible for, well, everything.  "See the movie THEY tried to stop" is going to work like a charm.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 19 2008,11:25

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 19 2008,10:08)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

but I doubt anyone would bother to lie

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



There are instances where movies are offered as torrents where you not only get some other movie given a bunch of different titles, but are told to install a special codec to decrypt the movie. The codec is very likely to be spyware at the least and may be malware.

There's plenty of lying in the peer-to-peer networking world.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Please - everyone listen to the man!

It took me 2 weeks of going crazy trying to finally clean my system after I made the mistake of clicking on a SNL Celebrity Jeopardy link.  

I have to say that the genius of  "So's your mother Trebeck" almost made it worth it though.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Mar. 19 2008,12:05

Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 19 2008,11:25)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 19 2008,10:08)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

but I doubt anyone would bother to lie

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



There are instances where movies are offered as torrents where you not only get some other movie given a bunch of different titles, but are told to install a special codec to decrypt the movie. The codec is very likely to be spyware at the least and may be malware.

There's plenty of lying in the peer-to-peer networking world.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Please - everyone listen to the man!

It took me 2 weeks of going crazy trying to finally clean my system after I made the mistake of clicking on a SNL Celebrity Jeopardy link.  

I have to say that the genius of  "So's your mother Trebeck" almost made it worth it though.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, indeed.

FYI if you have a piece of video in a unknown (or you are suspicious of the codec you are asked to download to play it) format then try to play it with VLC

www.videolan.org/vlc/

It comes pre-installed with every codec you'll likely ever need (and all self-contained so it won't contaminate your system with alternate versions of codecs you don't need).

If VLC can't play it it's likely not worth playing! It replaced media player years ago for me! :)
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 19 2008,12:08

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Mar. 19 2008,12:05)
If VLC can't play it it's likely not worth playing! It replaced media player years ago for me! :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Mac and my PC!  VLC is all I use for DVD watching and everything (though I have some old RealMedia files it wont recognize).
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 19 2008,12:42

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 19 2008,12:08)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Mar. 19 2008,12:05)
If VLC can't play it it's likely not worth playing! It replaced media player years ago for me! :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Mac and my PC!  VLC is all I use for DVD watching and everything (though I have some old RealMedia files it wont recognize).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for the experience comment Abbie - And I forgot to say thanks for calling the JDL too - I was posting at the time and didn't even see your comment till later.  

Let us know if /when you hear back from them.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Mar. 19 2008,13:17

I suspect the animation is also the one used in < this Pat Robertson report >.  I would strongly advise turning your sound off before watching.
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 19 2008,13:23

I wonder how long it will be before FTK crows about "Teh Impending Waterloo Caused By Expelled Flunked" or to defend its "innocent" makers from the horrid exposures of their vile and dishonest ways.

Some of us are, after all, atheists on at least a quarterly basis.

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 19 2008,13:40

Quote (Nomad @ Mar. 19 2008,00:14)
Well.. that was an experience.  *snip*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, well, my recording jokes aside, I would agree that it's not legal to record the whole (or probably any part of) thing. But were you asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement? I'm not clear on how screenings like this are supposed to generate publicity for a film that no one can subsequently talk about.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 19 2008,14:07

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 19 2008,13:40)
Quote (Nomad @ Mar. 19 2008,00:14)
Well.. that was an experience.  *snip*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, well, my recording jokes aside, I would agree that it's not legal to record the whole (or probably any part of) thing. But were you asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement? I'm not clear on how screenings like this are supposed to generate publicity for a film that no one can subsequently talk about.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They are getting favorable publicity this way, though.  Preachers and other religious folk that they're targeting are putting out rave "reviews" which say little (apparently staying within the confidentiality rule), but which assure the faithful that it is a great film.  And this is just what I see on the web.

I'm guessing that a whole lot of them are preaching about what a wonderful film it is, telling the sheep in meetings that they must go, signing up schools to have "mandatory" field trips, and downloading fliers and the like to plaster their schools and churches with (I did run across one poster on the web who said little posters for Expelled were all over his church).

It's a world that most of us don't know much about, and that operates according to different rules than we use.  They don't need for a lot of details to come out, they just need to pump up preachers and other religious folk regarding the "connections" between "Darwinism" and all of the ills of society.  In that market, I suspect that they're really doing just fine with their publicity.

Oh, and thanks much for that report on your experience, Nomad.

Glen D
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 19 2008,18:26

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 19 2008,10:08)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

but I doubt anyone would bother to lie

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



There are instances where movies are offered as torrents where you not only get some other movie given a bunch of different titles, but are told to install a special codec to decrypt the movie. The codec is very likely to be spyware at the least and may be malware.

There's plenty of lying in the peer-to-peer networking world.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I found a supposed Expelled torrent with a related problem. Could be the one oldman saw. They want me to sign up for some site to get a password and further instructions, which has never lead good places in my experience. This wasn't displayed directly but was "hidden" in a readme in the original torrent, which I grabbed in advance because I felt like checking if it was real before I downloaded the huge video file. Between that and the rarity of real pre-release torrent leaks, I don't think it's the genuine article.

Re: Paranoia, I don't think it's part of the marketing. People "stealing" the movie is a production company's sort of fear, not a persecuted scientist's fear. If they were doing it solely for the audience's benefit, I think they'd have gone for a malicious, censorious enemy without instead of aiming their night-visioned paranoia at their guests.
Posted by: JohnW on Mar. 19 2008,18:44

Quote (Annyday @ Mar. 19 2008,16:26)
Re: Paranoia, I don't think it's part of the marketing. People "stealing" the movie is a production company's sort of fear, not a persecuted scientist's fear. If they were doing it solely for the audience's benefit, I think they'd have gone for a malicious, censorious enemy without instead of aiming their night-visioned paranoia at their guests.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not sure.  I don't know what's normal practice at pre-release screenings, but I suspect some sort of non-disclosure agreement may be standard.  The sort of police-state shenanigans described by Nomad sound well beyond the pale, although I'm willing to be proved wrong if anyone knows more about the industry.

Remember, they're selling a film with a paranoid premise to an audience which likes paranoia.  Again, this is speculation, but I suspect most of the audience didn't mind being watched with night-vision goggles.  "They're not looking for us, they're looking for them!  Church-Burnin' Ebola Boys!  They're everywhere!"
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 19 2008,19:03

Quote (JohnW @ Mar. 19 2008,18:44)
I'm not sure.  I don't know what's normal practice at pre-release screenings, but I suspect some sort of non-disclosure agreement may be standard.  The sort of police-state shenanigans described by Nomad sound well beyond the pale, although I'm willing to be proved wrong if anyone knows more about the industry.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I worked at a movie theater for my entire teenage years (ran it myself for a year--small town).  I got to watch 'Lord of the Rings'/'Phantom Menace'/etc weeks before everyone else.  No non-disclosure agreements.

I dont think EXPELLED>>Lord of the Rings.

EXPELLED>>Phantom Menace is possible...
Posted by: lkeithlu on Mar. 19 2008,19:24

Quote (Bob O'H @ Mar. 19 2008,13:17)
I suspect the animation is also the one used in < this Pat Robertson report >.  I would strongly advise turning your sound off before watching.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nauseating.
Even with the sound off.
Posted by: Mister DNA on Mar. 19 2008,19:26

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 19 2008,19:03)
Quote (JohnW @ Mar. 19 2008,18:44)
I'm not sure.  I don't know what's normal practice at pre-release screenings, but I suspect some sort of non-disclosure agreement may be standard.  The sort of police-state shenanigans described by Nomad sound well beyond the pale, although I'm willing to be proved wrong if anyone knows more about the industry.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I worked at a movie theater for my entire teenage years (ran it myself for a year--small town).  I got to watch 'Lord of the Rings'/'Phantom Menace'/etc weeks before everyone else.  No non-disclosure agreements.

I dont think EXPELLED>>Lord of the Rings.

EXPELLED>>Phantom Menace is possible...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The heightened precautions reek of an old-school marketing ploy, like those old Z-Grade horror movies that would include warnings that heart patients and pregnant women shouldn't watch the movie.

To listen to people like FtK and other UD commenters, Expelled is supposed to be the final nail (in a long line of final nails) in Evolution's coffin. Expelled's target audience is likely to be more convinced by night vision goggle-wearing guards than by... oh, stuff like actual evidence.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Mar. 19 2008,20:22

Quote (Annyday @ Mar. 19 2008,18:26)
 Re: Paranoia, I don't think it's part of the marketing. People "stealing" the movie is a production company's sort of fear, not a persecuted scientist's fear. If they were doing it solely for the audience's benefit, I think they'd have gone for a malicious, censorious enemy without instead of aiming their night-visioned paranoia at their guests.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You need to remember, just like book sales and lecture fees for Dr. Dr. D and Dr. Behe, for Ben Stein, this movie is all about the money. Converts? Who needs 'em? They want a big box office take, at least during the opening days, and then they don't really care if it tanks. After that it will play in church basements for a dozen years or so, but the big money is made during that first weekend. So keeping it sequestered from real critics, and pumping it up among the church-going, makes sense solely from the money-making perspective.

It won't make money if it gets bit-torrented, and it won't make money if it gets reviewed by real critics. As Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward - "Follow the money". This is all about getting money from the rubes and turning it into Ben Stein's money, and they want to maximize that.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 19 2008,23:10

The question is whether it will follow the box office pattern of "Passion" or of "Gods and Generals."
Posted by: ndt on Mar. 19 2008,23:12

I wonder if they got permission to use "Another Brick in the Wall part 2"? Somehow I doubt it.
Posted by: Nomad on Mar. 20 2008,01:18

Okay, trying to respond to a bunch of comments at once here..

First off, no non disclosure agreement.  They explained that they just had to get our information because they movie wasn't in final form and because of the piracy threat.  It wasn't really a legal form, and unless I somehow forgot this part I don't think the form even had a place for a signature, just for printing your name and phone number and such.

About the cell animation, I just don't know.  There was no flagellum (no talk of it at all, also no talk of IC, the movie made nearly zero mention of any actual fact or scientific argument except a bunch of ID "scientists" saying that mainstream science has no explanation for a bunch of unspecified stuff).  I'm not up on my biology, so I can't tell you what it was that was shown in the animation, but one of the memorable bits was similar to something  I'd seen on the XVIVO animation.  It was similar to the scene where you see what looks like an almost cartoonish pair of walking feet walking along a tube, pulling a large blob attached to them by a tether.  But it was different in the version used in the movie, the feet weren't so much walking as sort of sliding along the tube like they were running along a rail.  It also had scenes of structures disassembling themselves, breaking up into a cascade of small pieces, but again it doesn't appear identical to the XVIVO piece that I'm looking at to refresh my memory although similar sequences appear.

I hope I didn't imply that I was accusing them of stealing it, I felt it was unlikely given the attention that the previous theft attracted and the fact that this will (theoretically) get a nationwide commercial release.  But the similarity was striking, I was just waiting for someone to start talking about the cell as a city.  I should have watched for CG credits at the end.

As far as the extent of the theatrical release, they had no specific info.  One of the other members of the audience asked how many theaters it would be released in and the rep said he didn't know.  I have to wonder if the reason he didn't know was that they're having trouble getting it into any theater, they only got it into this one by renting it out and apparently using their own equipment.  The digital projector itself looked like they might have brought it, after the movie started it shifted slightly as they tried to straighten it out, it had been a bit crooked and they made it perhaps slightly more crooked by messing with it.


Regarding their usage of the Pink Floyd song.. I think they got permission somehow or another.  It wasn't the original Pink Floyd performance, it was played solely on string instruments.  I don't know the details, but I think the law is different about using a musical composition but recording a new version yourself.  It's still protected, but perhaps not to the same degree or something.  I just don't think they'd steal a song and use it on a movie intended or at least hoped to be released to a nationwide audience.  Unless the commercial release is a hoax and they never intended to get it out to anyone other than these carefully selected audiences.


I'm not entirely certain if the point of this movie is to make money.  When you look at some of the details, like the plans to pay schools to force their students to go see it, it starts sounding fishy.  I start wondering if the whole thing is meant more as a promotional stunt than a means to rake in the money.  They make motions of intending to release to theaters nationwide and keep pushing the date back and then finally they could announce that the evil conspiracy is keeping them from getting into the theaters.  Maybe the producers could get some cash from charging for churches to show it in their basements, but in that scenario the movie is more like a large scale advertising campaign.
They could still make some money by releasing it on DVD, in fact one member of the audience asked when the DVD would be out.  But judging by the getexpelled site (which was the one referred to as being for people of faith and includes information for people who want to set up an expelled debate at their school) they're trying to convince their target demographic that they're part of a grass roots campaign to defend freedom and liberty.  I don't think this is a cynical attempt to profit off of the religiously minded.  I think it is an even more cynical attempt to manipulate the religiously minded who aren't already fixated on taking over schools and forcing their beliefs on the entire country to start doing just that.


Oh, and one final note about something that I feel I should have been clearer on regarding the treatment of the holocaust.  What they did in the movie was refer to the instances where the Nazis gathered up and executed the...  I don't know how to say it, the disabled.  The "physically inferior".  They got a German tour guide of the structure where the people had been killed to state that the people were killed because of Darwin.  I wanted to ask the filmmakers if they were familiar with the traditional way for ancient Spartans to deal with the birth of such a child, and if they believed that the evil of darwinsim extends backwards in time as well.

They then attempted to suggest that that sort of thinking was behind the entire holocaust.  This is tricky to talk about because I feel like I'm trying to defend part of it, but the campaign to exterminate the Jews was different.  It was racial scapegoating, it was a traditional tactic arguably as old as religion itself.

And I'm still furious that Ben Stein played off his Jewish Heritage and ignored all those details to blame it all on science.  I still can't figure out Ben's motive behind all this.  He can't have been paid enough.  The filmmakers can proceed to make more drivel like this, they'll always have an audience.  But can Ben be counting on becoming the next bizarre conservative religious spokesperson in the style of Kirk Cameron or Chuck Norris?  Perhaps his recent financial advice screwups were the result of him phoning in his last days as a financial guru before he moves on to Liars for Jesus inc?  Is a Fox News guest commenter relationship on the horizon?
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Mar. 20 2008,04:06

Quote (Annyday @ Mar. 19 2008,18:26)
I found a supposed Expelled torrent with a related problem. Could be the one oldman saw. They want me to sign up for some site to get a password and further instructions, which has never lead good places in my experience. This wasn't displayed directly but was "hidden" in a readme in the original torrent, which I grabbed in advance because I felt like checking if it was real before I downloaded the huge video file. Between that and the rarity of real pre-release torrent leaks, I don't think it's the genuine article.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's all fake! Turns out any word that people are searching for they make up a torrent for it (fake) and fill it with malware (most likely the storm bot worm).

Wow, I've not used torrents for some time and it appears I'm out of the loop! Avoid!
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 20 2008,05:52

Thanks for the report.
             
Quote (Nomad @ Mar. 19 2008,23:18)
Regarding their usage of the Pink Floyd song.. I think they got permission somehow or another.  It wasn't the original Pink Floyd performance, it was played solely on string instruments.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben Stein has been around the industry long enough that I would expect him (or his people) to know how to do such things by the book.
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I'm not entirely certain if the point of this movie is to make money.  When you look at some of the details, like the plans to pay schools to force their students to go see it, it starts sounding fishy.  I start wondering if the whole thing is meant more as a promotional stunt than a means to rake in the money.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd guess there's a True Believer camp and an in it for the money camp. The latter need not make their money in the box office, as many of the former are very wealthy and think this is Gods Work.

The money for schools to see it appears to come from outside organizations, not out of Ben Steins Money ;)

See for < http://www.getexpelled.com/scholarships.php > example. The ticket stub deal is only $10,000 to the group that collects the most.

They also have a pretty good guaranteed audience among fundie groups, and a large grass roots promotional network who will not only think work for free, but think it is their moral duty to do so.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Perhaps his recent financial advice screwups were the result of him phoning in his last days as a financial guru before he moves on to Liars for Jesus inc?  Is a Fox News guest commenter relationship on the horizon?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It has been suggested he wants to set himself up as the Michael Moore of the right.

Prediction: The next film will be about global warming.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 20 2008,09:03

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 20 2008,05:52)
Prediction: The next film will be about global warming.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What Global Warming? :(

I'm betting it's gonna be more on the War On The White Male Oppressed Republican Minority.
Posted by: blader on Mar. 20 2008,09:47

Nomad, perhaps I missed it, but can you please describe how one can go about getting a pass to see a screening?

I see they have one planned at a theater near me, and I'd like to see it for myself (I think).  I mean, it sounds so bad it might actually be funny..or not.
Posted by: blader on Mar. 20 2008,10:28

Quote (Nomad @ Mar. 20 2008,02:18)
And I'm still furious that Ben Stein played off his Jewish Heritage and ignored all those details to blame it all on science.  I still can't figure out Ben's motive behind all this.  He can't have been paid enough.  The filmmakers can proceed to make more drivel like this, they'll always have an audience.  But can Ben be counting on becoming the next bizarre conservative religious spokesperson in the style of Kirk Cameron or Chuck Norris?  Perhaps his recent financial advice screwups were the result of him phoning in his last days as a financial guru before he moves on to Liars for Jesus inc?  Is a Fox News guest commenter relationship on the horizon?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


When I first heard about this project, my first reflex was to assume it was a parody....until it became clear who are the producers.  Then I looked into Stein's pedigree a bit further.

My best guess is that what mostly motivates Stein is he is one of those people who make their living by working to get exposure and recognition so he'll be considered for the next gig that comes down the line.  He's just out there shilling, trying to get work.  

What is more interesting is to speculate why a group of self-styled fundamentalist christian leaders appear to have quite purposely chosen a jewish entertainer to serve as their standard bearer during what I think is quite clearly something they see as the next phase of their culture war.

I don't think it is at all accidental that Stein was selected for the project rather than someone else.  I'm pretty convinced that by recruiting Stein, they hoped to deflect any charges that their culture movement is essentially based upon a religious proposition.  As if to say, "Look!  How can you possibly accuse us of being an anti-intellectual religious-based when our key spokesman is actually a holywood/ivy league elitist wunderkind jew?!?"

It seems to me you can always expect the DI to do the crass and tasteless and the clumsy.  I'd love to be a fly on the wall listening to them congratulate themselves for the brilliance of choosing Stein.
Posted by: ndt on Mar. 20 2008,10:28

Regarding Stein's motivation, I'd like to offer an additional possibility besides True Believer and In It For The Money. I think it's possible that he sees the religious right as a useful, easily manipulated voting bloc, much the way Nixon regarded southern racists. This whole exercise could be an attempt to keep them voting for the Nixon-style "conservatives" whose views Stein agrees with.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 20 2008,10:34

Quote (blader @ Mar. 20 2008,09:47)
Nomad, perhaps I missed it, but can you please describe how one can go about getting a pass to see a screening?

I see they have one planned at a theater near me, and I'd like to see it for myself (I think).  I mean, it sounds so bad it might actually be funny..or not.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In case Nomad is still recovering his recently assaulted brain cells, here is a link so that you can book your screening:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled >

BTW - What city are you in?

Unless you want to get bombarded with Marketing junk, I would suggest setting  up a special email account.  They also ask for a Title when you sign up - Pastor, or Youth Group Leader would get you instant credibility.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 20 2008,11:01



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It seems to me you can always expect the DI to do the crass and tasteless and the clumsy.  I'd love to be a fly on the wall listening to them congratulate themselves for the brilliance of choosing Stein.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I was a bit surprised to see Stein assume the Monica position, but I'm not convinced he is being hypocritical. Evolution and ID are a bit like the vase and two women optical illusion. You see one aspect or the other.

I know lots of people who "accept" evolution, even argue for it on the web, but who don't understand it as a universal tendency. They cannot, for example, see the parallel between biological evolution and learning.

This deficiency of imagination is not confined to the right wing. Noam Chomsky was pretty much in the design camp. When pushed against the wall, he gave lip service to biological common descent, but he considered language and the language faculty to be irreducibly complex and not reachable by stepwise modification.
Posted by: Steverino on Mar. 20 2008,11:15

I don't recall the circumstances of Sternberg not being kept by the Smithsonian, but didn't it turn out to be for something other than him being an IDiot?

Can anyone provide me with the Reader's Digest version?
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 20 2008,11:31

Quote (Steverino @ Mar. 20 2008,11:15)
I don't recall the circumstances of Sternberg not being kept by the Smithsonian, but didn't it turn out to be for something other than him being an IDiot?

Can anyone provide me with the Reader's Digest version?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Try Wiki, better than Readers Digest and you get to read the arguments on the talk page :-)

Chris!
Posted by: blader on Mar. 20 2008,11:42

Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 20 2008,11:34)
Quote (blader @ Mar. 20 2008,09:47)
Nomad, perhaps I missed it, but can you please describe how one can go about getting a pass to see a screening?

I see they have one planned at a theater near me, and I'd like to see it for myself (I think).  I mean, it sounds so bad it might actually be funny..or not.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In case Nomad is still recovering his recently assaulted brain cells, here is a link so that you can book your screening:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled >

BTW - What city are you in?

Unless you want to get bombarded with Marketing junk, I would suggest setting  up a special email account.  They also ask for a Title when you sign up - Pastor, or Youth Group Leader would get you instant credibility.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm in Atlanta

thanks
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 20 2008,11:56

< Wikipedia article link >
Posted by: improvius on Mar. 20 2008,12:55

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 20 2008,12:31)
Quote (Steverino @ Mar. 20 2008,11:15)
I don't recall the circumstances of Sternberg not being kept by the Smithsonian, but didn't it turn out to be for something other than him being an IDiot?

Can anyone provide me with the Reader's Digest version?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Try Wiki, better than Readers Digest and you get to read the arguments on the talk page :-)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I checked out the discussion page just for kicks.

Wow.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Reputable? I do not normally deem reputable any published article that relies on either USENET, TalkOrigins, Art Bell or Panda's thumb. The AAAS link you posted does one of them. The link they provide ends up at the main page (stale link in AAAS article). Calling Panda's thumb polemic blog entries and their associated comments "scientific", as does the AAAS article you refer to, stretches credibility beyond belief. I am starting to suspect that the AAAS is funded by George Soros or Michael Moore:) Also, based on a quick search of google, it looks like the AAAS and Pandas thumb have engage in a form of mutual accredidation, quoting each other as convienent when discussing threats to evolutionary theory. Also, the AAAS article seems to be the basis of the peer review allegation on the reference (which is incorrect/broken). I'll reread yet again to see where you're coming from. Sometimes I miss things. ImprobabilityDrive 17:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 20 2008,16:56

I am astonished that person would speak of Art Bell in such a derogatory fashion!  Shocked I am!
Posted by: bystander on Mar. 20 2008,18:50

Quote (ndt @ Mar. 21 2008,03:28)
Regarding Stein's motivation, I'd like to offer an additional possibility besides True Believer and In It For The Money. I think it's possible that he sees the religious right as a useful, easily manipulated voting bloc, much the way Nixon regarded southern racists. This whole exercise could be an attempt to keep them voting for the Nixon-style "conservatives" whose views Stein agrees with.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Looking at Stein's financial writings, I think that he enjoys going against the crowd and this is probably what attracted him in the first place. The idea that he thinks that people are generally sheep and being different marks him as being an independent thinker. Also the DI guys can present their ideas quite seductively if you have not been exposed to the other side.
Posted by: bfish on Mar. 20 2008,19:25

[quote=J-Dog,Mar. 20 2008,08:34]

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

In case Nomad is still recovering his recently assaulted brain cells, here is a link so that you can book your screening:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dammit. There is a northern California one I could go to but it is already "full."

Nomad, do you think someone would succeed in getting in if they didn't have a pre-arranged "visa," or security check, or whatever it is they do? Are there scalpers at these showings? Scalpers for Jesus?

I should probably be preparing for my rotiserrie auction anyway.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 20 2008,20:00

Incase Kevin Miller has a "server glitch":

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....hi.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
OH NO. "Darwinism = Hitler", the old creationist canard.

(1) It’s an argument to (perceived) consequences.

The fact of evolution is real regardless of if you like the (perceived) consequences or not. I don’t like that donuts make me fat, but they do. Reality is not contingent on me approving its output.

(2) Hitler was a theist, and talked about god wanting him to do things.

Hitler talks about god a lot, Darwin not at all. Check “Mein Kampf” if you don’t believe me. German Soldiers had “gott mit uns” as part of their regalia. Don’t get me wrong, he was an odious, evil man, but he’s not getting his worldview from “Darwinism”

(3) Genocide is artificial, not natural selection

And it predates both Darwin and Hitler. The Spartans used to practice it. Modern pets and livestock are a product of it.

Shame on those who continue to perpetuate this nonsense. I’m talking to you, Kevin Miller.


Posted by: Rich | March 20, 2008 at 09:04 AM

Have you seen the film yet, Rich? If not, perhaps you should suspend judgment.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 20, 2008 at 09:24 AM

"I've always questioned Darwinism, because Darwinism leads to social Darwinism..." from the Godtube video you posted, about half way through.

"See the film" does not address my issues, Kevin.

Posted by: Rich | March 20, 2008 at 09:50 AM

Rich: All you're doing here is attempting to erect a straw man. But just to satisfy you, here are some responses to your points.

1) At no point does "Expelled" argue that Darwinism is wrong because it leads to dire social consequences. As I said, see the film before you pass judgment.

2) I don't disagree that Hitler was a theist. But to try and argue that he developed his programs completely independent of Darwin is ludicrous. As I said, see the film before you pass judgment. We present ample evidence of Darwin's influence upon the Third Reich.

3) Obviously, genocide predates Hitler and Darwin. But the science of eugenics does not. It was developed by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in an effort to apply Darwinian principals to social change. Once again, the connection between Darwinism and eugenics is crystal clear.

Do I have to say it again? See the film before passing judgment.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 20, 2008 at 02:45 PM

Thanks at least for answering.

1) But Ben Stein does, in a clip you link to, talking about “expelled” and he is the star of your film. Is that *really* a straw man?

2) If you agree that arguing to consequences is wrong, why do you then try and link Hitler and Darwin? Again, Darwin’s theory is natural selection and eugenics is artificial selection.

3) Eugenics predates both Hitler and Darwin. The fact that Galton coined the name is trivial. Gravity existed before someone formalized it as a theory. I mentioned ancient Sparta, but they clearly aren’t the only ancient society to practice eugenics.

Try :
Ancient Eugenics
The Arnold Prize Essay for 1913 by Allen G. Roper, B.A.
Late Scholar of Keble College
Originally Published By B.H. Blackwell, Broad Street, Oxford (1913)
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 7514891


I can find this. I'm surprised a big budget film crew can’t.


Posted by: Rich | March 20, 2008 at 05:32 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....-b.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Hey Rich: Advertise Glen D. on your own blog. If you want to offer a summary of his response here, that's cool. But no promoting.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 18, 2008 at 11:49 PM

I felt the comments were well crafted and wholly relevant, and better than I could have crafted. Have you "EXPELLED" his comments? Oh dear. What's the material difference between me posting them here and him posting them here? Are you a hypocrite?

Posted by: Rich | March 20, 2008 at 09:08 AM

Rich: I expelled your misuse of the comments section of my blog, not Glen D. The function of the comments is to COMMENT on something posted on the blog, not re-direct readers to another blog. So like I said, if you have something relevant to say, go for it. If you're just stopping by to snipe, I think we can probably do without you.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 20, 2008 at 09:23 AM

It would seem we're both very interested in intelligent design, and that you purport that censorship is going on with regard to that. But then you censor. How is a reader to be informed and make up their own mind? Aren't your actions defeating your argument?

Posted by: Rich | March 20, 2008 at 09:46 AM

Not at all, Rich. This is my blog. I'm free to run it according to my own editorial principles. I've told you the rules by which you may post things. If you don't want to abide by them, that's your problem. But it certainly isn't censorship.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 20, 2008 at 02:47 PM

Aren't there rules and demarcation for science and academia? Or do you advocate a double standard?

Posted by: Rich | March 20, 2008 at 05:12 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....-t.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"unscrupulous Orlando Sentinel film critic" - please substantiate and wallow in hypocrisy, or retract.

Posted by: Rich | March 13, 2008 at 12:27 PM

Yeah, I'm curious as to why you guys want clergy to see the film but not actual film critics.

Posted by: mike | March 14, 2008 at 06:22 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 20 2008,20:09

< PZ Myers expelled from line to see "Expelled" >

They let PZ's family and guest in to see it, though.

Go read PZ's blog post now for the name of the guest.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 20 2008,20:29

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 20 2008,20:09)
< PZ Myers expelled from line to see "Expelled" >

They let PZ's family and guest in to see it, though.

Go read PZ's blog post now for the name of the guest.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


BwaHaHa!  

They "expelled" PZ from Expelled The Bad Movie" and let in PZ's guest!

Every Irony Meter in the Twin Cities Area is now totally busted.
Posted by: stevestory on Mar. 20 2008,20:34

OMG that is hilarious
Posted by: Mister DNA on Mar. 20 2008,20:39

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 20 2008,20:09)
< PZ Myers expelled from line to see "Expelled" >

They let PZ's family and guest in to see it, though.

Go read PZ's blog post now for the name of the guest.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh man, that's just beautiful.
Posted by: stevestory on Mar. 20 2008,20:39


Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 20 2008,21:03


Posted by: Reed on Mar. 20 2008,21:43

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 20 2008,18:09)
< PZ Myers expelled from line to see "Expelled" >

They let PZ's family and guest in to see it, though.

Go read PZ's blog post now for the name of the guest.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wow. Not letting someone who is featured in the movie into a screening ?

That's low, even by IDiot standards. On the plus side, there's even more comedy gold to come when they try to spin this one. Especially given who they did let in ;)
Posted by: Doc Bill on Mar. 20 2008,21:46

I'm doing one of those cartoon head shake things.

Let me get this straight.

PZ, family and a guest went to see Expelled.  PZ and guest are actually IN Expelled.

PZ is singled out and expelled from seeing Expelled, but guest and family are admitted.

The guest is Richard Effing Dawkins.

Richard Effing Dawkins!

Sort of the Alpha Male PZ.  He's let in while the lemur-like beta male PZ is constrained to munching popcorn in the lobby.

Makes no sense to me.  Except....

Creatoonists!  Yes, makes perfect sense!
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 20 2008,21:57

Im sitting here, eating a piece of pineapple upside-down cheesecake with Arnie.  Friend IMs me on gmail "OMFG GO TO PHARYNGULA GO TO PHARYNGULA!"

Best day ever.

Seriously.

Shit.

ROFL!!!!!
Posted by: Nerull on Mar. 20 2008,21:58

Okay,  PZ probably already had the idea...

But since I did tell Skatje to crash Expelled at the MoA, I'm taking credit.  :p
Posted by: Occam's Aftershave on Mar. 20 2008,22:09

Countdown to Casey Luskin the attack gerbil's spin

" We did that on purpose so PZ would know what Sternberg and Gonzalez felt!!!!"

....5....4....3...2....1

:D  :D  :D  :D  :D
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 20 2008,22:49

THOSE FASCIST FUCKS THREW PZ OUT OF THE THEATRE RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! The only reason that they didn't throw Dawkins out is that they were apparently too fucking stupid to recognize him! They didn't even recognize him when he sat through the film - not until he rose to speak, after being called on - by said producer, MARK MATHIS - at the Q&A. Holy shit, the blood drained from his face then! :angry:

"Free speech" eh? Un-fucking-believable.

This is what I overheard from a theatre employee named "Jared" to PZ: "The producer said that you are not allowed to attend the screening, because you don't have a ticket, and you were not invited. This is a private screening." Nomad, did you have a ticket? Were you invited? Didn't you click on that "please fill the theatre, please, please," link and subsequently get, as I did, an e-mail that said, "TICKET NOT REQUIRED"?

Dawkins stands up and asks MARK MATHIS why PZ was expelled. As Rev. Barky said to me later, it was a magic moment. Mathis repeates the same bullshit above. Nazis, eh?

And that beefy, ugly cop [*edit- cop, not copy, but what the hay, "copy" fits too*], after completing his rounds of the audience during the film, hovered just behind Dawkins (who was about 30 rows away from Mathis) every time that Dawkins spoke. Stalin, eh? Police state?

I asked Mathis to give (as his film does not) a concise definition of intelligent design and to tell us about some little film called "Crossroads." Mathis did finally get ID right (irreducible complexity, Dembki's improbabilities, blah, blah) and then launches in with "And if you know anything about filmmaking, there's something called a working title..." Yeah, I do know, thanks. I've been in films. One of them even won an award (ifilm.com) and filled a few theatres. Without your police state shenanigans I might add, Mark Mathis.

Mark Mathis made a big spiel about "let's be open to new ideas and have a debate." So Dawkins stands up, and these open-minded people laugh at him.

These bloodsuckers went after him and PZ just to ride their coattails to attain some kind of fame, any kind of fame.

I'll write about the movie tomorrow. Right now, I feel as if I've escaped Nazi Germany myself. I need a beer. Prohibition is over! :p

I wouldn't treat Ftk or DaveScot the way that Mathis treated Dawkins tonight. (Mathis even accused Dawkins of lying, and Dawkins apologized for being wrong. Can't win for losing.)
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 20 2008,22:56

Im glad you were there, Kristine.  At first I was worried Richard was in with those people by himself...

*hug*
Posted by: Gary Bohn on Mar. 20 2008,23:15

I don't normally post here but this information is a bit to difficult to take.

That the producers of this bull shit had the gaul to set Dawkins up for derision after forcing PZ out of the theatre goes way beyond irony. These hypocrites should be dragged naked through the stench and poisons of their own making.

I have always felt that PZ and Dawkins have been a bit over zealous in their treatment of religion, but after seeing the events tonight, all I can say is its time to take it to the religionists. They apparently believe their absolute morals don't apply to them when fighting against the relativist Darwinists.
Posted by: Mike PSS on Mar. 20 2008,23:18

Quote (Occam's Aftershave @ Mar. 20 2008,23:09)
Countdown to Casey Luskin the attack gerbil's spin

" We did that on purpose so PZ would know what Sternberg and Gonzalez felt!!!!"

....5....4....3...2....1

:D  :D  :D  :D  :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is more like what Luskin is doing.



"They did WHAT??!!?!?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 20 2008,23:44

Genie Scott pointed out to me that I should check the date that they bought their domain name:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

% whois expelledthemovie.com

  Domain Name: EXPELLEDTHEMOVIE.COM
  Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
  Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
  Referral URL: < http://domainhelp.opensrs.net >
  Name Server: NS1.FILMPR.COM
  Name Server: NS2.FILMPR.COM
  Status: ok
  Updated Date: 16-feb-2008
  Creation Date: 01-mar-2007
  Expiration Date: 01-mar-2009

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



February 28, 2007 is the very latest they could claim "working title" as an excuse for their ruse.

When did Scott, Dawkins, and Myers get interviewed? April, 2007 for Scott and summer, 2007 for Dawkins. Does someone have Myers' interview date handy? Was it before February 28th? I somehow doubt it.

Now, what about the idea that maybe they changed things around late? That would mean that there should be a domain registration for "crossroadsthemovie.com", wouldn't you think?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

%whois crossroadsthemovie.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to < http://www.internic.net >
for detailed information.

No match for "CROSSROADSTHEMOVIE.COM".
>>> Last update of whois database: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:38:49 UTC <<<

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Isn't that ... special?

[From PZ's blog post:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So there you have it... even after buying the "Expelled" domain, and never having bought a domain for "Crossroads", Mathis was using "Crossroads" and its innocuous overtones to invite interviewees for the film.

Busted.]


Posted by: ERV on Mar. 20 2008,23:56

Awesome, Wes!

Blog about that so I can link to you :P
Posted by: Badidea on Mar. 21 2008,00:04

I've been trying to < shout out about the domain inconsistency for quite some time >.  Glad it's getting some notice.

There are other signs that this story is full of holes though.

More important than asking about Crossroads is asking: whatever happened to Rampant Films?  You know, the inconspicuous little production company with the website listing several blase films, about scuba diving and such, and which had a street address that turned out to be an unoccupied apartment building?

And how exactly does one claim that the Expelled concept evolved after the interviews anyway when your own star, selected early in the project, characterized his take on the film as "From Darwin to Hitler"?

And so on.

I do feel that we're still not hitting our stride in rebutting this stuff.  For all the things WE think are big goofs and obvious on their side, very little of that is really making an impression on people outside the scienceblog circle.  They are very tightly controlling their message, and it is a savvy one: hard to rebut as quickly and as clearly as it can be spun.  Free expression and free inquiry is a compelling rallying cry.  The problem is simply that freedom of inquiry does not overrule the unavoidable need to make judgments of scientific merit in academia, and the stalwart refusal of the ID camp to accept, even hypothetically, the possibility that their ideas have no merit, just as countless unsung scientists have seen happen to their ideas, only without a tremendous PR campaign to keep the idea alive regardless.

But see, even that took too long to blather on about...
Posted by: Badidea on Mar. 21 2008,00:44

I forgot to highlight my favorite part about the "Rampant Films" angle: producer Ruloff later told the NYT that Rampant was actually a "subsidiary" of the far more obviously evangelical company Premise Media.

The odd thing here, though is that Premise Media was founded explicitly to create the film that would become Expelled.  It's two original main producers, Craft and Rullof, even speak about how it all came together for that purpose.

So tell me folks: why exactly does a media company that just got founded, explicitly with the idea of creating a specific film (and they even, no joke, basically said "hmmm, we need to find a Jew to star in it!"), and has yet to produce anything else so far, need a subsidiary?  Don't you normally form subsidiary companies when you have, well, like, more than one project or division to juggle?  Or after you've been in business a very long time and need to spin off some operations?

I mean, getting together trademarks and company names and domain registrations costs money.  You don't just invent extra companies for the hell of it without a good reason.

But then, we all know the reason, don't we?
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 21 2008,00:49

Quote (Badidea @ Mar. 21 2008,00:04)
I do feel that we're still not hitting our stride in rebutting this stuff.  For all the things WE think are big goofs and obvious on their side, very little of that is really making an impression on people outside the scienceblog circle.  They are very tightly controlling their message, and it is a savvy one: hard to rebut as quickly and as clearly as it can be spun.  Free expression and free inquiry is a compelling rallying cry.  The problem is simply that freedom of inquiry does not overrule the unavoidable need to make judgments of scientific merit in academia, and the stalwart refusal of the ID camp to accept, even hypothetically, the possibility that their ideas have no merit, just as countless unsung scientists have seen happen to their ideas, only without a tremendous PR campaign to keep the idea alive regardless.

But see, even that took too long to blather on about...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll say. I read two sentences into that paragraph, then decided to skip it. Mark Twain was right, and a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Therefore, one should probably go shoeless. Mention directly and bluntly that the other guy is lying. You can say that academic freedom is technically an admirable goal and you agree with it, but the Discovery Institute isn't really appealing to academic freedom. It won't catch on, is the problem. I think you should instead say the other guy is lying, you've kicked nobody out and censored no one, and you have a right to your opinion and to freedom of association because this is a free country.

Scientists don't like doing this kind of thing, though. Generally speaking, the art of rhetoric is lost on them, and rolling out buzzwords like "free country" is a kind of horrific crime. They'd rather explain how stuff works and why X or Y is true, which is why they're good as scientists and teachers but kind of crappy at PR.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 21 2008,00:57

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 20 2008,22:44)
Genie Scott pointed out to me that I should check the date that they bought their domain name:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

% whois expelledthemovie.com

  Domain Name: EXPELLEDTHEMOVIE.COM
  Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
  Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
  Referral URL: < http://domainhelp.opensrs.net >
  Name Server: NS1.FILMPR.COM
  Name Server: NS2.FILMPR.COM
  Status: ok
  Updated Date: 16-feb-2008
  Creation Date: 01-mar-2007
  Expiration Date: 01-mar-2009

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



February 28, 2007 is the very latest they could claim "working title" as an excuse for their ruse.

When did Scott, Dawkins, and Myers get interviewed? April, 2007 for Scott and summer, 2007 for Dawkins. Does someone have Myers' interview date handy? Was it before February 28th? I somehow doubt it.

Now, what about the idea that maybe they changed things around late? That would mean that there should be a domain registration for "crossroadsthemovie.com", wouldn't you think?

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

%whois crossroadsthemovie.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to < http://www.internic.net >
for detailed information.

No match for "CROSSROADSTHEMOVIE.COM".
>>> Last update of whois database: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:38:49 UTC <<<

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Isn't that ... special?

[From PZ's blog post:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So there you have it... even after buying the "Expelled" domain, and never having bought a domain for "Crossroads", Mathis was using "Crossroads" and its innocuous overtones to invite interviewees for the film.

Busted.]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:O  Wesley you are AWESOME!

That little piss-ant Mathis! "If you know anything about how films are made..." Oh, man, he'd better not run into me again.
Posted by: Nomad on Mar. 21 2008,01:01

I am just beside myself with the story from Minnesota.  Had I known I would have driven for six hours each way to get there to participate in this.  I would have figured out a way to surreptitiously record the after movie festivities (so that there was no copyright violation that could be claimed) for those unable to attend.


Regarding what it took for me to get in, no, no passes or anything.  I signed up through the online form.  They emailed confirmation forms that many people printed out and brought in, but the forms didn't seem to count for anything, in the end all that mattered was that they had your name on a list (sorted by first instead of last name) and you could prove that you were who you said you were.  They made a point about being strict with the list, if you had signed up for three people total and brought one extra the extra guest absolutely would not be admitted.  Despite this the theater wasn't jam packed as you'd expect, they seemed to leave about a third of it unoccupied.  Or else that many people didn't show up.

I do know how religious pressure can effect the movie biz.  I still remember the story about the IMAX movie about life in the ocean being kept out of theaters in the South because of religious pressure (since the movie mentioned evolution and we can't have that in our public entertainment, although we can have Jesus being whipped and crucified).
But this still seems like a new low, kicking a scientifically literate individual out of an entire theater.  Oh producers, your cowardice is showing.  May I remind you that you told my group that you WANT to get discussions going, you want people to disagree with you.  The way you explained it, you were all about getting the dialog started.

Not having hired thugs kicking out the very people that you interviewed.

Not that I'm complaining.  It wouldn't have been near this glorious if everyone had gotten in, no questions asked.  It's much more fun when you kick out feared dissidents who want to see the movie that accuses others of kicking out dissidents.  Irony like that could be bottled and sold for $100 an ounce.
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on Mar. 21 2008,01:05

< Dawkins Crashes 'Expelled' Party >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mark Moring

Noted Darwinist shows up uninvited at private screening of Intelligent Design documentary.

Expelled, a new documentary that argues the case for Intelligent Design from a Judeo-Christian perspective, has been in the headlines lately, prior to its April 18 theatrical release.

The film, hosted and narrated by Ben Stein, has been screened to invitation-only audiences at churches and for various Christian groups. But several critics have worked their way in to some of the screenings, most notably Roger Moore of The Orlando Sentinel, who recently trashed the movie in his blog.

A critic of another kind "crashed" a screening in Minnesota on Thursday night--Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and arguably the most outspoken critic of Intelligent Design and Creationism. Dawkins himself appears in the documentary--but claims he was duped into believing it was going to be an objective account of Darwinism vs. ID.

Jeffrey Overstreet, a film critic for CT Movies, broke the news on his own blog Thursday night after receiving an e-mail from a college student who was at the screening.

Stuart Blessman, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities student, told Overstreet in the e-mail that Dawkins' appearance "was quite a surprise" to both the audience and associate producer Mark Mathis, who fielded questions afterward.

Blessman reported that Dawkins asked several questions, and complained that "any statement he made in the film was in fact under the assumption that he was being interviewed . . . for a film that was to take an even-handed look at the Intelligent Design/Evolution controversy."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 21 2008,01:16

I wonder if they'll take that "click here for a free screening" web page down now.
Posted by: tacitus on Mar. 21 2008,01:53

Wesley, while "crossroadsthemovie.com" wasn't reserved, it is possible that they reserved another combination of name and extension (e.g. crossroads-the-movie.net).

However, if that's the case, they should have no problem telling us what domain name they did choose so we can look up the details of when they registered it, so don't let them get away with waffling about inaccurate domain names.

Either way, nice work.
Posted by: Buzz Parsec on Mar. 21 2008,02:45

Crossroads?  Innocuous?  I must dispute that.  The Crossroads is where the supreme being (Robert Johnson) and his acolyte (Eric Clapton, aka God) sold their souls to the devil!  :p
Posted by: Mister DNA on Mar. 21 2008,02:49

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ Mar. 21 2008,01:05)
< Dawkins Crashes 'Expelled' Party >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mark Moring

Noted Darwinist shows up uninvited at private screening of Intelligent Design documentary.

Expelled, a new documentary that argues the case for Intelligent Design from a Judeo-Christian perspective, has been in the headlines lately, prior to its April 18 theatrical release.

The film, hosted and narrated by Ben Stein, has been screened to invitation-only audiences at churches and for various Christian groups. But several critics have worked their way in to some of the screenings, most notably Roger Moore of The Orlando Sentinel, who recently trashed the movie in his blog.

A critic of another kind "crashed" a screening in Minnesota on Thursday night--Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and arguably the most outspoken critic of Intelligent Design and Creationism. Dawkins himself appears in the documentary--but claims he was duped into believing it was going to be an objective account of Darwinism vs. ID.

Jeffrey Overstreet, a film critic for CT Movies, broke the news on his own blog Thursday night after receiving an e-mail from a college student who was at the screening.

Stuart Blessman, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities student, told Overstreet in the e-mail that Dawkins' appearance "was quite a surprise" to both the audience and associate producer Mark Mathis, who fielded questions afterward.

Blessman reported that Dawkins asked several questions, and complained that "any statement he made in the film was in fact under the assumption that he was being interviewed . . . for a film that was to take an even-handed look at the Intelligent Design/Evolution controversy."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Too bad the comments are moderated at CT's blog. It looks like Mark Moring is going to wake up tomorrow and find a buttload of comments with links to Pharyngula.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 21 2008,03:00

Quote (tacitus @ Mar. 21 2008,01:53)
Wesley, while "crossroadsthemovie.com" wasn't reserved, it is possible that they reserved another combination of name and extension (e.g. crossroads-the-movie.net).

However, if that's the case, they should have no problem telling us what domain name they did choose so we can look up the details of when they registered it, so don't let them get away with waffling about inaccurate domain names.

Either way, nice work.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Neither "crossroadsthemovie.*" nor "crossroads-the-movie.*" show any sign of anybody registering such a domain.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 21 2008,03:21

Perhaps they had to drop Crossroads as the title because they couldn't get Britney Spears to narrate.
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 21 2008,03:28

IIRC, it's been mentioned that they had information regarding the supposed "crossroads" film at rampantfilms.com for the benefit of those they were interviewing. It's gone now, at any rate. This doesn't do much to mitigate the oddness of registering expelledthemovie in advance, but hey.
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 21 2008,03:42

[quote=Mister DNA,Mar. 21 2008,00:49]
Quote (Jason Spaceman @ Mar. 21 2008,01:05)
< Dawkins Crashes 'Expelled' Party >

Too bad the comments are moderated at CT's blog. It looks like Mark Moring is going to wake up tomorrow and find a buttload of comments with links to Pharyngula.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


As I noted over on pharyngula, the CT post has mutated been intelligently modified to link to PZs account, even though no comments have appeared, and the text doesn't mention any updates.
Posted by: slpage on Mar. 21 2008,07:56

Where is the "libral' media" in all this?  This sounds like at least page 2 material to me....
Posted by: 1of63 on Mar. 21 2008,08:05

Crossroads was also the name of a long-running British TV soap, notable for bad scripts, bad acting, shaky sets and improbable storylines...hmm, that sounds familiar...
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Mar. 21 2008,08:22

Quote (1of63 @ Mar. 21 2008,08:05)
Crossroads was also the name of a long-running British TV soap, notable for bad scripts, bad acting, shaky sets and improbable storylines...hmm, that sounds familiar...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crossroads also had a somewhat, er, simple character in it

Is < Benny > DaveScot?
Posted by: AJ Milne on Mar. 21 2008,08:53

Man, I wish I lived in Minnesota. All the cool shit happens there.

Seriously, this is just too sweet. Fear the Minnesota biology prof. Fear him![I]
Posted by: Doc Bill on Mar. 21 2008,09:23

I would have driven from Houston just to watch PZ get expelled and DAWKINS get in!

Oh, that's rich!  Kick out PZ and let in Dawkins!

I'm laughing, I'm crying.  And "they" wonder why we call them IDiots.

Too, too good.  This is legend.
Posted by: guthrie on Mar. 21 2008,09:29

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 20 2008,22:49)
The only reason that they didn't throw Dawkins out is that they were apparently too fucking stupid to recognize him! They didn't even recognize him when he sat through the film - not until he rose to speak, after being called on - by said producer, MARK MATHIS - at the Q&A. Holy shit, the blood drained from his face then! :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just for clarification purposes- Mathis didn't even seem to know Dawkins was there, so the blood drained from his face when Dawkins revealed himself?

Maybe someone needs to speak to the people checking the list of names, so as to clear up why "Richard Dawkins" was allowed in...
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 21 2008,09:42

I am so sad they are not showing this piece of shit in Dallas.  Sounds like it would be a hoot.

I'd go as a catholic priest and hide a camera in my dress or whatever it is those guys wear.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 21 2008,10:16

I've signed up for the March 26th screening at the AMC 20 in Livonia, MI. It's conveniently near Costco, so if they haven't bumped me off the list before then, I can at least get some shopping done for my trouble.

Is there anyone else who might care to sign up for this screening? I'd like there to be a truthful witness or two for whatever might happen.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 21 2008,10:24

Quote (guthrie @ Mar. 21 2008,09:29)
Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 20 2008,22:49)
The only reason that they didn't throw Dawkins out is that they were apparently too fucking stupid to recognize him! They didn't even recognize him when he sat through the film - not until he rose to speak, after being called on - by said producer, MARK MATHIS - at the Q&A. Holy shit, the blood drained from his face then! :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just for clarification purposes- Mathis didn't even seem to know Dawkins was there, so the blood drained from his face when Dawkins revealed himself?

Maybe someone needs to speak to the people checking the list of names, so as to clear up why "Richard Dawkins" was allowed in...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This has a fairly simple and rational explanation. Myers lives in the town and could be expected to show up. He signed up online under his own name, plus unnamed guests.

So they had his name and a reason to look for him before he showed up.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Mar. 21 2008,10:39



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Is there anyone else who might care to sign up for this screening? I'd like there to be a truthful witness or two for whatever might happen.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Or to hold you back if you get too irate?  :-)
Posted by: Nerull on Mar. 21 2008,10:43

Quote (midwifetoad @ Mar. 21 2008,11:24)
Quote (guthrie @ Mar. 21 2008,09:29)
Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 20 2008,22:49)
The only reason that they didn't throw Dawkins out is that they were apparently too fucking stupid to recognize him! They didn't even recognize him when he sat through the film - not until he rose to speak, after being called on - by said producer, MARK MATHIS - at the Q&A. Holy shit, the blood drained from his face then! :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just for clarification purposes- Mathis didn't even seem to know Dawkins was there, so the blood drained from his face when Dawkins revealed himself?

Maybe someone needs to speak to the people checking the list of names, so as to clear up why "Richard Dawkins" was allowed in...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This has a fairly simple and rational explanation. Myers lives in the town and could be expected to show up. He signed up online under his own name, plus unnamed guests.

So they had his name and a reason to look for him before he showed up.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, actually he lives on the other side of the state, several hours away.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 21 2008,10:51

Quote (Bob O'H @ Mar. 21 2008,10:39)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Is there anyone else who might care to sign up for this screening? I'd like there to be a truthful witness or two for whatever might happen.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Or to hold you back if you get too irate?  :-)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who, me?

I've been in proximity to Bill Dembski several times without blowing a gasket. Can Mark Mathis and Ben Stein exceed that level of provocation?
Posted by: carlsonjok on Mar. 21 2008,10:56

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 21 2008,10:51)
I've been in proximity to Bill Dembski several times without blowing a gasket. Can Mark Mathis and Ben Stein exceed that level of provocation?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, given the respective amount of skin shown, I would have to say that Ben Stein's shorts are more provocative than Dembski's sweater.

Or were you using a different definition of provocative?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 21 2008,11:05

Quote (carlsonjok @ Mar. 21 2008,10:56)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 21 2008,10:51)
I've been in proximity to Bill Dembski several times without blowing a gasket. Can Mark Mathis and Ben Stein exceed that level of provocation?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, given the respective amount of skin shown, I would have to say that Ben Stein's shorts are more provocative than Dembski's sweater.

Or were you using a different definition of provocative?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ewwww.
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 21 2008,11:20

Pharyngula ii. Legi. Cachinnavi*

"Moronic paranoia" thy name is, Mathis.

What a bunch of loons. Only one comment is worthy of this kind of epic cock up by the IDCist clowns:

All your base are belong to us.

With enemies like this, who needs friends?

Louis

* I went to Pharyngula. I read. I laughed out loud.

How wise were our Roman ancestors to actually have a specific verb for "laugh out loud"? Cachinno, cachinnare, cachinnavi, cachinnatus sum. Learn it well my friends, we will be needing it a great deal.

Editerisated for speelung ererz
Posted by: Amadan on Mar. 21 2008,12:28

The Ballad of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins
(To the tune of ‘The Mountains of Mourne’)


They say that Expelled is a wonderful flick
With its tales of shenanigans academic.
It shows evolution is really the cause
Of Hitler and Stalin and no Santa Claus.
It tells of the virtues of freedom of speech -
Professors should feel free to preach when they teach;
But the best bit occurs just before it begins
When PZ gets chucked out but Dawkins gets in.

Ben Stein is the picture’s amazing compère
He interviews Dawkins without being there!
He’d never go mining for quotes or mislead -
They have a scriptwriter who’s paid for that deed!
As a Nixon appointee, you’d think that Ben Stein
Would know that the cover-up’s worse than the crime.
But it seems that hypocrisy isn’t a sin,
So PZ got chucked out though Dawkins got in.

On the Last Day a trumpet will waken the dead
We’ll account then for all that we did and we said.
And the Lord will say “Ev’ryone who saw Expelled,
For supporting that rubbish, in Hell will be held!
But the rest of you people, untouched by its slime
Can join me in Heaven and have a great time.
Our movie tonight is Inherit the Wind:
So for Dawkins, damnation, but PZ, come in!”




Posted by: JohnW on Mar. 21 2008,12:36

Quote (Amadan @ Mar. 21 2008,10:28)
The Ballad of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins
(To the tune of ‘The Mountains of Mourne’)


They say that Expelled is a wonderful flick
With its tales of shenanigans academic.
It shows evolution is really the cause
Of Hitler and Stalin and no Santa Claus.
It tells of the virtues of freedom of speech -
Professors should feel free to preach when they teach;
But the best bit occurs just before it begins
When PZ gets chucked out but Dawkins gets in.

Ben Stein is the picture’s amazing compère
He interviews Dawkins without being there!
He’d never go mining for quotes or mislead -
They have a scriptwriter who’s paid for that deed!
As a Nixon appointee, you’d think that Ben Stein
Would know that the cover-up’s worse than the crime.
But it seems that hypocrisy isn’t a sin,
So PZ got chucked out though Dawkins got in.

On the Last Day a trumpet will waken the dead
We’ll account then for all that we did and we said.
And the Lord will say “Ev’ryone who saw Expelled,
For supporting that rubbish, in Hell will be held!
But the rest of you people, untouched by its slime
Can join me in Heaven and have a great time.
Our movie tonight is Inherit the Wind:
So for Dawkins, damnation, but PZ, come in!”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


POTW.  Also next week, and the week after that.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 21 2008,12:44

I went and gloated at Kevin's website.  I wouldn't repeat the gloating here without an excuse, but the fact is that his site is sticky (accidental, or on purpose?), and I don't trust him.  So, I'm repeating all of the posts I wrote there (including some stuff where I thought I'd made a mistake, then realized I didn't), except the last post I used simply to access them.  One added comment is inserted in brackets, second paragraph down:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So, you expelled my answers to javascript on your blog, and you expelled a link to them here.

What did you think I'd do, Kevin, let you act like the hypocrite you are? You do know, don't you, that I found and splashed the rsvp site for "Expelled" over the web, which appears to have led to this [I don't know for sure, but that's how it looks to me from the comments I saw]. I might have anyway, but I happened to have it in for you guys much more once you censored me while hypocritically whining about others censoring (even though they're not).

Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 21, 2008 at 09:41 AM

Well, you didn't censor my comments from your personal blog, but from the "Expelled" blog--just to be clear.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 21, 2008 at 09:43 AM


Ha, you jackass, now you're censoring my posts from here. Christ, you must feel like the dirt that you are.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 21, 2008 at 09:53 AM

Oh, sorry, I guess it's still there. Oh well, time for the sackcloth.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 21, 2008 at 09:54 AM

(The fact that the page hadn't renewed is why I made the mistake I did, so I was writing on a page where my posts were missing, and then they showed up when I posted.

(Still my error, of course, since I should have tried renewing the page)

Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 21, 2008 at 09:58 AM

Actually, now that I've come in here again, I'm pretty sure that I did renew the page, but this site is sticky. The fact is that my posts simply did not show (the sackcloth comes off).

Is there something wrong with the site, or is this some kind of shenanigans?

Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 21, 2008 at 10:11 AM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I know it's all pretty much a tempest in a teapot, even though we're enjoying it all now.  But I do think that the responses to Expelled will be more direct and prompt due to such "crashings."  Perhaps more important, the fact that it's boring, something the preachers and the like don't generally point out, will be publicized.

I just hope that we don't have so much fun at their expense that the film begins to look interesting to the general public.

Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 21 2008,16:54

This is great.  The first little bit identifying the newspaper is mine, as are the comments at the end:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The St. Paul Pioneer Press, a fairly substantial newspaper, reports on the Myers/Dawkins matter:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
By Chris Hewitt chewitt@pioneerpress.com Article Last Updated: 03/21/2008 04:25:12 PM CDT

It's almost too perfect: P.Z. Myers tried to see the movie, "Expelled," at the Mall of America Thursday.

But he was expelled.

"Expelled," subtitled "No Intelligence Allowed," is the controversial film that argues schools should be teaching creationism as an alternative to evolution. Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota-Morris -- and, more to the point, a prominent atheist -- was interviewed for "Expelled" last April, although he says he was told the film was an evenhanded look at the intersection of science and religion and was to be called "Crossroads."

Myers was in the Twin Cities this week for the American Atheists Conference 2008 in Minneapolis and, coincidentally, he learned there was to be a free screening of "Expelled" at the Mall of America Thursday night. So he registered to attend with his wife, Mary, along with what Myers called "a whole parade of atheists," including internationally famous science writer, Richard Dawkins, whose books include "The God Delusion."

They all got in, but Myers did not.

The filmmakers had been advertising it. They'd been sending out e-mails to people who subscribed to their Web site and all you had to do to go was click on the site and tell how many guests you were going to bring," said Myers, who did just that. "I wanted to be completely above-board. I signed under my own name and I didn't think they would object because, after all, I am in the movie."

At about 7:15 p.m., 15 minutes before showtime, Myers was informed that "Expelled" was expelling him. Myers believes Mark Mathis, who interviewed him for the film "under false pretenses," and who was in attendance at the Mall of America, recognized his name and barred him from attending (attendees had to show identification before being admitted).

"It shows off the hypocrisy of these people, as well as their outright incompetence," said Myers, who reports that his blog -- scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ -- had an all-time high-traffic day Friday. "I could not imagine a better result for this. They've shown themselves to be completely dishonest and that they're trying to hide the truth about their movie, which is to my advantage. And they've shown themselves to be such flaming idiots."

Ironically, Mathis did not recognize Dawkins, who also is in the film and who says Mathis "tricked" him into an interview.

"What surprised me is it is a really lousy film, even if you happen to agree with it," said Dawkins, who took advantage of a question-and-answer session after the screening to ask why Myers wasn't allowed in. "P.Z. is in the film extensively. If anyone had a right to see the film, it was him. The incompetence, on a public relations level, is beyond belief."

Although he hasn't seen the movie, Myers said his wife confirmed what he has heard about it: "She said they would have a biologist talking about evolution and they would intercut that with lots of shots of the Nazi Holocaust, so it's a blatant appeal to emotions. It's propaganda, and it's trying to associate us with acts that, obviously, neither Richard Dawkins nor I would call good or would associate with science."

Representatives of Motive Marketing, a specialist in marketing such faith-based films as "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Chronicles of Narnia," did not return phone calls about Myer's claims and about his barring from the film (they had previously attempted to bar Orlando film critic Roger Moore from a screening, but he got in, anyway). In any case, Myers will probably have to wait to see himself on-screen until the movie opens April 18, nationwide.

In the meantime, Myers is entertained by this irony: "Expelled's" closing credits include a thank-you to him. So he knows the filmmakers are grateful for the couple of hours he gave them last year. Just not grateful enough to let him see their movie.

< http://www.twincities.com/allheadlines/ci_8653837 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Pretty good stuff, if you ask me.

I don't know if I really like "Expelled" getting this publicity just now, however. But at least it's bad publicity, and even if it helps the movie sell, it'll look like the intellectual debacle that it actually is.

Glen D

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: tacitus on Mar. 21 2008,17:15

Quote (1of63 @ Mar. 21 2008,08:05)
Crossroads was also the name of a long-running British TV soap, notable for bad scripts, bad acting, shaky sets and improbable storylines...hmm, that sounds familiar...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dammit.  I can't get that stupid Crossroads theme tune out of my head now (and it hasn't even been on the telly for 20 years now!).  Thanks a bunch!
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 21 2008,18:59

Our buddy Kevin comes produces some choice tard:
< http://artsandfaith.com/index.p....y156433 >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The interesting thing about this debate, Peter, is that the Darwinists are the ones who are desperately trying to link religion to ID, not the IDers. The ID folks are merely saying that ID is friendly to religion in a way that classical Darwinism (a blind, mechanical, purposeless process driven by random mutations and natural selection) is not. Just witness how many Darwinists are writing books about religion while IDers are writing books about science.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


my bold.
Posted by: Connatic on Mar. 21 2008,19:08

The formerly lorn and bereft CrossroadsTheMovie.com now has a home, in case anybody wants to put some content there...
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 21 2008,19:49

Pleasantly surprised by Kevin:
< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....ed.html >

I also realize my tard quote above was quite old. Well aged, you might say. Apologies for the typo as well.
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 21 2008,20:01

DI finally responds.

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008....fa.html >

No unexpected TARD.
Posted by: Mister DNA on Mar. 21 2008,20:09

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 21 2008,20:01)
DI finally responds.

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008....fa.html >

No unexpected TARD.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I was just reading that at < Bruce Chapman's "blog" > (which doesn't allow comments).

I like how following the same procedures as everyone else means that Dawkins "stoops to gate-crashing".

What color is the sky in these people's world?
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 21 2008,20:35


Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Mar. 21 2008,20:45

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 21 2008,20:01)
DI finally responds.

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008....fa.html >

No unexpected TARD.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is certainly expected, and truly classic, given what happened in Minneapolis.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I am getting more excited about Expelled myself and can’t wait to see the finished version. I suspect I’ll wish that the film was twice as long and had twice as much from Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, et al. From what I already have seen, they really expose themselves as the anti-intellectual, bullying poseurs they are -- small men who above all are afraid of a fair contest.

- Bruce Chapman
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 21 2008,20:48

I do believe I got reply #666.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 21 2008,21:42

Quote (midwifetoad @ Mar. 21 2008,20:35)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Excellent work midwifetoad... and you know you should explain your moniker, right?
Posted by: Doc Bill on Mar. 21 2008,22:55

So, on the Disco website Bruce Chapman writes, regarding the PZ Expelled Incident, that Dawkins didn't have a ticket to see the film.

However, NONE of the attendees had tickets since tickets were not provided nor required.

Bruce Chapman writes that Dawkins wasn't invited, but NONE of the attendees were invited, rather, they signed themselves up.

Since Chapman writes this with the explicit intention to deceive that makes him a liar.  Or is he just dishonest?

Or is it just those whacky creationists putting the best spin possible on a very bad story?

I suggest we get some high school students together, present both sides, and let them decide.

Good idea, Bruce?
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 22 2008,00:34



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Excellent work midwifetoad... and you know you should explain your moniker, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Paul Kammerer >
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 22 2008,01:33

Oh, I didn't know Bruce Chapman was there! Was he the one wearing a dress? :p


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There is a growing fear by the producers that Darwinists may be trying get into the showings to make bootleg copies (for the Web?), possibly in hopes of damaging the commercial value. Others may be crashing because they want to trash it before it even gets reviewed by the media. P.Z. Myers, who was not let into a showing last night in Minnesota, probably falls in the latter category.

Amazingly, the best selling Oxford scientist/author Richard Dawkins also crashed a showing of Expelled in Minnesota last night and he not only was let in, but introduced at the end of the showing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Um, he was introduced after he stood up and told everyone that he had been interviewed for the film.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dawkins, understandably is nervous about this film,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, Rev. Barky and I had dinner with him tonight. He was grinning over this pile'o'crap. People have been tee-heeing about it all day. :) What people? Oh, you know, the 500-strong atheist conference that happens to have been scheduled in Minneapolis for this weekend, months before some twit scheduled this supposedly top-secret "no ticket required" screening that was open to everyone who clicked that web link.

Yeah, we scheduled this conference just to conspire against this film, too. And I chose to be born on same day as the NY Times article just to turn the knife. Witches can do that. *Sticks pins in Ben Stein doll*
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 22 2008,01:51

< Skatje has written a review >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'm trying very hard to be unbiased, but that's pretty difficult in this situation. Regardless of content, the movie was surprisingly unpolished and cheap-looking. It might be due in part to being unfinished, but how far off can they be when it's released in less than a month? The camera-work was shakey, obnoxious, and they seemed to like to zoom into ultra-close-ups. Ever wonder what's up Dawkins' nose? Here's your chance to find out.

The entire movie was interspliced with stock footage and older movies. A comment from an interview about "Big Science" picking on the little guys would be followed by a 1940's-looking clip of two guys slapping each other. A comment from someone who supposedly lost their job over ID would be followed by a clip from Planet of the Apes, with an ape water-hosing Heston and calling him a freak. While they were obviously trying to be funny, it just got so tiring and distracting.

It started out going one-by-one through the people who've had their jobs affected by their talking about ID. This was also pretty boring. You hear one, you basically hear them all. They asked Michael Shermer what he would say about people losing their jobs because of ID, and he said that as far as he knew, that's never happened, and if it did, it probably involved other factors than just ID. This was basically ignored, and Stein continued to assert that ID was the only reason they were fired.

There was also a part where Stein wandered around Seattle saying "Where is it? Oh, I'll just keep walking. Where is it?" He reaches a building and says "The Discovery Institute must be this entire building." Soon after: "Oh, but it has to be at least one of these floors." But no, it turns out it's only half a floor out of a 20-story building. They also point out the half-dozen people at the office, clearly making the point that IDists are the underdogs when it comes to money. You have to be kidding.

*snip*

Before I'd seen this movie, I was of the opinion that it would be worthwhile to see, but I'd pay money for something else and walk into the "wrong" auditorium. Now I realise that it really wasn't worth the hour-and-a-half of my time. I cannot emphasise how utterly boring this film was. Half of it was annoying clips of people knitting, people making toys, people laying bricks, tanks, Hitler, and people chipping at the Berlin wall. Half of the other half was different people saying the same things.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


She forgot a few things...like Ben Stein scratching his back in a classroom with a backscratcher (which produced hysterical giggles from the audience for some reason); Ben Stein interjecting a description from Michael Ruse about the idea of abiogenesis piggybacking off of crystals with a Swami bellowing, "Look into my crystal ball!" (huh?); and that fake "stock footage" of little boys kicking a ball over the Berlin Wall. (Gee, they could walk right up to it and everything! Gosh, this film is so realistic.)

As for Bruce Chapman and his "Dawkins is nervous" spiel, all I can say is, there's another Expelled trailer out there. No link yet. It's pretty funny. :) (You won't believe what those wacky scientists are trying to censor this time!;)
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 22 2008,02:02

Writer of Expelled repents!! Read about it here: www.kevinmillerxi.com.
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 22 2008,02:54

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2008,02:02)
Writer of Expelled repents!! Read about it here: www.kevinmillerxi.com.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You earn many kudos in my book for the ability to admit mistakes. If you'll just repent your heresies against the One True Church and renounce heliocentrism, we might not even have to burn you! Mutterings of "eppur si muove" need not apply.

Though:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So if PZ followed the correct procedures, why was he still kicked out? I'll let the producers of Expelled speak to that--which they will do shortly. And trust me, it's not because they were afraid of him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I don't buy this at all, and I'll believe it when I see it. They might be telling you they've got a good reason and will soon reveal it, but they've failed to do so thus far and have made what looks a lot like lame excuses. I mean, if they did have a good reason, why lie about him "sneaking in without a ticket"?
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 22 2008,03:04

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2008,02:02)
Writer of Expelled repents!! Read about it here: www.kevinmillerxi.com.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Shit. He stole the image I stole fair and square from Expelled. Is there no honor?
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 22 2008,03:30

Preserved for posterity:
< >

Should put to rest the idea that PZ and Dawkins hacked the RSVP site or "crashed" the event.  :p
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 22 2008,03:50

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 22 2008,01:30)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Whoops. Actually, that pictured page just leads "tour" events, and the tour is over.
Posted by: 1of63 on Mar. 22 2008,07:57

Quote (tacitus @ Mar. 21 2008,17:15)
   
Quote (1of63 @ Mar. 21 2008,08:05)
Crossroads was also the name of a long-running British TV soap, notable for bad scripts, bad acting, shaky sets and improbable storylines...hmm, that sounds familiar...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dammit.  I can't get that stupid Crossroads theme tune out of my head now (and it hasn't even been on the telly for 20 years now!).  Thanks a bunch!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry about that.  But for anyone who's curious this is what we're talking about:

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyIA26sFi_g&feature=related >

It was written by songwriter Tony Hatch who later perpetrated the musical atrocity of the theme to the Aussie soap Neighbours
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Mar. 22 2008,08:25

Expelled! is opening in 1000 theaters on April 18; Time to find a theater, get tickets and avoid those long lines. Off to the < theater locator >!

Oops...no theaters listed in Ohio.

Oops...no theaters listed in 38 other states. Nor DC.

Oops...98 total theaters listed nationwide: 32 in California, 31 in Florida, 9 in Georgia, a scattering in eight other states.

The others must be located in secret ID labs.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 22 2008,08:26

Quote (midwifetoad @ Mar. 22 2008,00:34)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Excellent work midwifetoad... and you know you should explain your moniker, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Paul Kammerer >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks - I thought it would prove to be an intersting story.
Posted by: CeilingCat on Mar. 22 2008,09:52

If they're really opening on a thousand screens, then there's some serious money behind this movie.  Figure $1500-$2000 per print.  $1500 times 1000 and you're talking $1.5 million bucks!
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 22 2008,10:40

Well, now they're < removing screenings >.

Geez. This has really, um, backfired *expel*, hasn't it? :)
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Mar. 22 2008,11:06

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 22 2008,10:40)
Well, now they're < removing screenings >.

Geez. This has really, um, backfired *expel*, hasn't it? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


One can only hope that this is because they (again) failed to get permission to use the XVIVO "Inner Life of a Cell" animation, and Harvard has sent them another cease-and-desist.

:p
Posted by: Shirakawasuna on Mar. 22 2008,12:19

In case anyone's wondering and doesn't want to give out their email, here's what you receive when you sign up for their RSVP service:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Dear Shira Kawasuna,

This is a confirmation of your RSVP for the free "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" movie screening.  Venue information is below.  

Theater: Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia
Calvary Performing Arts Center, 13500 Philmont Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19116

Date: March 28
Time:  9:30 AM

Number of seats reserved: 1

YOUR NAME WILL BE ON A LIST AT THE DOOR. NO TICKET IS NEEDED. IDs WILL BE CHECKED.

NO BAGS, CELL PHONES OR RECORDING DEVICES WILL BE ALLOWED IN THE THEATER. PLEASE LEAVE THEM IN YOUR CAR.

More information about "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" can be found at < http://expelledthemovie.com; >  http://getexpelled.com

Sincerely,
Motive Entertainement

If you need to cancel or make an important change to an existing RSVP, please email [EMAIL=jessica@motivemarketing.biz.]jessica@motivemarketing.biz.[/EMAIL]  Be sure to reference the screening city, date, and time in your email.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Sorry if this is available elsewhere and if anyone cares, I *did* email them to take me off the list.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2008,12:25

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Mar. 22 2008,08:25)
Expelled! is opening in 1000 theaters on April 18; Time to find a theater, get tickets and avoid those long lines. Off to the < theater locator >!

Oops...no theaters listed in Ohio.

Oops...no theaters listed in 38 other states. Nor DC.

Oops...98 total theaters listed nationwide: 32 in California, 31 in Florida, 9 in Georgia, a scattering in eight other states.

The others must be located in secret ID labs.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 22 2008,12:40

Poking around the "Expelled" site, I notice that Stein is listing himself with Galileo and Einstein (and Bono, too, for who knows what reason). There's a quote from Galileo:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Galileo Galilei
Class Clown
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How apropos, since "intelligent design" creationism seeks to override the humble reasoning of thousands of individuals by the authority of a few individuals.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Mar. 22 2008,13:06

Ah, so that's how he'll respond to the criticisms that Expelled is badly made.  He'll appeal to its emotional impact: "And yet it moves".
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2008,14:37

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 22 2008,12:40)
Poking around the "Expelled" site, I notice that Stein is listing himself with Galileo and Einstein (and Bono, too, for who knows what reason). There's a quote from Galileo:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Galileo Galilei
Class Clown
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How apropos, since "intelligent design" creationism seeks to override the humble reasoning of thousands of individuals by the authority of a few individuals.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....ry71870 >
Posted by: Freelurker on Mar. 22 2008,15:13

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 21 2008,21:01)
DI finally responds.

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008....fa.html >

No unexpected TARD.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I liked this part:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have to say something else, personally. I have been sandbagged by one TV and documentary crew after another. So have Discovery-affiliated scientists.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Looks like Chapman recognizes that the movie producers of Expelled have been caught cold lying about the movie name. He's using the "everybody does it" defense.

Edit: "of Expelled"
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 22 2008,16:22

Quote (Louis @ Aug. 12 2007,07:40)
YAWN.

Wake me for the second reel.

Why didn't they go the whole propaganda hog and ressurect Leni Riefenstahl for the director's chair? After all wasn't she merely a misunderstood and misused propagandist film maker? Shouldn't birds of a misunderstood feather flock together?

Do I win an award for such an early Godwin?

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Undead Leni Riefenstahl had too many standards.
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 22 2008,18:57

Hypocrisy, thy name is < Kevin Miller >. The rant about objectivity and balance would be a bit more credible if your own "documentary" exhibited either of those principles.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2008,19:16

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 22 2008,18:57)
Hypocrisy, thy name is < Kevin Miller >. The rant about objectivity and balance would be a bit more credible if your own "documentary" exhibited either of those principles.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That was me, that was. I demand the De Rerum Natura equivalent of a gold star.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2008,20:48

Kevin Miller says the animation was custom made for the film:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....7971996 >





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Adrian:

1. As I've noted elsewhere on my blog, the producers of Expelled will issue a statement on the reason behind PZ's eviction. It's not my role to speak for them.

2. We have not lied about a Nazi-Atheism connection. If you actually watch the film, you'll see we don't even address that topic. However, we do address the Darwin-Hitler connection.

3. The reason their side comment on the celluar animation is laughable is that they went to the bother of posting this video online without doing some simple fact-checking. Their accusations that we "borrowed" this piece from Harvard is completely unfounded. Our team created it for our film.

As for your statements about Christianity, I fail to see how they are relevant. Expelled is not about Christians vs. atheists. It's about what happens when the quest for truth becomes a quest for power and control. It's about tyranny in the Academy and its consequences. Nothing more.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 22 2008,20:58

Copyright protects performances. But even so, even if the animation is done by the "Expelled" folks, it could still be an infringement of the Harvard/XVIVO animation if it is found to be a derivative work. If it can be mistaken by knowledgeable people for the original, they are running a significant risk in this respect, though it must be said that IANAL.
Posted by: TAG on Mar. 22 2008,21:31

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 20 2008,22:49)
Mark Mathis made a big spiel about "let's be open to new ideas and have a debate." So Dawkins stands up, and these open-minded people laugh at him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hi folks, I just registered here coming over from the RDF forums. I'm a little late to the party following this crazy story. I just had to ask about this part of Kristine's report. What were they laughing at Dawkins about? I don't understand what happened. He just asked why PZ was kicked out, right?

Thanks!
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2008,21:34

Allan MacNeill says his lawyer advised taking legal action:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/expelle....-190050 >




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
57

Allen_MacNeill

03/22/2008

9:16 pm
JPCollado wrote (in #55):

“…I don’t see enough compelling evidence that the producers lied to Mr. MacNeill.”

My lawyer was of exactly the opposite opinion, and advised suing the filmmakers if my comments were included in the film. However, on further consideration, I thought that this would only add support to the main thesis of the film: that evolutionary biologists have “unfairly persecuted” proponents of ID.

And so, I decided not to pursue a lawsuit against Rampart Films, which (in the fullness of time) would have been pointless anyway, as my comments were not included in the movie for the reasons I posted earlier.

For those who require documentation from primary sources, I have originals of all of my email correspondence with Rampart Films, Mark Mathis, Will Provine, Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, and my lawyer on the aforementioned points, and would be happy to share them (with personal information redacted for the sake of privacy) with anyone interested. You can find a link to my email address at my blog:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 22 2008,21:46

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 22 2008,03:30)
Preserved for posterity:
< >

Should put to rest the idea that PZ and Dawkins hacked the RSVP site or "crashed" the event.  :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That doesn't take you to their "private screenings," however.  Actually, I don't know why more on our side didn't take advantage of the earlier showings, but they didn't.

The later showings did have a different address, one that they didn't publicize much.  But it was still on the web, which I know because it was on the site of a Chicago viewing that I posted here (and when I realized it had all of the remaining viewings, I posted the rsvp address for "private screenings" on several forums).

Glen D
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 22 2008,22:37

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 22 2008,18:58)
Copyright protects performances. But even so, even if the animation is done by the "Expelled" folks, it could still be an infringement of the Harvard/XVIVO animation if it is found to be a derivative work. If it can be mistaken by knowledgeable people for the original, they are running a significant risk in this respect, though it must be said that IANAL.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From my (IANAL) understanding, they would have to be very similar indeed to get into any trouble if they haven't actually copied any of the original. Not just "gee it looks really similar" but "I can't tell these scenes apart even playing them side by side."

People have tried to extend copyright to "look and feel" but fortunately have failed for the most part.

If they actually made it themselves, they are probably safe.

@glen yeah, I noticed that after the fact (see my next post after that one), but I still can't edit, so there it is ;)
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 22 2008,22:46

The Expelled RSVP site has dried up and evaporated like some fever dream. Only past screenings are listed now.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 22 2008,22:49

There are people claiming vociferously that the animations used were the Illustra media ones. Given that PZ has the DVD with some portion of the animation used on it, he should be able to do some side-by-side comparisons and put this to rest one way or the other. But I think that relying on recall alone probably isn't sufficient in this case.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 22 2008,23:01

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 22 2008,22:46)
The Expelled RSVP site has dried up and evaporated like some fever dream. Only past screenings are listed now.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh, it has at that.  Nevertheless, the rsvp site at Expelled had only the older showings:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
FL Boca Raton Trinity Church January 10 7:00 PM Done  
FL Clearwater International Church of Clearwater January 17 7:00 PM Done  
FL Lake Alfred First Baptist Church Lake Alfred January 16 6:30 PM Done  
FL Orlando Pine Castle Christian Academy January 14 1:30 PM Done  
FL Titusville Jesus & Co Connect January 11 7:00 PM Done  
FL Vero Beach King's Baptist Church January 18 7:00 PM Done  
IL Springfield Christian Student Fellowship @ the University of Illinois at Springfield - Brookins Auditorium 192  December 7 3:00 PM Done  
IN Bluffton Life Community Church - Bluffton Auditorium December 9 7:00 PM Done  
IN Indianapolis Life Point Church December 6 7:00 PM Done  
OH Canton North Industry Christian Church  December 3 7:00 PM Done  
OH Columbus Worthington Christian Church December 5 7:00 PM Done  
OH Dayton The Experience Youth Church Coming Soon... TBD Done  
OH Fairborn Wright State University  November 30 7:00 PM Done  
OH Xenia Fusion Church - A House of Prayer (Church) December 1 7:00 PM Done  
TN Dayton Bryan College - Rudd Auditorium  November 26 7:00 PM Done  
VA Lynchburg Liberty University - 1114 DeMoss Hall November 27 7:00 PM Done  
VA Purcellville Patrick Henry College November 28 7:30 PM Done  
VA Virginia Beach Regent University / Main Theater January 25 7:30 PM Done  
WV Huntington Marshall University - Don Morris Room  November 29 7:00 PM Done  
 
< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/movies/expelled >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The less publicized site had newer listings:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
AZ Tempe Harkins Arizona Mills April 3 7:00 PM  RSVP
CA Dublin Regal Hacienda Crossings 21 March 26 7:00 PM  RSVP
CA Santa Clara AMC Mercado 20 March 27 8:00 PM  RSVP
CO Broomfield (Denver) AMC Flatiron Crossing April 2 7:00 PM  RSVP
FL Lake Buena Vista (Orlando) AMC Pleasure Island 24 March 18 7:00 PM
RSVP
GA Decatur (Atlanta) AMC North Dekalb Mall 16 March 25 7:00 PM  RSVP
IL Deerfield Trinity International University March 18 1:00 PM  RSVP
IL Schaumburg (Chicago) AMC Loews Streets of Woodfield 20 March 18
7:00 PM  RSVP
KY Louisville National Amusements Showcase Cinemas Stoneybrook March
31 7:00 PM  RSVP
MA Cambridge AMC Loews Harvard Square 5 March 19 7:00 PM  RSVP
MD Owings Mills (Baltimore) AMC Owings Mills 17 April 1 7:00 PM
RSVP
MI Grand Rapids Grand Rapids First March 4 3:30 PM Done
MI Livonia (Detroit) AMC Livonia 20 March 26 7:00 PM  RSVP
MN Bloomington AMC Mall of America 14 March 20 7:00 PM  RSVP
MO Creve Coeur (St. Louis) AMC Creve Coeur 12 March 12 7:00 PM Done
MO Kansas City Ward Parkway Theater March 4 7:00 PM Done
NC Charlotte AMC Carolina Pavilion 22 March 10 7:00 PM Done
NM Albuquerque Century Rio 24 March 6 2:00 PM Done
OH Brooklyn (Cleveland) AMC Ridge Park Square 8 March 19 7:00 PM
RSVP
OR Portland PENDING - CLICK BUTTON TO BE ADDED TO OUR WAITLIST March
25 TBD Waitlist
PA Plymouth Meeting (Philly) AMC Plymouth Meeting March 27 7:00 PM
RSVP
TN Franklin Carmike Thoroughbred 20 March 10 7:00 PM Done
TX Houston River Oaks Theatre March 13 7:00 PM  RSVP
TX San Antonio Santikos Palladium IMAX March 12 7:00 PM Done
WA Seattle PENDING - CLICK BUTTON TO BE ADDED TO OUR WAITLIST March 24
TBD Waitlist
WI Milwaukee AMC Mayfair Mall 18 April 8 7:00 PM  RSVP

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's how it was on March 12.  Now it's essentially the same, except that they took off all of the ones that remained after the recent debacle:




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
FL Lake Buena Vista (Orlando) AMC Pleasure Island 24 March 18 7:00 PM Done  
IL Deerfield Trinity International University March 18 1:00 PM Done  
IL Schaumburg (Chicago) AMC Loews Streets of Woodfield 20 March 18 7:00 PM Done  
MA Cambridge AMC Loews Harvard Square 5 March 19 7:00 PM Done  
MI Grand Rapids Grand Rapids First March 4 3:30 PM Done  
MN Bloomington AMC Mall of America 14 March 20 7:00 PM Done  
MO Creve Coeur (St. Louis) AMC Creve Coeur 12 March 12 7:00 PM Done  
MO Kansas City Ward Parkway Theater March 4 7:00 PM Done  
NC Charlotte AMC Carolina Pavilion 22 March 10 7:00 PM Done  
NM Albuquerque Century Rio 24 March 6 2:00 PM Done  
OH Brooklyn (Cleveland) AMC Ridge Park Square 8 March 19 7:00 PM Done  
TN Franklin Carmike Thoroughbred 20 March 10 7:00 PM Done  
TX Houston River Oaks Theatre March 13 7:00 PM Done  
TX San Antonio Santikos Palladium IMAX March 12 7:00 PM Done  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Even the DI is now suggesting that they show it to participants, albeit in a venue stacked with paid prevaricators.

Glen D
Posted by: Jkrebs on Mar. 22 2008,23:12

Oops - mistake - disregard.
Posted by: podzolboy on Mar. 22 2008,23:14

Go away for a few days and swear off my little guilty pleasure of enjoying a slow motion car wreck and comeback to find out I missed the the funniest event of the year (its early). I'm heartbroken although I see the spin doctors are operating furiously trying to save whats left of the patient.  The tard pump is primed and I am not ashamed to say I'm going to enjoy this.  :)
Posted by: Bob O'H on Mar. 23 2008,02:20

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 22 2008,22:49)
There are people claiming vociferously that the animations used were the Illustra media ones. Given that PZ has the DVD with some portion of the animation used on it, he should be able to do some side-by-side comparisons and put this to rest one way or the other. But I think that relying on recall alone probably isn't sufficient in this case.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There's also a short snippet in the Pat Robertson interview that UD linked to.  It's only short, but it looks similar to the famous XVIVO animation.  If it's the same, I'm sure someone will be able to spot where exactly it's from.

Ugh.  Going to UD to find a link to Robertson.  Well, I had to go for a shower anyway, so let's cut out one of them, and go < straight to Pat >.  It's about a minute in, wedged between Berlinski and Dembski.
Posted by: stevestory on Mar. 23 2008,02:49

Quote (Bob O'H @ Mar. 23 2008,03:20)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 22 2008,22:49)
There are people claiming vociferously that the animations used were the Illustra media ones. Given that PZ has the DVD with some portion of the animation used on it, he should be able to do some side-by-side comparisons and put this to rest one way or the other. But I think that relying on recall alone probably isn't sufficient in this case.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There's also a short snippet in the Pat Robertson interview that UD linked to.  It's only short, but it looks similar to the famous XVIVO animation.  If it's the same, I'm sure someone will be able to spot where exactly it's from.

Ugh.  Going to UD to find a link to Robertson.  Well, I had to go for a shower anyway, so let's cut out one of them, and go < straight to Pat >.  It's about a minute in, wedged between Berlinski and Dembski.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmm....Cordova, Behe, Dembski, Berlinski...

Should we be suspicious of people whose names end in vowels?

(I will point out, btw, that w/r/t Elsberry and Story, my grade school teacher informed me that y is only sometimes a vowel.)
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 23 2008,06:31

Mmmkay, I've gone over the XVIVO video and the second-long cut in Pat's program. I suspect I've been doing too much studying and too little sleeping or my brain is just at capacity for today, because I don't seem to be absorbing any scientific data any more. However, I believe that;

1) It's different. There's a passing resemblance between what, in the XVIVO animation, appears to be mRNA and the bit seen in the 700 club clip, but they're definitely different animations. Specifically, the XVIVO animation is pretty and the 700 club animation is not. Conceptually, however, they look very similar, as if someone went to an animation firm and said "we want you to remake that to get around copyright law". (This is shortly after 4:30 in Inner Life of a Cell < here >, should you want to see for yourself.)

2) They're also both framed against what looks like either the folds of mitochondria (can't remember the name of them?) or a Golgi apparatus in the background. My money's on a Golgi apparatus, since the next scene in the XVIVO animation features one in action and I don't think you could see the inside of mitochondria from a ribosome producing intercellular signaling molecules. This would be kind of like foreshadowing, except not since it's not a story. It could also be some random organelle unknown to me or a generic "biological-looking background".

3) Integrin reminds me of the Four Giants in Majora's Mask. These weird huge semi-anthropomorphic figures with no real heads raising their "arms" upwards to catch a large sphere, you know? Maybe it's just me.

4) Someone in some blog post somewhere I vaguely remember (or possibly it was Dawkins, I don't know) described Expelled having a shot of myosin V "walking" along an actin filament, which is kind of the iconic moment of the XVIVO video. Even if it is an original animation, this would fairly obviously be a conceptual ripoff to play on that same image. Conceptual ripoffs aren't really illegal, just really really lame.

5) Analyzing the Robertson bit might be totally meaningless, since they might have had those few seconds pulled from God-knows-where for no good reason instead of ripped straight off Expelled. I don't know why I bothered doing this.

To see what I meant regarding the integrin, though, you can click < this >. Is the resemblance not obvious?!

Edited for typos.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,11:14

More on the video:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8005920 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Duae: We created the animation in conjunction with an animation studio and several cell biologists. It is a completely original work. The only similarity I can see between it and the Harvard animation is that it may portray one or more of the same cellular processes. But as far as I'm concerned, no one has copyrighted any cellular processes--at least not yet. I'm sure Craig Venter would like to. :) If Dawkins had stuck around to read the full credits for the film, he would have known this. It has nothing to do with the Illustra animation.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 23, 2008 at 08:09 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,11:18

Also, Read more Allan MacNeill and the response...

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8000512 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Interesting: I was expelled from "Expelled" because my interview was "boring." Surprising, then, that my students have twice nominated me as the outstanding lecturer at Cornell University and that I was given a special award for my teaching by the Cornell Learning Skills Center.

But maybe I was a little boring in that interview. After all, I didn't use ad hominem attacks against my opponents, nor did I try winning a Godwin Award (for most egregious application of Godwin's Law), nor did I lie from the beginning to the end of the interview the way the film makers did. Silly me!

And all of that beside the point, it still doesn't explain why Will Provine's interview (with essentially the same content, but probably a little more pizazz) was also omitted. It couldn't possibly have to do with the fact that he and I invite IDers and YECs to make presentations in our evolution courses, and that this fact totally undermines the basic premise of "Expelled"?

Oops, sorry, I forgot: as Ben Stein (a towering intellect in political history, philosophy, and science) has said repeatedly, "No Darwin, no Hitler."

Or, to put it even more succinctly,

"No integrity, no audience."

Posted by: Allen_MacNeill | March 23, 2008 at 06:20 AM


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8005768 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Wow, this is getting really petty and ridiculous. Sorry to rain on your little witch hunt, Allen, but Will Provine has a very prominent role in our film. As for your interview, perhaps boring was too strong of a word. In making this film, I sat through dozens of hours of footage. Some of it stood out, and most of it didn't. Yours was in the latter category. Who knows, it may end up somewhere in the DVD extras. You're looking for a conspiracy where there is none.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 23, 2008 at 08:06 AM


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 23 2008,11:54

Hey Richard: As I said on my blog, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm under no obligation to be objective. As a journalist supposedly reporting the news for a major daily, Cornelia Hunter is.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Mar. 23 2008,11:59

Hang on, so Allen was deemed too boring in a film narrated by Ben Stein?!

Allen - give up teaching.  Now.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 23 2008,12:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,09:54)
Hey Richard: As I said on my blog, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm under no obligation to be objective. As a journalist supposedly reporting the news for a major daily, Cornelia Hunter is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, as a propagandist you have no obligation to be objective, nor honest.


Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,12:17

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,11:54)
Hey Richard: As I said on my blog, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm under no obligation to be objective. As a journalist supposedly reporting the news for a major daily, Cornelia Hunter is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(journalism) >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Journalistic objectivity can refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Fairness and factuality. Well, I suppose you got some of the facts, selectively. That is why your film is propaganda and not advocacy journalism.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,12:26

More Allan:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/expelle....-190158 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
84

Allen_MacNeill

03/23/2008

11:39 am
Phinehas asked (in #83):

“With your “liar” charges here, are you making a substantive rebuttal against the film’s main premise regarding academic persecution? Or are you using a classical diversionary tactic?”

The point I have been trying to make since my very first post is precisely the point that the main premise of the film “Expelled” — that ID supporters/evolution critics are unfairly “expelled” from academic discussions — is, in fact, a deliberate falsification.

I have presented as evidence the fact ID supporters/evolution critics are regularly invited to make presentations at my evolution courses at Cornell, and have done so repeatedly in the past. However, this fact was deliberately omitted from the film.

In brief, the central premise of the film “Expelled” is a deliberate lie, a lie that was perpetrated on all of the evolutionary biologists who were invited to participate of whom I am aware.

What other conclusion would you draw from this evidence?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Mar. 23 2008,12:31

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,11:54)
Hey Richard: As I said on my blog, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm under no obligation to be objective. As a journalist supposedly reporting the news for a major daily, Cornelia Hunter is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Interesting (freudian) slip. Cornelia Dean is a < journalist. >

Cornelius Hunter is a < creationist and DI Fellow >.

Which one do you think is more likely to be objective about Kevin's propaganda flick?
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,12:35

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ Mar. 23 2008,12:31)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,11:54)
Hey Richard: As I said on my blog, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm under no obligation to be objective. As a journalist supposedly reporting the news for a major daily, Cornelia Hunter is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Interesting (freudian) slip. Cornelia Dean is a < journalist. >

Cornelius Hunter is a < creationist and DI Fellow >.

Which one do you think is more likely to be objective about Kevin's propaganda flick?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh. Dear.

Was the fact checking as rigorous in Crossroads Expelled?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 23 2008,12:42

Oh wow, you caught me, guys. Pants down and on fire! Anything to avoid the real issue I guess.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,12:53

The real issue?

That Big Science is persecuting IDists! (except when it isn't, but we cut those bits out.)

I'm sure you talk at length about

[] The Wedge Document
[] That the discovery Institute is funded by post-millenial reconstructionists.
[] "Cdesign proponentism"
[] The lack of an ID Theory or Hypothesis

Rather than trying to link Darwin with Hitler like every other creobot that has come before.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 2




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I had so often sung 'Deutschland über Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 5



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 5



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 8



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2

In that last one, is he appealing to Darwin, or the Biblical tradition of genocide?
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Mar. 23 2008,12:55

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,12:42)
Oh wow, you caught me, guys. Pants down and on fire! Anything to avoid the real issue I guess.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Remind me again, Kevin.  What is the "real issue"?

The fact that your film repeats oft-refuted bullshit about Darwin and Hitler?

The fact that your producers seem incapable of understanding the hypocrisy of expelling someone who appeared in the movie from a screening of the movie?

The fact that MacNeill's interview revealed facts that seem to be at odds with the the premise of the movie, and coincidentally seems to be missing from the movie?

Or the fact that ID is not science, has led to exactly zero scientific predictions, observations, or breakthroughs, and thus deserves to be expelled from science journals and classrooms?

I'd appreciate it if you could help me focus on the real issues.

thanks
Posted by: hooligans on Mar. 23 2008,12:57

What is the real issue? To me it seems like the issue is as follows:

1: You made a movie wherein those asked to do interviews where asked to do so under false pretenses. You knew they would never agree to a partake in a ID/Creationist piece of propaganda, so you tricked them.

2: Your movie is just plain bad.

3: You are saying that ID has nothing to do with religion, but your actions and connections say otherwise

4: During a free screening PZ was expelled for no apparent reason. Those responsible, lied about why he was expelled. They got caught lying.

5: Your movie tries to conflate Hitler and Genocide with "Darwinism". But it doesn't examine the relationship between Hitler and Religion. Why? I thought you just wanted to look at all the angles?

6: Finally, you are a tool
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Mar. 23 2008,12:58

I guess in order to let us know what the 'real issues' are Kevin could just tell us to see the movie, except, of course, they're trying to keep people like us from seeing it. Whoops.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Mar. 23 2008,12:58



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Or the fact that ID is not science, has led to exactly zero scientific predictions, observations, or breakthroughs, and thus deserves to be expelled from science journals and classrooms?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now now, that's unfair.  Someone once got a very nice pocketwatch out of it.
Posted by: hooligans on Mar. 23 2008,13:03

Ha Ha. All three of us wondered the same thing. I guess when something is just too obvious it makes sense.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,13:04

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ Mar. 23 2008,12:58)
I guess in order to let us know what the 'real issues' are Kevin could just tell us to see the movie, except, of course, they're trying to keep people like us from seeing it. Whoops.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Like most IDists, its all about taking money from the rubes..
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,13:26

Oh, one more:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



- Adolf Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936

But if you put this through the < bible code > I'm pretty sure you get "Darwin did it".
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Mar. 23 2008,13:31

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 23 2008,13:04)
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ Mar. 23 2008,12:58)
I guess in order to let us know what the 'real issues' are Kevin could just tell us to see the movie, except, of course, they're trying to keep people like us from seeing it. Whoops.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Like most IDists, its all about taking money from the rubes..
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Just see the movie when it goes to DVD this May. That'll explain everything."
Posted by: TAG on Mar. 23 2008,13:39

Quote (stevestory @ Mar. 23 2008,02:49)

Hmm....Cordova, Behe, Dembski, Berlinski...

Should we be suspicious of people whose names end in vowels?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:D

And look, 3 of the 4 atheist "horsemen" have surnames ending in 's': Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris.

I never know how to make their names possessive.

I guess "Dawkins' book" is correct.
Posted by: Art on Mar. 23 2008,13:43

Quote (TAG @ Mar. 23 2008,13:39)
 
Quote (stevestory @ Mar. 23 2008,02:49)

Hmm....Cordova, Behe, Dembski, Berlinski...

Should we be suspicious of people whose names end in vowels?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:D

And look, 3 of the 4 atheist "horsemen" have surnames ending in 's': Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris.

I never know how to make their names possessive.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No need.  Atheists are all commies, so they don't actually own anything.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 23 2008,13:50

There's discussion of whether the Expelledgate incident is helping or hurting Mathis and Stein over on Chris Mooney's weblog.

I entered a < comment > putting in with those who think that this is a win for science education and a loss for Mathis.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The short AP article linked in a comment above is just right in my opinion. The first sentence carries the message:

   BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (AP) ? P.Z. Myers was interviewed in a movie. He's even thanked in the credits. He just wasn't allowed to actually watch it.

Put me in the group who thinks that Mathis and Stein aren't going to like the lingering effects of this incident. This reads as "UNFAIR" to any but IDC cheerleaders.

Think that message isn't getting across? The answer isn't to spike the story.

If Mathis had recognized Myers and proceeded to make sure that he and his party got good seats and complimentary refreshments, sure, they'd have gotten blog posts on Pharyngula blasting the movie content, but they'd have stayed in character for the role they are claiming via the film as being advocates for an exchange of ideas. The combination of predictable xenophobia and incompetence in the screening fiasco demonstrates that all that was just an act.

"Expelled" is already being used to attempt to influence the politics of antievolution. In Florida, they had a limited private screening aimed at legislators considering two Discovery Institute-derived "academic freedom" bills that would empower teachers -- and students -- to interrupt science classes discussing evolutionary science to bring in "weaknesses" (in other words, all the usual tired, bogus religiously-motivated antievolution arguments) without repercussion. Trying to pretend that the movie doesn't exist is not the answer. Impeaching the content and the producers goes some way toward reducing the ill effects it may have. The "Expelledgate" event gives us a good tool for that purpose.

As has been noted, we'll know within a couple of months whether that actually works out for us. I'm more comfortable with having been active and failing than I am with having done nothing and failing.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I got a < response > from a fellow I'd never heard of before saying:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Wesley R. Elsberry: "I'm more comfortable with having been active and failing than I am with having done nothing and failing."

But it's not about what you are comfortable with, but rather what works.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This was my < response >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But it's not about what you are comfortable with, but rather what works.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Well, thanks for the vote of no confidence, but I'm still of the < opinion > that < being >  < active > in < this > < area > < leads > to < gains > and < not losses >.

Of course, I suppose you may think that your careful non-presence has had more to do with what has been gained in recent years than my work in this regard. I'd disagree, though.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Too much?
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,13:55

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 23 2008,13:50)
Too much?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not Enough. One day soon, I'll be retired. Then I'll fight these liars full time, for free.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Mar. 23 2008,14:04

Stein on the The 700 Club lays it all bare:

Robertson: Is this something in your heart? I mean were you just an actor for this movie?

Stein Oh no no no, its very much in my heart. I've always questioned Darwinism because darwinism leads to Social Darwinism, the belief that some races are superior to other races, and that the superior races have it as their moral duty to eliminate the lesser races, and that means my fellow Jews, and of course African Americans, Indians, Aborigines - just kill them, they're worthless the only people that count are the master race like the Germans or the Danes.

And, there could have been no Holocaust without Darwinism, that's my view. So I've always had my suspicions about Darwinism.

But Darwinism explains so little. It doesn't explain how life began. It doesn't explain how gravity works to keep the planets in their orbits. It doesn't explain how thermodynamics works. It doesn't explain how physics and the laws of motion work.

And you know I saw that scientist you had up on the TV before I came on, who said it's been tested and restested...

No one has ever observed the evolution of a single mammalian species. They've observed evolution within species, but a new species, no one has ever been able to observe that or find fossil record of it.

Robertson: Why do they try to suppress it, that was the theme of your movie, Expelled!, that one man was expelled from a teaching position...

Stein Oh! More than one! Dozens! Dozens and dozens have been expelled or lost their grants or been humiliated for even mentioning the possibility there could be an intelligent designer in the universe, who created the universe, and created the heavens and the earth.

And I think people want to suppress the idea of an intelligent designer - I call the intelligent designer God - because they think if there's a God, I'm going to be held morally accountable.  If there is no God, if it all happens by accident, random mutation and natural selection, I'm not responsible, I'm just a creature of my genes. But if there is a God, I'm morally responsible, I'm in deep trouble here.

Robertson: But this is pervasive, what that movie showed, pervasive right across the academe.

Stein Oh, very pervasive. If you were to stand up, if you are say an assistant professor at Harvard, and you stood up and said, "You know we have no evidence for how life began, a perfectly reasonable hypothesis is that there is an intelligent designer, always was and always will be, and he created life," you would be out of there on your ear so fast it would be insane. If you were on a Ford Foundation grant and you said, ah, "We don't know how the planets stay in their orbits, we don't know how light beams began, we don't know how energy began, we don't know how matter began. A perfectly reasonable hypothesis is that there is an intelligent designer."  You'd loose your grant like that [snaps fingers].

Robertson: Well why? There is, you know, they said we see that scientists created some test tubes and they put some amino acids and they played electricity on it and therefore we had some primitive cells but that, that...

Stein They didn't get it, they had no life at all. You see, Darwin never hypothesized about how life began, and he said, maybe, possibly there were organic  elements and lightning struck them, that was the only thing he ever said, that was in a letter to someone. But people have run electricity through every kind of inorganic compound you can mention, and they NEVER get life from it. Never, ever ever.  So that doesn't work.

Life didn't come from a mud puddle; life came, it seems fairly clear to me, from an intelligent designer. But I'm willing to agree I could be wrong, I'm often wrong. I'm very often wrong.  But give us free speech. Give us free speech. Don't fire us because we question a doctrine that doesn't even mention - I mean, Darwin didn't mention astrology, astronomy rather.  Darwin didn't mention physics. Why can't we question whether Darwinism accounts for those things too?  

Robertson: You can't be a true scientist unless you do.

Stein You have to try do disprove your own theory if you're a real scientist.

(badda-bing)
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,14:07

Thanks Bill.

Related:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....hi.html >
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 23 2008,14:17

The "real" issue, or at least the one were talking about at the time, was journalistic integrity. But you know, maybe I'm being too hard on Ms. Dean. Perhaps objectivity is like certainty--unattainable.
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 23 2008,14:18

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,12:17)
The "real" issue, or at least the one were talking about at the time, was journalistic integrity. But you know, maybe I'm being too hard on Ms. Dean. Perhaps objectivity is like certainty--unattainable.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You still haven't explained how she failed to be objective.

What specific part of that article would you change ?

It's simple question.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2008,14:18

Okay, so let's pull "Journalistic" out of it. At a basic level, why does she have to have it and you don't?

Nice sidestep of all the other points, BTW.
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 23 2008,14:49

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 23 2008,14:18)
Okay, so let's pull "Journalistic" out of it. At a basic level, why does she have to have it and you don't?

Nice sidestep of all the other points, BTW.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Because he's the underdog, and Michael Moore did it first.

If I'm wrong, Kevin, please tell me why. It's basically what Mathis has been saying for a while now.
Posted by: slpage on Mar. 23 2008,15:05

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,11:54)
Hey Richard: As I said on my blog, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm under no obligation to be objective. As a journalist supposedly reporting the news for a major daily, Cornelia Hunter is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is there an obligation to be truthful at least?

Apparently not.

Crocker...
Posted by: slpage on Mar. 23 2008,15:08

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,12:42)
Oh wow, you caught me, guys. Pants down and on fire! Anything to avoid the real issue I guess.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Real issues?

< You mean like Crocker getting canned for being a crappy teacher and peddling lies in class > and NOT because she was just trying to present 'both sides'?
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 23 2008,15:45

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 22 2008,22:37)
@glen yeah, I noticed that after the fact (see my next post after that one), but I still can't edit, so there it is ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks, I just saw your "@glen" today, and went back and saw your caveat.  Nicely done.

Btw, editing is rather easy, you just sign in, and on the post you wish to edit is an "Edit" button (only when you've signed in, however).  Just click it, and you'll get a screen that lets you edit.

Added in edit:

Unless, of course, you mean that for some reason you are somehow prevented from editing, the paragraph above on editing would be totally superfluous.

Glen D
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 23 2008,17:05

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 23 2008,11:14)
More on the video:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8005920 >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Duae: We created the animation in conjunction with an animation studio and several cell biologists. It is a completely original work. The only similarity I can see between it and the Harvard animation is that it may portray one or more of the same cellular processes. But as far as I'm concerned, no one has copyrighted any cellular processes--at least not yet. I'm sure Craig Venter would like to. :) If Dawkins had stuck around to read the full credits for the film, he would have known this. It has nothing to do with the Illustra animation.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 23, 2008 at 08:09 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*looks at Kevin*

*smiles, trying desperately to hide her fangs*

Please do keep it in, Dear Kevin.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 23 2008,17:56

Reed: Have answered your question on my blog. Added 2 my original post.
Posted by: Badidea on Mar. 23 2008,18:31

It's truly amusing, Kevin, that you would accuse folks of dodging the point.

While I've yet to see it myself, I very much doubt that there is a single accusation your film makes that has not already been decisively refuted long before anyone had ever heard of your production.  If so, please feel free to enlighten me on what's new that you bring to the table.

We've already given the ginsu treatment to your every move: it's seems like your basic strategy is to try and promote your claims but avoid as much as possible any actual discussion of whether or not they hold up.  

For instance, you present several cases of claimed illegitimate discrimination in the film against ID proponents.  And yet, as far as I can tell, your film isn't even just giving a biased take on these incidents, you basically don't even inform your viewers what the controversies were over.  In the Sternberg section I have seen, for instance, the core issues over which Sternberg was criticized (that the paper was well outside and bizarrely the journals subject scope, that he snuck it in during his final issue as editor without consulting anyone else despite it being obviously controversial, etc.) were never mentioned.  Are they/will they be in the final film?  

Will what Carolyn Crocker actually taught in class: the specific claims she made, be mentioned?  Are you prepared to defend these claims as accurate?  That horse ancestor fossils are "the same" as the modern day hyrax (it isn't)?  That only one Archeo fossil has ever been found, and that it was suspected as a fraud (all wrong), or that it being a bird is somehow inconsistent with it being a transitional form (it isn't).  Because if not, isn't it a little pathetic to present her as an example of discrimination before you've completed defending her from the charge of simple incompetence?

Do you even TRY to defend her on that count, or do you simply ignore the entire matter?

And so how can you purport to make a case that Sternberg was wrongly treated if you never even discuss the actual merits of the case, even to defend him?  I mean, it's almost as if you guys have no clue what it was all about in the first place.  You have Stein bizarrely claiming that the controversy was because Meyers' paper "merely suggested that perhaps we aren’t mud and lightning after all."  Except that Meyers' paper never discusses any such thing: it's all about the Cambrian explosion: the closest it comes to talking about the origin of life is talking about the basics of multicellularity: i.e. nowhere close.  Did you or Stein or anyone on the production even READ the article in question?   If you can't even summarize what it said accurately, how the heck can you judge whether or not it was legitimate science?

Likewise, do you guys ever discuss the many good rebuttals made as to why the paper was without merit in the film?  If not, how are you engaging the issues at all, even to defend the claims of the ID movement?

The core issue you guys dodge again and again is that science inevitably involves judgments of merit: whether claims hold up to the evidence, and whether they formulate themselves in testable manners susceptible to examination and confirmation.  As far as I can tell, you never wade into this core issue, not even to defend ID.  You simply imply that criticism of ID as being BS is oppression, end of story. But you can't dodge this question.  Either ID really is good science or it isn't.   If the mainstream scientists are correct, then you guys have no leg to stand on.  

According to even favorable reviewers, you never even really explain what claims ID makes: it's just some vaguely associated with God thing based on the idea that stuff is really really complicated. How can people possibly judge whether ID is good science or not if they don't even know what claims it makes in the first place?

And do you not quite get the irony that your own religious story is the one that involves things being formed out of the mud via magic, while the scientific endeavor is to explain very specific chemical mechanisms and processes that would have played a role?

Again and again: we can take your every claim.  We're happy to explain why you're wrong.  Your film and its star, on the other hand, don't seem to be up to the debate.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 23 2008,19:26

Quote (TAG @ Mar. 22 2008,20:31)
     
Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 20 2008,22:49)
Mark Mathis made a big spiel about "let's be open to new ideas and have a debate." So Dawkins stands up, and these open-minded people laugh at him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hi folks, I just registered here coming over from the RDF forums. I'm a little late to the party following this crazy story. I just had to ask about this part of Kristine's report. What were they laughing at Dawkins about? I don't understand what happened. He just asked why PZ was kicked out, right?

Thanks!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What were they laughing about? Good question! That question is right up there with why these folks kept saying in the Q&A that ID was science, and then slipped back into saying "we need to teach creationism in our public schools so that we can keep up with Japan's and Europe's SAT scores" without the producer correcting them. [They teach creationism in Japan and Europe. Right!] :p

Basically, they were laughing because this film engages in rapid-fire editing during Stein's "interview" of Dawkins so that they caught his every stutter (the editing was a kind of stutter itself) and chopped up his answer so that it made no sense.

Even more nefarious in my opinion is this little "cartoon" of Dawkins in a casino, pulling the handle of a slot machine while saying, "C'mon Mother Nature, do your stuff?" and then flying into a rage and kicking the machine when he loses. Yeah, the audience laughed at that, too. People brought kids as young as six to this film. (I didn't even know about Nazi Germany until I was in junior high.)

1. Dawkins asked why PZ Myers was thrown out, and Mathis said he hadn't been invited. The audience laughed.

2. Dawkins explained what he had been trying to get across in that chopped-up interview, and the audience laughed.

3. Dawkins related the circumstances under which he was approached for the film, and the audience laughed. Why? Well, number one, they apparently don't get out much... Number two, because these YEC home-schoolers, who kept referring to ID as "creationism" without any correction by Mathis, obviously enjoyed laughing at a world-famous scientist in the same way that this film is trying to ride that same scientist's coattails to fame and fortune by mocking him. [Mathis kept saying to Dawkins, "You've done all right for yourself!"] In other words, this is science envy from the science illiterate.

Oh, hi, Kevin.
 
Quote ( kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,10:54)

Hey Richard: As I said on my blog, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm under no obligation to be objective.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Thanks for that incredible quote. That pretty much sums up Expelled right there! That’s the best sound bite against ID I have heard yet. You are a poet when you’re not using archival footage of two men hitting each other, Nazis, shots of Stalin while John Lennon's "Imagine" is playing, and other cheap stunts. (Did you think it was Lenin who wrote the song?)

Now that you're here, I am going to ask the question that I asked you before: Since Ben Stein claims to not be a biblical creationist, is he proud to be publicly associated with someone like Ken Ham?

All these excuses about the "real issue" reminds me of therapists in the 1970s who would tell women that they had the "wrong kind of orgasm." :p
Posted by: rhmc on Mar. 23 2008,19:51

Quote (Art @ Mar. 23 2008,14:43)
No need.  Atheists are all commies, so they don't actually own anything.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


da, tovarisch.    
i about busted a gut laughing at that one.
dasvadanya, droog.  :)
Posted by: k.e.. on Mar. 23 2008,20:02

Stein who seems to be suffering from post Holocaust blues owes avowed christian Joseph Goebbels some thanks.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”

“Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character”

The child learns from the master of modern political multi-media propaganda.

Stein may also learn Propaganda is just another name for Religion, which has far more genocides on its hands.
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 23 2008,20:09

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,15:56)
Reed: Have answered your question on my blog. Added 2 my original post.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You say:
                 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Note how she creates the illusion of balance by quoting both sides. But what she is actually doing is setting up the Expelled folks as targets and then using PZ, Dawkins, and Eugenie to knock them down.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, Cornelia Dean quotes them as saying bad things about your movie, and gives them the last word. However it's clear that she's quoting, and you haven't identified any part of the "knocking down" done that is factually incorrect. Or actually any of the story that you claim is factually incorrect.

The story certainly makes the Expelled group look bad, but the main reason is their own actions. Turning someone who is featured and credited in a film away from a screening makes you look bad, regardless of what excuse you come up with. It makes you look especially bad when you are found to be lying about about the reasons and circumstances.

The "We are all having a good laugh" bits certainly favor the PZ/Dawkins side, but the fact is the situation is funny, and the participants are laughing about it.

It's clear she isn't sympathetic to your side, but it seems to me she got the basics facts right, and treated the core of the story honestly. That's pretty good by the standards of journalism today, and far from the blatant spin job you claimed.

But this whole issue is minor compared to the complaints about the film itself. You could start with BadIdeas.
Posted by: TAG on Mar. 23 2008,20:30

Kristine, thanks for elaborating that part!

This nasty mix of stupidity and dishonesty spewing out of the creationist machine is making me sick.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 23 2008,20:45

Quote (TAG @ Mar. 23 2008,19:30)
Kristine, thanks for elaborating that part!

This nasty mix of stupidity and dishonesty spewing out of the creationist machine is making me sick.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's classic projection.

Okay-doke, everyone, here's my summary of the film:

ID is science - but it's not science, because science is not really science without religion, and ID is religion. Religion and science are not at war - but they are, because liberal and mainstream theologians believe in God and accept evolution, but we can't have that. But we can have that - through ID! Which is science! Which is the universe being created by God! Which is not science but the same evidence being seen by both evolutionists and ID theorists! Which is really a culture war!

Got it? Good. :p
Posted by: Badidea on Mar. 23 2008,21:04

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 23 2008,20:09)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2008,15:56)
You could start with BadIdeas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



No no: it's just BadIdea, because I can only handle one at a time without falling into desperate despair.
Posted by: bystander on Mar. 23 2008,21:23

No doubt many of you would have read  < Dawkins' review of the movie >. I wonder if Kevin will include this and enlighten us where it was unfair? I think that it might have been too facty for him.
Posted by: bystander on Mar. 23 2008,21:25

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 24 2008,04:54)
Hey Richard: As I said on my blog, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm under no obligation to be objective. As a journalist supposedly reporting the news for a major daily, Cornelia Hunter is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's the first step - admiting to not being objective. How many steps until the admission that the movie is just outright lying. Is it a seven step program like AA?
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 23 2008,23:28

Quote (bystander @ Mar. 23 2008,19:23)
No doubt many of you would have read  < Dawkins' review of the movie >. I wonder if Kevin will include this and enlighten us where it was unfair? I think that it might have been too facty for him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, he has < this cunning riposte >.
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

...If it's so "poorly constructed and utterly devoid of any style, wit or subtlety," why doesn't he just take a cue from Eugenie Scott and ignore it? Methinks you protest way too much, Sir Richard.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let me guess, Kevin, if he had ignored it, you'd say "See Richard Dawkins didn't have any criticism of it!"

More seriously, while I wouldn't deign to speak for Dawkins, I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head.

  • Genuinely interested in promoting public understanding of science.
  • Personally opposed to attempts to pass religiously motivated bullshit off as science.
  • Offended by attempts to associate his profession with Nazism.
  • Offended by attempts to associate his personal philosophy with Nazism.
  • Offended by being tricked into participating in the film.
  • Offended by the producers treatment of his colleague.
  • Is a militant atheist, and sees easy opportunity show religious wackos for idiots and assholes they are with minimum effort.
  • Is pissed he let PZ carry the AK this time.

Or who knows Kevin, maybe he really really loved it but doesn't know how to express himself well ?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 23 2008,23:55

Some people are critiquing things in the movie while it is in its final editing phase.

Others will only criticize it after it has been committed to a final form and released.

One shouldn't mistake the silence so far of people in the second group for any sort of complacency concerning the movie.
Posted by: stevestory on Mar. 23 2008,23:57

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 24 2008,00:28)
Quote (bystander @ Mar. 23 2008,19:23)
No doubt many of you would have read  < Dawkins' review of the movie >. I wonder if Kevin will include this and enlighten us where it was unfair? I think that it might have been too facty for him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, he has < this cunning riposte >.
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

...If it's so "poorly constructed and utterly devoid of any style, wit or subtlety," why doesn't he just take a cue from Eugenie Scott and ignore it? Methinks you protest way too much, Sir Richard.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let me guess, Kevin, if he had ignored it, you'd say "See Richard Dawkins didn't have any criticism of it!"

More seriously, while I wouldn't deign to speak for Dawkins, I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head.

  • Genuinely interested in promoting public understanding of science.
  • Personally opposed to attempts to pass religiously motivated bullshit off as science.
  • Offended by attempts to associate his profession with Nazism.
  • Offended by attempts to associate his personal philosophy with Nazism.
  • Offended by being tricked into participating in the film.
  • Offended by the producers treatment of his colleague.
  • Is a militant atheist, and sees easy opportunity show religious wackos for idiots and assholes they are with minimum effort.
  • Is pissed he let PZ carry the AK this time.

Or who knows Kevin, maybe he really really loved it but doesn't know how to express himself well ?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


When a propagangist like Miller smears a lot of good people, it's only natural that some of them are going to object.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 23 2008,23:58

< Expelled Exposed > has added a couple of links to the site, one on Expelledgate and another from Popular Science.
Posted by: jupiter on Mar. 23 2008,23:58



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
More seriously, while I wouldn't deign to speak for Dawkins, I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Deign? > I think what you mean is that you wouldn't presume to speak for Dawkins.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Is it a seven step program like AA?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They have a whopping < twelve > steps.

And, yes, they're all sad and sorry SOBs.
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 24 2008,00:04

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 23 2008,21:55)
One shouldn't mistake the silence so far of people in the second group for any sort of complacency concerning the movie.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Indeed, that part of Kevins comment is as clueless as the rest considering the the NCSE (of which Eugenie Scott is listed as executive director) < has a web sited dedicated to the movie >.

jupiter
You are correct.
Posted by: stevestory on Mar. 24 2008,01:42

We're having a lot of fun at what idiots the Expelled people are proving to be. Here's a good bit from Dawkins:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Many people have wondered why, if PZ was expelled, I managed to get in. This has been adduced as further evidence of Mathis' bungling incompetence, but I think that is unfair. It was easy for Mathis to spot PZ Myers' name on the list of those registering in advance. Like all guests, my name was not on any list, and therefore Mathis didn't spot me. So I think he can be absolved of stupidity in not spotting me. But convicted of extreme stupidity in expelling PZ when he spotted him. What was he afraid of? What did he think PZ would do, open fire with a Kalashnikov? Now that I think about it, that would have been all-of-a-piece with the overblown paranoia displayed throughout the film itself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



PZ would say that it was a good day, because he didn't even have to use his A.K.
Posted by: tacitus on Mar. 24 2008,01:48

I haven't seen this anywhere, but I might be repeating what someone else has already done.

I did a little checking of domain names for Expelled the Movie, and here's what I found:

The name "expelledthemovie" was registered for all of the following domain extensions on 02 March 2007:

.com .net .biz .us .org .info

In addition, "expelledmovie.com" was registered on April 5th, 2007 (it redirects to the main site).  Probably just as insurance against mistyping, but an additional "smoking gun" nonetheless.

Seems to me that this is a pretty concerted effort to cover all the bases domain-wise for the title they had decided upon.  Certainly no one has come up with anything similar for "Crossroads".

"getexpelled.com" was registered on 26th Oct 2007, no doubt when they came up with their marketing campaign, and "getexpelled.net" was added on 31st Dec 2007.

Interestingly, "expelledthemoviesucks" was registered for the domain extensions .com .net .org. and .info on 6th Sep 2007, but the registrant details are private.  My guess is that they were registered by the Expelled people as domains ending in "sucks" tend to be registered by (lame) critics of the company or merchandise being advertised. But it could equally have been someone opposed to the movie.

"themovieexpelled.com" was registered in Jan 2008, but looks like a domain squatting exercise (or critic, of course).

FYI, "expelledthedvd" is still available for all domain extensions, and they don't seem to have bothered with country-specific domain names.
Posted by: carlsonjok on Mar. 24 2008,08:44

NEWSFLASH!!!!  Sal Cordova < confirms > Expelled producers less than forthright approach to interviews!


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I don’t have a publicly available quote on hand but I remember hearing via private email exchanges that the ID proponents who were interviewed were similarly not given a full explanation of the producer’s long term intentions. I think Sal Cordova was one of them? So if it’s true that Allen was “misled” or “lied to” then so were the ID proponents being interviewed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That is correct.

I was filmed for the movie as well…

The ID side were given the same line that this was for the documentary “Crossroads”.

I felt uncomfortable with the way they secured the interviews as it did not seem completely forthright and appeared deceptive.

Although, at this point, if there is a question of the ethics of how evidence was gathered, it will probably increase the publc interest to see the movie. Have I ever lost interest in a journalistic piece because the journalist lied in order to acquire facts (like Celeste Biever)? I can’t recall that I ever had less interest as a result…
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bolding mine, but it appears that Sal is also confirming that lying is a good thing when the cause is righteous.  Thanks, Sal!
Posted by: Nerull on Mar. 24 2008,09:33

Since it hasn't been posted yet:

< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....his.php >

Mark Mathis:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

You should know that I invited Michael shermer to a screening at NRB in Nashville. He came and is writing a review for scientific American. I banned pz because I want him to pay to see it. Nothing more.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 24 2008,09:35

Quote (Nerull @ Mar. 24 2008,09:33)
Since it hasn't been posted yet:

< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....his.php >

Mark Mathis:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

You should know that I invited Michael shermer to a screening at NRB in Nashville. He came and is writing a review for scientific American. I banned pz because I want him to pay to see it. Nothing more.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Meow! Sour grapes a go go.

Any more screenings cancelled? Is this film going straight to DVD Church?
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 24 2008,09:38

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 23 2008,22:28)
   
Quote (bystander @ Mar. 23 2008,19:23)
No doubt many of you would have read  < Dawkins' review of the movie >. I wonder if Kevin will include this and enlighten us where it was unfair? I think that it might have been too facty for him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, he has < this cunning riposte >.
               

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

...If it's so "poorly constructed and utterly devoid of any style, wit or subtlety," why doesn't he just take a cue from Eugenie Scott and ignore it? Methinks you protest way too much, Sir Richard.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let me guess, Kevin, if he had ignored it, you'd say "See Richard Dawkins didn't have any criticism of it!"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*In response Kevin's clumsy attempt at damage control, Kristine thus ignores Kevin's blog* :)

It's clear that he's lonely over there, and it's not my job to help him out.

On a related note, the domain breathtakinginanity.org is < available > - appropriate after having seen this screening with an audience comprised mostly of Bill Buckinghams ("We need to teach creationism in our schools!").
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 24 2008,09:42

Mark Mathis has < informed the town crier >, Denyse O'Leary:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You should know that I invited Michael shermer to a screening at NRB in Nashville. He came and is writing a review for scientific American. I banned pz because I want him to pay to see it. Nothing more.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Please excuse me while I crawl beneath my desk for a good laugh! :D
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 24 2008,09:52

Based on the early reviews, someone should lock up the following Domain names- I think you would be able to sell them at a premium very soon:

ExpelledTheRazzieAwardWinningMovie

ExpelledTheTard

ExpelledTheWorstMovieEverMade

ExpelledHaHaThisIsYou

ExpelledWeMeantToDoThat
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Mar. 24 2008,10:14

ExpelledTheContentsOfMyColon
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 24 2008,10:22

Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 24 2008,08:52)
Based on the early reviews, someone should lock up the following Domain names- I think you would be able to sell them at a premium very soon:

ExpelledTheRazzieAwardWinningMovie

ExpelledTheTard

ExpelledTheWorstMovieEverMade

ExpelledHaHaThisIsYou

ExpelledWeMeantToDoThat
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Expelledblows.com and .org are available. And they have a nice tie-in on my blog (where I joked that one could get a blowjob for less than the $10 that Mathis wants PZ to pay). (No, I don't know specifically where these service are available. Quit asking me!;) :D

Can one get a hangover from laughing? Thursday night was scary and infuriating. The rest of the weekend has been a romp! The cherry on the top of this whole Darwin -> Nazis/Commies [I thought they warred against each other?] -> eugenics pie was the theist at the American Atheist convention who started railing that secular culture -> Nazis/Commies -> 20th century art and Jackson Pollock.

Jackson Pollock, for the love of pi.

Anyone see something wrong with a conservative Jew echoing the sentiments of Joseph Goebbels, who railed against the same "degenerate" modern art (thought not specifically, of course, Pollock, who came later). What is it with this Nazi/Communist obsession?
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 24 2008,10:52

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 24 2008,10:22)
What is it with this Nazi/Communist obsession?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kristine - I think you bring up a good point.  IMO, Fundies just need to be dominated.  They don't seem to care if it's Nazis, Commies, or The One True God.

They should however,  be thankful that you are a witch, instead of a Dominatrix, or you could make them cluck about nothing and jumping up and down like chickens with their heads cut off.

Oh. wait.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 24 2008,12:36

It turns out that Mark Mathis has been padding his audiences with his own staff, < to open-mindedly yell "Shut up!" at questioners > during the Q&A.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Some arguing ensued concerning the scientific merits of ID, and someone asked, "Where's the evidence? Where are the peer reviewed papers?" to which Mathis proudly proclaimed, "Actually, there are ten peer reviewed papers."

A guy in the front row scoffed. "Ten papers?" he asked sarcastically.

Mathis told the guy not to interrupt, and then mockingly called him "Mr Darwinist." Zing!

He began calling on others in the crowd, who asked friendlier questions. But Maggie and I quickly realised that we'd seen some of these people before - earlier that evening, in fact, working at the movie's registration table. These friendly audience members worked for the film? Had Mathis planted questioners?

People asked what they could do to help the film succeed, and a young woman in the front row inquired: "How can I pray for you and for the movie?" Mathis grew excited. "We need to start a grass roots movement!" he said, encouraging people to tell their "networks" about the movie and to get as many people as they could to go on opening weekend.

Another man in the front row wondered about the film's premise that supporters of ID are being silenced. He pointed out that a recent trial about the teaching of intelligent design held in Dover, Pennsylvania, gave supporters of intelligent design all the time in the world to make their case, but most of the 'leading lights' of ID didn't even show up.

When Mathis was responding, the guy asked another question, and the producer shot back, "How about you let me finish talking?" Then, a security guard for the film approached the calmly seated man and told him, "I may have to ask you to leave."

"Does anyone else see how ironic this is?" the guy asked.

"Shut up!" someone shouted from the back.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*Leans forehead into hand*

< Expelled: PZ, Darwin, and Now, Jackson Pollock >
Posted by: BWE on Mar. 24 2008,13:42

This.

Is.

The.

Best.

Thread.

Ever.

Kristine, I love you. Shimmy, hugs, whatever you've got going.

Count me among your hardcore fan base.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 24 2008,13:55

I am so sad they cancelled the tard fest.  I was going to make the 4 hour drive to San Antonion to watch this steaming bowl of right wing fundy slop and they've cancelled the screenings.

Why???  Did they lose their night vision goggles or?
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 24 2008,15:29

I checked google trends and the word "expelled" has never been more-googled-for. < Ever. > Correlation with "expelled movie" is there to demonstrate causation, since "expelled" by itself can refer to stuff other than the movie.

Contrary to a certain saying, I think there is such a thing as bad publicity, and this is it. Generic "controversy" may attract people to raw entertainment on an opening weekend, but real success for Expelled is measured in apparent legitimacy for creationism rather than by ratings. Further, controversy only gets people in for a couple of days- word of mouth will quickly shred any entertainment that is not, you know, entertaining thereafter. Logically incoherent propaganda can be made entertaining, but if Expelled fails at doing this half as badly as is reported I think it's pretty doomed.

Re: Pulled showings, I'm starting to consider that they really aren't going to release it at all. As in, they plan to say they've been persecuted and show the film in church basements, as has been speculated for a long time. They don't seem to be acting like people expecting to open to a national audience in a few short weeks. They're acting like they're terrified of publicity. Say what you want about Michael Moore, he transitioned fairly smoothly from semi-obscure filmmaker to a maniacal public figure and screen presence. He's not terrified of publicity. Trying to be a conservative Michael Moore without embracing publicity is five kinds of retarded, and Mathis can't be that dumb, right?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 24 2008,15:43

I wonder if the "security guard" is someone in the "Expelled" production crew who likes to play dress-up. The behavior noted so far of this "security guard" seems far too independent for rented muscle.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Mar. 24 2008,15:53

They could have pulled the screenings for any number of reasons.

One reason could be the Cell as a City animation which was clearly lifted from Harvard since the creationists haven't done a lick of work to put together a simulation like that in the first place.  Do they even imply that creation scientists figured out how these "molecular machines" operate?  Two minutes of fact checking would answer that question.

The other reason they may be pulling the screenings is that they can't control who is in the audience as tightly as they thought.  For crying out loud they let in Richard Freaking Dawkins and members of his Foundation.  Once people start asking sane and specific questions in the Q&A they are quickly reduced to insults and expelling.

As for killing the entire project, that is a real possibility.  This is going to be an easy film to discredit because so much of the "documentary" is in the public record.  Right, Kevin?

Ben Stein said in an interview that dozens and dozens and dozens of scientists have lost their jobs, their grants, etc.  Let's see, 6 dozen is at least 72 people.  I recall an interview with one of the producers who said that they interviewed "hundreds" of people who had been persecuted and expelled.  Where are all these people?  Why do we see the usual creationist suspects:  Sternberg, Crocker, Gonzalez, Behe, Dembski, Marks, etc?

No, the entire premise of the film is bogus.  It won't survive the slightest scrutiny.  How can they release Expelled to the public when it's the public who will be their most vocal critic?  

I'll give them credit for one thing.  No Intelligence Allowed.  They got that part right.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 24 2008,15:55

Quote (BWE @ Mar. 24 2008,12:42)
This.

Is.

The.

Best.

Thread.

Ever.

Kristine, I love you. Shimmy, hugs, whatever you've got going.

Count me among your hardcore fan base.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks, man. :) In a perverse way, this has been fun.

Rev. Barky said to me, "It's like being superheroes, living this double life, having these adventures, and now we have to go back to the office."

I think I saw a badge with a number on that cop.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Mar. 24 2008,16:02



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein said in an interview that dozens and dozens and dozens of scientists have lost their jobs, their grants, etc.  Let's see, 6 dozen is at least 72 people.  I recall an interview with one of the producers who said that they interviewed "hundreds" of people who had been persecuted and expelled.  Where are all these people?  Why do we see the usual creationist suspects:  Sternberg, Crocker, Gonzalez, Behe, Dembski, Marks, etc?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Last I heard, Sternberg, Behe, Dembski, and Marks all still had their jobs. Gonzalez got denied tenure because he brought in no grant money, had no students, and did no research. I think the DI is getting a little desperate for martyrs.

Oh yes, I forgot: "Those scientists say such MEAN things about them! That's persecution too, you know!!!"
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 24 2008,16:04

Two points:

(1) Good for Kevin miller for letting posts go through on his blog (all but one of mine)

(2) Its a shame he doesn't try to address any of the substantial criticisms. I suspect deep down he now knows ID isn't science and the whole endeavour is dishonest.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 24 2008,16:23

Oh - they can't seem to come up with a consistent account.

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-190425 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
32

DLH

03/24/2008

4:11 pm
Rather than speculate, how about some facts.
Eyewitness Stuart Blessman reports:

I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.

”Richard Dawkins crashes the party at a screening of “Expelled”” By JEFFREY OVERSTREET, ExpelledTheMovie.com March 20, 2008

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



how is that the same as:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....rd.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And now, a word from Mark Mathis
“Yes, I turned Mr. Myers away. He was not an invited guest of Premise Media. This was a private screening of an unfinished film. I could have let him in, just as I invited Michael Shermer to a screening in Nashville. Shermer is in the film as well. But, in light of Myers’ untruthful blogging about ‘Expelled’ I decided it was better to have him wait until April 18 and pay to see the film. Others, notable others, were permitted to see the film. At a private screening it’s my call."


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Mar. 24 2008,16:36

And also let's not forget "I kicked PZ out because I wanted him to buy a ticket."

I say we take all the different accounts that the Creationists are offering, assign each one a number, and every morning they can draw one at random. All day long, that can be the explanation they use. It should be easier for them to stay on-message that way.
Posted by: khan on Mar. 24 2008,20:40

I wish I had known the circus was in town in November, only a mile or two from my house.  Ah well.
Posted by: KimvdLinde on Mar. 24 2008,20:48

Well, I think Kevin better starts to do some repenting before the circus is going to destroy him and his career......
Posted by: BWE on Mar. 24 2008,21:06

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 24 2008,15:55)
Quote (BWE @ Mar. 24 2008,12:42)
This.

Is.

The.

Best.

Thread.

Ever.

Kristine, I love you. Shimmy, hugs, whatever you've got going.

Count me among your hardcore fan base.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks, man. :) In a perverse way, this has been fun.

Rev. Barky said to me, "It's like being superheroes, living this double life, having these adventures, and now we have to go back to the office."

I think I saw a badge with a number on that cop.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My wife's grandmother used to say, when someone demonstrates an element of their character, believe them.

On Richard Dawkins' forum a thread asked whether there should be an official response to expelled and I received private correspondence asking some pretty specific questions to which I replied (edited for the on topic issue):



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Good god man! Don't worry! They can't make a smart move. Morons lack the ability to temporarily become non-morons. Let them talk. If you get the chance, ask them questions and get them to talk. They can't hide the original defect in their argument. Please, I know there is no reason to listen to me. You don't know me from Adam (pun intended) but I swear to you, coming from a lifetime of professional experience, don't respond with anything that makes sense.

If you get lucky, they will not only say the stupid, they may even DO the stupid, a la Dembski and the Fart noises, regent home #'s allowing Denise on his blog and etc.

If you don't get the chance to ask them questions, don't worry. I promise the movie will be blisteringly stupid. It can't help being so since the premise suffers from the problem.

You can't shine wet, steaming turds...


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And quite a bit more regarding the specific questions.

You Kristine, although you suffered at their hands (for which, should it ever be within my power, I promise to avenge you by subjecting them to the most abject public ridicule) you managed to actually contribute to them doing the stupid.  I offer my sincerest gratitude and appreciation. If you ever need any assistance, you can count on me.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 24 2008,21:42

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 24 2008,16:23)
Oh - they can't seem to come up with a consistent account.

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-190425 >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
32

DLH

03/24/2008

4:11 pm
Rather than speculate, how about some facts.
Eyewitness Stuart Blessman reports:

I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.

”Richard Dawkins crashes the party at a screening of “Expelled”” By JEFFREY OVERSTREET, ExpelledTheMovie.com March 20, 2008

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



how is that the same as:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....rd.html >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And now, a word from Mark Mathis
“Yes, I turned Mr. Myers away. He was not an invited guest of Premise Media. This was a private screening of an unfinished film. I could have let him in, just as I invited Michael Shermer to a screening in Nashville. Shermer is in the film as well. But, in light of Myers’ untruthful blogging about ‘Expelled’ I decided it was better to have him wait until April 18 and pay to see the film. Others, notable others, were permitted to see the film. At a private screening it’s my call."


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


DLH was pulling his usualy shit on the Wiki PZ Myers article today.
Posted by: Badger3k on Mar. 24 2008,23:57

Quote (KimvdLinde @ Mar. 24 2008,20:48)
Well, I think Kevin better starts to do some repenting before the circus is going to destroy him and his career......
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nah - these people live on persecution and marytrdom, even if it arises from their own duplicity and stupidity.  It's their method of validation, like cutting - the pain and blood is a good thing!
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 25 2008,08:05

It looks like the remaining screenings are being completely reorganized and re-scheduled.

That's too bad. I've been collecting information about Michigan's statute 338 that applies to private security businesses and their employees. As I expected, such companies have to be bonded, and employees are issued identification cards. What I hadn't known was that was a felony for someone to falsely represent themselves as an employee of a private security business if they are not, in fact, an employee of a firm in compliance and bonded.

If Minnesota law is similar, PZ or others could see about getting an investigation into whether Mr. Security Guard at that screening was really a bona fide professional, or just someone in the entourage with a costume.

Michigan law, by the way, really appears to have it in for folks who make up fake shields and badges.
Posted by: BWE on Mar. 25 2008,08:22

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 25 2008,08:05)
It looks like the remaining screenings are being completely reorganized and re-scheduled.

That's too bad. I've been collecting information about Michigan's statute 338 that applies to private security businesses and their employees. As I expected, such companies have to be bonded, and employees are issued identification cards. What I hadn't known was that was a felony for someone to falsely represent themselves as an employee of a private security business if they are not, in fact, an employee of a firm in compliance and bonded.

If Minnesota law is similar, PZ or others could see about getting an investigation into whether Mr. Security Guard at that screening was really a bona fide professional, or just someone in the entourage with a costume.

Michigan law, by the way, really appears to have it in for folks who make up fake shields and badges.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wouldn't that be a peach.

Yikes.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Mar. 25 2008,09:44

Y'know, I sneak out of town to go to Philly and visit
< The Franklin Institute > over the weekend, and the funniest shit EVAH goes down...  (It was not only a Good Friday, it was a GREAT Friday - Cheesesteaks at Tony Luke's in South Philly after the Franklin, then drank beer and watched the Flyers win in a shootout - how much better can it get without having sex inside Independence Hall?)

(Oddly, no one got Expelled from the Franklin Institute while I was there, and I didn't have to sign in or produce ID (HAH!), and cameras, cell phones, and video recording devices were encouraged!  WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING??????)

Oh, and the Star Wars exhibit is going on at the Franklin Institute, with original props and costumes from the movies.

The only sucky parts?  It snowed and I missed the Expelled From Expelled fiasco.  Fair trade, I guess.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Mar. 25 2008,10:41

Quote (Lou FCD @ Mar. 25 2008,10:44)
Oh, and the Star Wars exhibit is going on at the Franklin Institute, with original props and costumes from the movies.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I saw that a few years ago at the National Air and Space Museum. WAY cool. It included production models of the Millennium Falcon, Tie-fighters and X-wings, C-3PO and R2D2, Darth Vader's costume, storm troopers, etc. The Millenium Falcon looks like they bought every plastic battleship model in the state of California and applied the parts to its surface. I was thinking, "And people get paid to do this?"

They also had some very old air and vintage space on display.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Mar. 25 2008,10:56

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Mar. 25 2008,11:41)
Quote (Lou FCD @ Mar. 25 2008,10:44)
Oh, and the Star Wars exhibit is going on at the Franklin Institute, with original props and costumes from the movies.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I saw that a few years ago at the National Air and Space Museum. WAY cool. It included production models of the Millennium Falcon, Tie-fighters and X-wings, C-3PO and R2D2, Darth Vader's costume, storm troopers, etc. The Millenium Falcon looks like they bought every plastic battleship model in the state of California and applied the parts to its surface. I was thinking, "And people get paid to do this?"

They also had some very old air and vintage space on display.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, it was very very cool to be standing that close to the Darth Vader costume, Luke's land speeder, the models of the MF and the Star Destroyers, the light sabers, etc.

And yeah, the models really do look exactly like you describe.

I'll probably post a few pictures later today at Crowded Head.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 25 2008,11:56

Kevin Miller, < are you calling Dawkins a liar or me >?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Whose [sic] the liar now? Check out Dave Scot's argument for why he thinks PZ and Dawkins really did gate-crash the Expelled screening in Minneapolis. It's over at uncommondescent.com.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: ERV on Mar. 25 2008,12:27

I wonder if we are ever going to get the names of the individuals that worked on EXPELLEDs totally new and completely original animation?

Harvard guys are interested.  It took them over a year to make 'Inner Life' with Harvard PIs and an entire team of professional bio-animators, and now some Creationists do the same thing independently in approximately 2-3 months.  Those 'cell biologists' and 'animation studio' must rock!
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 25 2008,12:28

The spin from Premise blurs, it's so fast:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
EXPELLED Controversy Top Issue in Blogosphere
SANTA FE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Something amazing happened yesterday. The controversy around Premise Media’s upcoming movie Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed became the hottest topic in the blogosphere. According to BlogPulse, a service of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the issue held the number one slot throughout the day on Monday, March 24th (http://www.blogpulse.com). There were also over 800 results on Technorati (www.technorati.com).

“It is amazing to see the reaction of PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and their cohorts when one of them is simply expelled from a movie. Yet these men applaud when professors throughout the nation are fired from their jobs and permanently excluded from their profession for mentioning Intelligent Design,” said producer Mark Mathis. Mathis was at the event that has raised this controversy.

Mathis continued, “I hope PZ’s experience has helped him see the light. He is distraught because he could not see a movie. What if he wasn’t allowed to teach on a college campus or was denied tenure? Maybe he will think twice before he starts demanding more professors be blacklisted and expelled simply because they question the adequacy of Darwin's theory.”

EXPELLED was screened for a select Minneapolis grass roots audience on Thursday night. Dr. Myers and noted atheist Dr. Richard Dawkins were not sent invitations to the screening from the producers. Nevertheless, they acquired access to a proprietary online RSVP site, along with a group of other atheists. The producers were notified that Myers and others who were not invited had signed up for the screening. They were also aware that Dawkins, who oddly used his formal surname "Clinton" instead of Richard to sign up, was in attendance.

Recognizing the opportunity to make a point of the inconvenience and pain that they, and others like them, have caused to numerous scientists and educators, the decision was made beforehand to deny Myers access to the film if he actually showed up. PZ is one of the foremost proponents of expelling those who hold to any form of Intelligent Design: “The only appropriate responses [to proponents of Intelligent Design] should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many school board members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians.” (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001143.html#comments Comment #35130 Posted by PZ Myers, 6/14/05, 07:50)

Executive Producer Logan Craft noted: “EXPELLED makes it clear that academic freedom is at stake. Yet Dawkins and his friends continue to misrepresent the film and slander the producers. It is obvious that they do not want to debate the real issues raised in the movie. Their only interest is to control the damage their interviews have done to their cause. We are happy to let the public decide where the truth rests on this controversial issue when the movie opens nationwide on April 18th.”

Myers has apparently been asking supporters to sneak into the different private screenings for many weeks. After being denied his chance to see the movie, Myers blogged about his experience and expressed his outrage.

Executive Producer Walt Ruloff responded, “This is the typical reaction of Darwinists and atheists who are so blinded by their own self importance that they fail to understand what is really going on. They yell and scream when one of their friends isn’t allowed to see a movie weeks before it goes public. All this outrage while these same people organize witch hunts to expel those who disagree with them.”

Premise Media’s new film, Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed, opens nationwide on April 18th. You can learn more at www.expelledthemovie.com

To schedule an interview with one of the producers, please contact Mary Beth Hutchins (mhutchins@crcpublicrelations.com) ext. 105 or Kerry Brown (kbrown@crcpublicrelations.com) ext. 120 at 703.683.5004


< http://www.businesswire.com/portal....Lang=en >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Sure, PZ's distraught.  More like thrilled.


And the site was not proprietary, or at least not secret.  I found it
via Google here:


< http://onegreatcityblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/private-screening.html >


And I put the link here at Talkorigins, on AtBC, Pharyngula, PT, and
Atheistnetwork, a week before the showing.


Furthermore, they can't keep their story straight.  Mathis told Denyse
O'Leary that he just wanted to make PZ wait and pay for his ticket.
Not that I find any of his stories believable (maybe the rationale is
as stated above--who can say, when one can't trust these bozos?), it's
just that this conflicts with the other spins bandied about the
blogosphere.


Glen D
Posted by: blader on Mar. 25 2008,12:28

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 25 2008,09:05)
It looks like the remaining screenings are being completely reorganized and re-scheduled.

That's too bad. I've been collecting information about Michigan's statute 338 that applies to private security businesses and their employees. As I expected, such companies have to be bonded, and employees are issued identification cards. What I hadn't known was that was a felony for someone to falsely represent themselves as an employee of a private security business if they are not, in fact, an employee of a firm in compliance and bonded.

If Minnesota law is similar, PZ or others could see about getting an investigation into whether Mr. Security Guard at that screening was really a bona fide professional, or just someone in the entourage with a costume.

Michigan law, by the way, really appears to have it in for folks who make up fake shields and badges.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I figured it would come to this.

They are going to have to go underground and into secretive mode with their pre-screening.  They'll hold pre-screenings, but they won't tell anybody where they'll be.

Which is hilarious in so many ways if the entire point of the pre-screening campaign was to generate a buzz and interest for the broader big screen rollout.

There is some reason here to wonder if they really do have a contract to get it distributed or if that too is a bunch of BS

I know Flock of Dodo's tried hard but was never signed up for something like that.  It doesn't sound like expelled is the sort of movie you'd ever see at the Mall 16 unless it is underwritten by big, deep and really stupid pockets.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Mar. 25 2008,12:41

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 24 2008,16:23)
Oh - they can't seem to come up with a consistent account.

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-190425 >

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
32

DLH

03/24/2008

4:11 pm
Rather than speculate, how about some facts.
Eyewitness Stuart Blessman reports:

I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.

”Richard Dawkins crashes the party at a screening of “Expelled”” By JEFFREY OVERSTREET, ExpelledTheMovie.com March 20, 2008

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



'Hustling'? WTF? Like, challenging them to play pool? Or trying to get them to go back to his motel?

Kristine, what's your reaction to this? Was PZ drunkenly lurching around bothering the decent churchgoing folk who were waiting in line?  :p
Posted by: Lou FCD on Mar. 25 2008,13:12

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ Mar. 25 2008,13:41)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 24 2008,16:23)
Oh - they can't seem to come up with a consistent account.

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-190425 >

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
32

DLH

03/24/2008

4:11 pm
Rather than speculate, how about some facts.
Eyewitness Stuart Blessman reports:

I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.

”Richard Dawkins crashes the party at a screening of “Expelled”” By JEFFREY OVERSTREET, ExpelledTheMovie.com March 20, 2008

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



'Hustling'? WTF? Like, challenging them to play pool? Or trying to get them to go back to his motel?

Kristine, what's your reaction to this? Was PZ drunkenly lurching around bothering the decent churchgoing folk who were waiting in line?  :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The ever-honest DLH apparently forgot to mention the furious backpeddling of Stuart Blessman.

Perhaps someone should out that he forgot to put that in before he hit the "Post" button.

I'm sure it was an honest oversight.

< Here. >

In full, his further comment reads thus:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
39  stuartblessman

Wow. Thanks for all the responses…both these and the spams on my blog. And thank you Dr. Myers for posting your email; I’m gonna keep that one.

Obviously you can tell that I was going off of Mathis’ comments toward Dawkins regarding you. If you had a legitimate ticket and was just booted by the film’s producers, you have my sympathies, although they were under no obligation to let you in to see the movie. I apologize if I in any way slandered you, but I am not in any way ashamed. I wrote my account of the events as quickly as possible in order to circumvent any attempt to spin the events by other parties. These are obviously my impressions of the events as I witnessed them.

A question though, if I may. Dr. Myers…where were you standing when the policeman told you that the film’s producers had asked him to escort you out? Why did you have to walk back to your family (and me by default)? Were you not already in line with them? Oh, and did you happen to catch the police officer’s name?

Moving on…Did I have tickets? No. Did I have pirated tickets? No. I was the guest of an invited person. I was RSVPed by someone who was invited. He will write up his own view of events later in the day and post them online. Perhaps something he say will contradict what I say; will that in any way alter my perceptions or what I knew at the time? I doubt it.

Was I aware that this screening was open to the general public? No, and I don’t think it was. Mathis never once alluded to this and implied that it was a very selective, invited audience…”grassroots”…which is ok, since he and the film’s producers can do whatever they want with the film. No one can force them to invite anyone they don’t want to.

Obviously I was unaware of Dr. Myers first conversation. I merely reported on what I myself had observed. I apologize if someone was misled.

The term “Intelligent Design” is self explanatory. Yes, one audience member asked what ID was, since she thought the film did not give a good definition. Mathis nodded at this and reinforced it was a rough cut. Obviously, I am of the opinion that one would be able to figure out what the ID is by the very words themselves.

Define “disruption.” Did he get violent, start shouting, bothering everyone in the line? No. It appeared he was bothering a few people, trying to worm his way in to the movie. Security was already tight: no bags, cell phones, cameras, etc, allowed. The possibility exists that he might have begun to get violent and start shouting once he snuck in to the movie. That was my perceived basis for why managment was taking no chances and escorting him out. To his credit, Dr. Myers went peacefully.

And I regret not recognizing Dawkins in line in front of me. I haven’t read any of his books, although my friend Grant had, but he was busy getting popcorn up til we signed in. But well played, Dr. Myers…that was an entertaining blog post. I’m glad you are also a Mac fan! I’m writing this from a Macbook Pro on campus overlooking the downed 35W bridge.

As for the rest of the comments…I’m gonna simply choose to ignore them. I’m not here to debate ID or Evolution. I lack “credentials” to do so. But that’s the point of “Expelled”…those with the credentials to argue against Evolution are not even allowed a voice. The movie is hardly pro-Creation; it simply states that any side in this debate should be allowed a fair voice. It’s really a battle of faith vs faith; why else would evolutionists so vehemently defend evolution and even resort to attacking an undergraduate writing about his first impressions of a movie and an event?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: factician on Mar. 25 2008,13:15

Via < Uncommonhypocrisy >:

< Get yer tickets here! >
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 25 2008,13:27

Quote (factician @ Mar. 25 2008,13:15)
Via < Uncommonhypocrisy >:

< Get yer tickets here! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Due to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of “Expelled”, several of our screenings have been canceled or are being rescheduled to a new date or time. If you'd like to be notified once a new screening in your area is confirmed, please sign-up on one of the waitlists below.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Snort!
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 25 2008,13:39

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ Mar. 25 2008,11:41)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 24 2008,16:23)
Oh - they can't seem to come up with a consistent account.

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-190425 >

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
32

DLH

03/24/2008

4:11 pm
Rather than speculate, how about some facts.
Eyewitness Stuart Blessman reports:

I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.

”Richard Dawkins crashes the party at a screening of “Expelled”” By JEFFREY OVERSTREET, ExpelledTheMovie.com March 20, 2008

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



'Hustling'? WTF? Like, challenging them to play pool? Or trying to get them to go back to his motel?

Kristine, what's your reaction to this? Was PZ drunkenly lurching around bothering the decent churchgoing folk who were waiting in line?  :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He was talking to people he knew in line - actually I thought he was on his way to the bathroom when that cop stopped him and talked to him.

Then PZ came over to me and said, "Uh, hi. I'm being kicked out!" Naturally I went, "What?" and the cop came over and said something like, "Excuse me, come over here, please." PZ did and the cop gave me a stern glare as I watched them, so I averted my eyes.

I thought we were going to be kicked out next when the cop said to PZ, "Because you don't have a ticket and you were not invited," and because of the way he looked at me.

That was unpleasant.

BTW, some anonymous poster came to my blog and made a new < allegation >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
pThe word is that this was a set up.

PZ had a family member call management and say he was going to yell and shout during the showing, which he claimed earlier on his blog.

I thought this seemed a little too convenient.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I asked "anonymous" for evidence. I certainly hope that this isn't who I think it is. ;)
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 25 2008,14:18

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 25 2008,13:39)
BTW, some anonymous poster came to my blog and made a new < allegation >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
pThe word is that this was a set up.

PZ had a family member call management and say he was going to yell and shout during the showing, which he claimed earlier on his blog.

I thought this seemed a little too convenient.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I asked "anonymous" for evidence. I certainly hope that this isn't who I think it is. ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha!  Since it's a secret, I can't tell you whose name first popped into my head as "anonymous... but their initials are:
DaveScot Springer.   :)

Am I right?  Or am I right?
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 25 2008,14:22

Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 25 2008,13:18)
Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 25 2008,13:39)
BTW, some anonymous poster came to my blog and made a new < allegation >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
pThe word is that this was a set up.

PZ had a family member call management and say he was going to yell and shout during the showing, which he claimed earlier on his blog.

I thought this seemed a little too convenient.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I asked "anonymous" for evidence. I certainly hope that this isn't who I think it is. ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha!  Since it's a secret, I can't tell you whose name first popped into my head as "anonymous... but their initials are:
DaveScot Springer.   :)

Am I right?  Or am I right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I thought it was a little evangelical (in more ways than one) commenter/movie writer myself. Unfortunately, my blogometer is only reporting stats up to last Friday.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 25 2008,15:50

Is this turd playing in your neighborhood?  Click < here > and find out.

I was hoping it would play in a multi-cinema in my city and it is.  Now I need to choose which slasher )or other absurd) film I will pay money for so I can sneak into Ben's Nazi Propaganda Tribute.


Chris!
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 25 2008,15:56

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 25 2008,15:50)
Is this turd playing in your neighborhood?  Click < here > and find out.

I was hoping it would play in a multi-cinema in my city and it is.  Now I need to choose which slasher )or other absurd) film I will pay money for so I can sneak into Ben's Nazi Propaganda Tribute.


Chris!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks - FYI - There is a list of theaters available, so you can rent the entire thing!

THIS IS FROM THE ACTUAL LIST

Easter Federal (800) 394-7368 x328 Regal Cinemas/Edwards/UA (888) 792-8244

"Easter Federal" are 2 words I don't like to see together...
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 25 2008,16:11

I like the current "we may be liars but think of the publicity!" Angle. Creobots, If you were to felate each other at the next showing you could really make the headlines.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 25 2008,16:17

Well, no evidence from trolly so far.

Was anyone else wondering what made April 18 a weird release date?

On that day in 1802, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) died, as did Einstein, in 1955. Also on this day in 1946, The League of Nations is dissolved. Weird, huh?

I wonder what their real reasons were for choosing this date. I hope it’s not the fact that it’s the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court upholding the “Partial-Birth” Abortion Ban Act.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 25 2008,16:20

It is the Friday of the weekend containing the anniversary of Darwin's death, as noted on UD some time ago.
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on Mar. 25 2008,17:07

Poachy, about the Premise Media press release  on the fiasco:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Beautiful. I’ll say this about our side, we have some darn fine press release writers.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Those guys are unbelievably dim (UD)!
Posted by: Occam's Aftershave on Mar. 25 2008,17:32

Original prediction, Mar 20th:

 
Quote (Occam's Aftershave @ Mar. 20 2008,22:09)
Countdown to Casey Luskin the attack gerbil's spin

" We did that on purpose so PZ would know what Sternberg and Gonzalez felt!!!!"

....5....4....3...2....1

:D  :D  :D  :D  :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Latest bullshit excuse from the Expelled morons, Mar 25th:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Recognizing the opportunity to make a point of the inconvenience and pain that they, and others like them, have caused to numerous scientists and educators, the decision was made beforehand to deny Myers access to the film if he actually showed up.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Can I call 'em or what?   ;)
Posted by: bfish on Mar. 25 2008,17:42

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 25 2008,13:50)
Is this turd playing in your neighborhood?  Click < here > and find out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh. Why yes, it IS playing in my fair city. Will be interesting to see if that actually comes to be.

And Occam, that was a nice prediction there.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 25 2008,17:43

Quote (bfish @ Mar. 25 2008,17:42)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 25 2008,13:50)
Is this turd playing in your neighborhood?  Click < here > and find out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh. Why yes, it IS playing in my fair city. Will be interesting to see if that actually comes to be.

And Occam, that was a nice prediction there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nope. No chicago.
Posted by: deejay on Mar. 25 2008,17:57

Did anyone make it to the March 19th screening in Cambridge, MA?  I only found out about that the day after, but I was working that night anyway.  Of course all the fun happened the next day.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 25 2008,17:58

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 25 2008,17:43)
Quote (bfish @ Mar. 25 2008,17:42)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 25 2008,13:50)
Is this turd playing in your neighborhood?  Click < here > and find out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh. Why yes, it IS playing in my fair city. Will be interesting to see if that actually comes to be.

And Occam, that was a nice prediction there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nope. No chicago.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard -  If you got puppet, they got openings...

As long as you put "Youth Councilor", "Pastor" or "Stuhrbanfuher" in the Title section of their Reservation Screen, and remember to not put in "Friend Of PZMeyers", I think they will save a seat for you.  

Also on the Do Not Admit List:
ERV
Darwinist
Atheist
IQ of 100+
Witch
Belly Dancer
English Composition Teacher*


* Denyse insisted
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Mar. 25 2008,19:06

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 25 2008,16:17)
Well, no evidence from trolly so far.

Was anyone else wondering what made April 18 a weird release date?

On that day in 1802, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) died, as did Einstein, in 1955. Also on this day in 1946, The League of Nations is dissolved. Weird, huh?

I wonder what their real reasons were for choosing this date. I hope it’s not the fact that it’s the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court upholding the “Partial-Birth” Abortion Ban Act.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It must be this one:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
1958 - A U.S. federal court rules that poet Ezra Pound be released from an insane asylum.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Or was it this?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
1980 - The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Actually, it isn't that second one, I just wanted to draw attention to what must be the most totally excellent < personal name > in history.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 25 2008,19:23

Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 25 2008,16:58)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 25 2008,17:43)
 
Quote (bfish @ Mar. 25 2008,17:42)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 25 2008,13:50)
Is this turd playing in your neighborhood?  Click < here > and find out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh. Why yes, it IS playing in my fair city. Will be interesting to see if that actually comes to be.

And Occam, that was a nice prediction there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nope. No chicago.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard -  If you got puppet, they got openings...

As long as you put "Youth Councilor", "Pastor" or "Stuhrbanfuher" in the Title section of their Reservation Screen, and remember to not put in "Friend Of PZMeyers", I think they will save a seat for you.  

Also on the Do Not Admit List:
ERV
Darwinist
Atheist
IQ of 100+
Witch
Belly Dancer
English Composition Teacher*


* Denyse insisted
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Field Marshal Doctor President William Dembski tenured professor, licensed garbageman and supreme astronaut? :)
Posted by: factician on Mar. 25 2008,19:23

Quote (bfish @ Mar. 25 2008,18:42)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 25 2008,13:50)
Is this turd playing in your neighborhood?  Click < here > and find out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh. Why yes, it IS playing in my fair city. Will be interesting to see if that actually comes to be.

And Occam, that was a nice prediction there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yow, it's several hours away from me.  Apparently they think the fine folks within driving distance of the NIH/Hopkins/Rockville biotech corridor aren't interested in this turd.

Go figure.
Posted by: khan on Mar. 25 2008,19:38

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five...

Posted by: BWE on Mar. 25 2008,19:59

[quote=J-Dog,Mar. 25 2008,17:58]
Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 25 2008,17:43)

Also on the Do Not Admit List:
ERV
Darwinist
Atheist
IQ of 100+
Witch
Belly Dancer
English Composition Teacher*


* Denyse insisted
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< I ran a report >about that a long time ago on my blog. It seems relevant here.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Mar. 25 2008,20:21

I wish they'd hurry up and schedule a screening here in Jacksonville, NC.

I have a great red party dress I've only gotten to wear once.
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 25 2008,21:07

Quote (Lou FCD @ Mar. 25 2008,20:21)
I have a great red party dress I've only gotten to wear once.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Tease.

Heh, its not showing in Oklahoma.

A Creationist movie.

Not showing in Oklahoma.

LOL!!
Posted by: Reed on Mar. 25 2008,21:22

A game we can play!
According to: < http://www.newscientist.com/blog....ed.html >
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Some arguing ensued concerning the scientific merits of ID, and someone asked, "Where's the evidence? Where are the peer reviewed papers?" to which Mathis proudly proclaimed, "Actually, there are ten peer reviewed papers."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Leaving aside just how pathetic* that is, it would be quite interesting to get a list of those papers. This leads to the game:

Guess how many papers will be left after you remove those that
- Don't actually exist. Startlingly, some evidence suggests that Mathis might occasionally engage in fibbing.
- Were published by some Sternbergian subterfuge.
- Were not published in recognized, credible scientific journals, but rather in the likes of < IDs own PCID >, < AiGs Answers Research Journal >, or popular press.
- Have been retracted like the < infamous Warda/Han paper >.
- Are written by people who do not accept ID and do not believe their work supports ID. The ID movement has a long history of claiming as their own papers for the simple fact they contain the word "design" in the abstract.

I'll open with a guess of 1

* We might consider how many scientists named Steve have individually published more papers on evolution than the ten claimed by Mathis as the total output of ID.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Mar. 25 2008,21:25

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 25 2008,21:22)
A game we can play!
According to: < http://www.newscientist.com/blog....ed.html >
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Some arguing ensued concerning the scientific merits of ID, and someone asked, "Where's the evidence? Where are the peer reviewed papers?" to which Mathis proudly proclaimed, "Actually, there are ten peer reviewed papers."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Leaving aside just how pathetic* that is, it would be quite interesting to get a list of those papers. This leads to the game:

Guess how many papers will be left after you remove those that
- Don't actually exist. Startlingly, some evidence suggests that Mathis might occasionally engage in fibbing.
- Were published by some Sternbergian subterfuge.
- Were not published in recognized, credible scientific journals, but rather in the likes of < IDs own PCID >, < AiGs Answers Research Journal >, or popular press.
- Have been retracted like the < infamous Warda/Han paper >.
- Are written by people who do not accept ID and do not believe their work supports ID. The ID movement has a long history of claiming as their own papers for the simple fact they contain the word "design" in the abstract.

I'll open with a guess of 1

* We might consider how many scientists named Steve have individually published more papers on evolution than the ten claimed by Mathis as the total output of ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, 'Jerry' at UD recently claimed that ALL genome research is ID research whether the researcher realizes it or not, so if Mathis had been more on the ball, he could have cited a much higher number.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 25 2008,21:37

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 25 2008,06:05)
It looks like the remaining screenings are being completely reorganized and re-scheduled.

That's too bad. I've been collecting information about Michigan's statute 338 that applies to private security businesses and their employees. As I expected, such companies have to be bonded, and employees are issued identification cards. What I hadn't known was that was a felony for someone to falsely represent themselves as an employee of a private security business if they are not, in fact, an employee of a firm in compliance and bonded.

If Minnesota law is similar, PZ or others could see about getting an investigation into whether Mr. Security Guard at that screening was really a bona fide professional, or just someone in the entourage with a costume.

Michigan law, by the way, really appears to have it in for folks who make up fake shields and badges.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wes, You would make one great PI.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 25 2008,21:44

Quote (blader @ Mar. 25 2008,10:28)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 25 2008,09:05)
It looks like the remaining screenings are being completely reorganized and re-scheduled.

That's too bad. I've been collecting information about Michigan's statute 338 that applies to private security businesses and their employees. As I expected, such companies have to be bonded, and employees are issued identification cards. What I hadn't known was that was a felony for someone to falsely represent themselves as an employee of a private security business if they are not, in fact, an employee of a firm in compliance and bonded.

If Minnesota law is similar, PZ or others could see about getting an investigation into whether Mr. Security Guard at that screening was really a bona fide professional, or just someone in the entourage with a costume.

Michigan law, by the way, really appears to have it in for folks who make up fake shields and badges.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I figured it would come to this.

They are going to have to go underground and into secretive mode with their pre-screening.  They'll hold pre-screenings, but they won't tell anybody where they'll be.

Which is hilarious in so many ways if the entire point of the pre-screening campaign was to generate a buzz and interest for the broader big screen rollout.

There is some reason here to wonder if they really do have a contract to get it distributed or if that too is a bunch of BS

I know Flock of Dodo's tried hard but was never signed up for something like that.  It doesn't sound like expelled is the sort of movie you'd ever see at the Mall 16 unless it is underwritten by big, deep and really stupid pockets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't see how they can flush their "buzz machine" and make an April 18th opening.

I have a director/editor nextdoor, and he tells me that you can mess with schedules all that the budget will allow- before you have contracted/announced your opening.  Theaters must know that the advertising and the product will come together at the same time.  They are going to have dead screens, and dead screens cost lots of money.
Posted by: steve_h on Mar. 25 2008,21:45

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 26 2008,03:22)
< http://www.newscientist.com/blog....ed.html >
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dear anonymous (if that's your real name),
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's got to be an oldy but nevertheless, I love it so.
Posted by: JAM on Mar. 25 2008,22:02

Quote (Reed @ Mar. 25 2008,21:22)
A game we can play!
According to: < http://www.newscientist.com/blog....ed.html >
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Some arguing ensued concerning the scientific merits of ID, and someone asked, "Where's the evidence? Where are the peer reviewed papers?" to which Mathis proudly proclaimed, "Actually, there are ten peer reviewed papers."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Leaving aside just how pathetic* that is, it would be quite interesting to get a list of those papers. This leads to the game:

Guess how many papers will be left after you remove those that
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


...have any new data from testing a hypothesis: 1

...have any new data from testing an ID hypothesis, not a misrepresentation of an ID hypothesis: 0

It should be about new data, not peer review.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 25 2008,22:16

I can’t keep up. I dubed the press release as lie ver 5.01. But, that doesn’t do justice to all the lies the creationists are telling on this one.

I offered the following preliminary list at PT:

V. 1, PZ was “hustling people in line.”

v. 2, PZ was recognized and it was feared he would disrupt the movie.

v. 3, It amuzed Mark Mathis to kick PZ out, and make him pay to see himself after the movie release.

v. 4.1, Myers was kicked out, but Dawkins was let in because Dawkins had been a decent sort, and PZ had said bad things. (v. 4.2 This had all been descided in advance).

v. 5, PZ was kicked out and threatened with arrest to teach him a lessen.

There was also “PZ was kicked out because he didn’t have a ticket” which was the v. 0.0 beta they used while throwing him out of the Mall of America.

The sick irony of that deserves more comment that I have the stomach for right now.
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 25 2008,23:16

OK, here's my personal theory as to what really happened: PZ wasn't "hustling and bothering" as Stewie Blesshisheart thought, but rather he was hustling and flowing.  He wasn't even there to see the movie at all, but was rather trying to get a demo of his latest jam "It's Hard Out There For A Shrimp" into the hands of SkinnyBrit, a.k.a HolyGhostFaceKillah, a.k.a. The Muthafuckin' MCDawk.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Mar. 26 2008,00:02

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 25 2008,22:07)
Quote (Lou FCD @ Mar. 25 2008,20:21)
I have a great red party dress I've only gotten to wear once.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Tease.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not I.

< I deliver >.

(The occasion was my Aunt Helen's viewing.  Full story in those posts, but the pictures are in The Moment For Which You've All Been Waiting.  WARNING:  NOT FOR THE WEAK OF STOMACH OR FAINT OF HEART!)
Posted by: BWE on Mar. 26 2008,00:05

Quote (Dr.GH @ Mar. 25 2008,21:44)
Quote (blader @ Mar. 25 2008,10:28)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 25 2008,09:05)
It looks like the remaining screenings are being completely reorganized and re-scheduled.

That's too bad. I've been collecting information about Michigan's statute 338 that applies to private security businesses and their employees. As I expected, such companies have to be bonded, and employees are issued identification cards. What I hadn't known was that was a felony for someone to falsely represent themselves as an employee of a private security business if they are not, in fact, an employee of a firm in compliance and bonded.

If Minnesota law is similar, PZ or others could see about getting an investigation into whether Mr. Security Guard at that screening was really a bona fide professional, or just someone in the entourage with a costume.

Michigan law, by the way, really appears to have it in for folks who make up fake shields and badges.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I figured it would come to this.

They are going to have to go underground and into secretive mode with their pre-screening.  They'll hold pre-screenings, but they won't tell anybody where they'll be.

Which is hilarious in so many ways if the entire point of the pre-screening campaign was to generate a buzz and interest for the broader big screen rollout.

There is some reason here to wonder if they really do have a contract to get it distributed or if that too is a bunch of BS

I know Flock of Dodo's tried hard but was never signed up for something like that.  It doesn't sound like expelled is the sort of movie you'd ever see at the Mall 16 unless it is underwritten by big, deep and really stupid pockets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't see how they can flush their "buzz machine" and make an April 18th opening.

I have a director/editor nextdoor, and he tells me that you can mess with schedules all that the budget will allow- before you have contracted/announced your opening.  Theaters must know that the advertising and the product will come together at the same time.  They are going to have dead screens, and dead screens cost lots of money.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh shit. Any guesses as to what's going to happen?
Posted by: Lou FCD on Mar. 26 2008,00:07

Quote (didymos @ Mar. 26 2008,00:16)
He wasn't even there to see the movie at all, but was rather trying to get a demo of his latest jam "It's Hard Out There For A Shrimp" into the hands of SkinnyBrit, a.k.a HolyGhostFaceKillah, a.k.a. The Muthafuckin' MCDawk.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That right there cracked me up.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 26 2008,00:50



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Yes, yes, I know. You want to see the damned pictures of Lou FCD in the red dress he wore to his Aunt Helen’s viewing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, I actually haven't the slightest interest.  So, you may rest easy that there is no pressure at all that might possibly encourage you to publicly reveal such a private moment.  Thanks anyway, but no thanks.
Posted by: CeilingCat on Mar. 26 2008,01:00



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Arden Chatfield wrote:
Actually, it isn't that second one, I just wanted to draw attention to what must be the most totally excellent personal name in history."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



A good Biblical name, too.

From < Wiki >: Canaan Sodindo Banana (5 March 1936-10 November 2003) served as the first President of Zimbabwe from 18 April, 1980 until 31 December, 1987. A Methodist minister, he held the largely ceremonial office of the presidency while his eventual successor, Robert Mugabe, served as Prime Minister. ... His later life is tainted by charges of sodomy, which he denied and for which he was later imprisoned.

Sodomy charges and imprisonment
The former president's later years were clouded by scandal. In 1997, Rev. Banana was arrested in Zimbabwe on charges of sodomy, following accusations made during the murder trial of his former bodyguard, Jefta Dube.[1] The charges related to accusations that Banana had misused his authority while he was president to coerce numerous men in positions of service (ranging from domestic staff to security guards, and even members of sports teams for whom he had acted as referee) into accepting sexual advances. He was found guilty of 11 charges of sodomy, attempted sodomy and indecent assault in 1998. He denied all charges, saying that they were "a mortuary of pathological lies" intended to destroy his political career.[3] He fled to South Africa while on bail before he could be imprisoned, apparently believing Mugabe was planning his death. He returned to Zimbabwe in December 1998, after a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Banana was sentenced on January 18, 1999 to ten years in jail, nine years suspended and he was also defrocked. He served two years in prison before being released in January 2001, and died of cancer in 2003 in London, according to the Zimbabwean High Commissioner. The Guardian Unlimited, however, claims that Banana had travelled to South Africa, where he eventually died, in order to receive appropriate treatment for his cancer.[1] He was buried in Zimbabwe without the full honours expected to be accorded a former head of state.[2] His wife, Janet Banana, sought asylum in Britain in October 2000.[2]

Ray Comfort would die for this man's name.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 26 2008,01:01

Quote (BWE @ Mar. 25 2008,22:05)
Oh shit. Any guesses as to what's going to happen?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am not sure at all.  The release might not actually have many screens locked, and those were given a guarantee.  If the producers have mega-psycho-creato money, they might be able to front a lot of screens.  Producers use other people's money, so at this point they can tank the movie, go straight to DVD, and blame the evil Darwinists for blocking their Oscar.  They get paid anyway.  If the film is as crappy as everyone says, then I would guess they have just taken the up-front money.


Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 26 2008,01:05

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8308248 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Okay, Rich, I've identified your two lines of attack: Ad hominem and guilt by association. Both of them make me strongly suspect that you are severely lacking in substance. But just to give you the benefit of the doubt, what's all this substance I've missed out on? I've been busy, and I don't have time to wade through hundreds of comments. Fire away. Ask me five questions and I'll answer them in a blog post.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



FIVE GOOD QUESTIONS, PEOPLE.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 26 2008,01:24

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 25 2008,23:05)
< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8308248 >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Okay, Rich, I've identified your two lines of attack: Ad hominem and guilt by association. Both of them make me strongly suspect that you are severely lacking in substance. But just to give you the benefit of the doubt, what's all this substance I've missed out on? I've been busy, and I don't have time to wade through hundreds of comments. Fire away. Ask me five questions and I'll answer them in a blog post.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



FIVE GOOD QUESTIONS, PEOPLE.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Go for one question per day, max.  He gets the next question when the preceding one is finished.


Posted by: carlsonjok on Mar. 26 2008,01:28

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 25 2008,21:07)
Heh, its not showing in Oklahoma.

A Creationist movie.

Not showing in Oklahoma.

LOL!!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, it is.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Quail Springs 24       2501 W. Memorial                    Oklahoma City
Southroads 20         4923 E. 41st St.                       Tulsa
Tinseltown 20          6001 Matin Luther King Blvd.    Oklahoma City
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But, for the moment anyways: It's not playing in Norman! It's not playing in Norman!
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 26 2008,02:21

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 25 2008,23:05)
< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8308248 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Okay, Rich, I've identified your two lines of attack: Ad hominem and guilt by association. Both of them make me strongly suspect that you are severely lacking in substance. But just to give you the benefit of the doubt, what's all this substance I've missed out on? I've been busy, and I don't have time to wade through hundreds of comments. Fire away. Ask me five questions and I'll answer them in a blog post.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



FIVE GOOD QUESTIONS, PEOPLE.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why have the film makers assumed that creationists have been expelled because they are creationsits?  I think they were expelled for being incompetent.  Sternberg wasn't even expelled at all, nor Behe.  Dembski could have salvaged his job at Baylor if he hadn't been such a prick that nobody liked him.
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 26 2008,02:30

Mr. Miller is a bit slippery, or memory-deficient.  In response to a post on the thread where he promised to answer questions he wrote:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Nestor: We didn't even have a finished rough cut of the film last October. And we didn't begin showing it to people until December. And we never showed it at an AMC in San Diego. Remember that thing I said about not trusting anything said by someone who won't even tell me his real name? I'm sorry, but you've just proven me right.
Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 25, 2008 at 11:42 PM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So, I responded with :

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Kevin, I suggest you go here:
< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/events/list >

Please take note of the following:

CA San Diego AMC Mission Valley 20* October 11 7:00pm Done

What the hell? How hard was that?

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 26, 2008 at 12:14 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I don't have any questions to offer, just the observation that they ought to be as airtight and evidence-buttressed as possible if this is the kind of crap he can be expected to pull.
Posted by: BWE on Mar. 26 2008,05:17

Quote (carlsonjok @ Mar. 26 2008,01:28)
Quote (ERV @ Mar. 25 2008,21:07)
Heh, its not showing in Oklahoma.

A Creationist movie.

Not showing in Oklahoma.

LOL!!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, it is.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Quail Springs 24       2501 W. Memorial                    Oklahoma City
Southroads 20         4923 E. 41st St.                       Tulsa
Tinseltown 20          6001 Matin Luther King Blvd.    Oklahoma City
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But, for the moment anyways: It's not playing in Norman! It's not playing in Norman!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


After what Abby did there, I'd be surprised if any creationist copyright infringement media shows up there again.
Posted by: guthrie on Mar. 26 2008,05:27

Quote (didymos @ Mar. 26 2008,02:30)
Mr. Miller is a bit slippery, or memory-deficient.  In response to a post on the thread where he promised to answer questions he wrote:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Nestor: We didn't even have a finished rough cut of the film last October. And we didn't begin showing it to people until December. And we never showed it at an AMC in San Diego. Remember that thing I said about not trusting anything said by someone who won't even tell me his real name? I'm sorry, but you've just proven me right.
Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 25, 2008 at 11:42 PM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So, I responded with :

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Kevin, I suggest you go here:
< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/events/list >

Please take note of the following:

CA San Diego AMC Mission Valley 20* October 11 7:00pm Done

What the hell? How hard was that?

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 26, 2008 at 12:14 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I don't have any questions to offer, just the observation that they ought to be as airtight and evidence-buttressed as possible if this is the kind of crap he can be expected to pull.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is Creationist standard operating procedure.  I see by your number of posts that you have not been here long.  The regulars here have been taking screenshots of Creationist  blogs and webpages for future reference for years, in order to counter exactly that kind of lies.  When debating on a Creationist blog, it is common to copy and paste your response to here, in order that you have a copy when the Creationist doesn't print your response.
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 26 2008,06:03

Well, in this case, he did allow the reply; but you know, I figured better safe than sorry.
Posted by: KimvdLinde on Mar. 26 2008,06:17

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 25 2008,21:07)
Heh, its not showing in Oklahoma.

A Creationist movie.

Not showing in Oklahoma.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It is not a YEC-film, so not hard-core fundamentalist enough......
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 26 2008,10:04

I'm not sure why the "not invited" meme persists in the IDC cheerleading camp. Didn't they see the "Events and Tours" page?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Motive Entertainment is proud to present THE EXPELLED TOUR which launches on November 26th to promote the upcoming release of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Tour locations are being added every day! You and your community are invited to attend FREE of charge! CLICK HERE to RSVP now at a location near you!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: carlsonjok on Mar. 26 2008,10:15

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 26 2008,10:04)
I'm not sure why the "not invited" meme persists in the IDC cheerleading camp. Didn't they see the "Events and Tours" page?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Because it allows them to continue to focus on personalities rather than facts.  Portraying PZ and Dawkins as uninvited agitators keeps folks from actually evaluating the merits of what PZ is saying. Note that the Premise Media press release the other day plumbs out a 3 year old PT quote from PZ which plays to the prejudices of the target audience.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 26 2008,10:31

Looks like Michael Shermer picked up on the underhanded tone of this steaming pile of shit during the interview.  I picked this up from < this review >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
My take on Mathis is that he's an opportunist. He says and does whatever he thinks necessary to get his film made and now promoted. My guess on the latest flap about tossing PZ out of the screening but not Dawkins was PZ's original assumption that they just didn't notice Dawkins there, and only after the fact rationalizing the whole affair with plausible (and ever changing) reasons.

For my part, the moment I sat down with Stein (with Mathis there) and he asked me that question about firing people for expressing dissenting views a dozen times, I realized that I was being manipulated to give certain answers they were looking for me to give. I asked them both, several times, if they had anything else to ask me about evolutionary theory or Intelligent Design. In frustration I finally said something like "Do you have any other questions to ask me or do you keep asking me this question in hopes that I'll give a different answer?"

That's when Stein finally changed the subject and asked about social Darwinism. We got into a lengthy discussion about Adam Smith, which he seemed surprised to learn that I seemed to know more about the great economist than he did! For example, he didn't seem to even realize that Smith's first book was "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", and that Smith didn't trust businessmen any more than he trusted government bureaucrats, and that we need a mix of enlightened self-interest and strictly enforced rules of trade. But as I noted in my review of the film for Scientific American, Stein was especially displeased with my linkage of Smith and Darwin, that Darwin read Smith as an undergraduate at Edinburgh, etc. I also pointed out to him that Darwin has been used and abused by ideologues of all stripes, and that in any case that is all separate from whether the science is good or not. That seemed to tax his thinking too much, because shortly after he announced that he had to take a rest break and he just got up and went out to his car for about 20 minutes! Seriously, he just went out to the street next to our office and sat in the rent car they had! I couldn't believe it. We had only been going for about 30 minutes and he was tired? And this was in the late morning. I joked with Mathis that, this being Hollywood and all, I wondered if Stein was out doing a line of cocaine.... Mathis assured me that Stein doesn't do drugs, but I found the whole thing to be quite odd. Then Stein came back in and that's when we walked around the office with the handheld camera to get some B-Roll footage, and they showed him asking me about my books, and that's where I told him I thought ID was much closer to pseudoscience than science. Then he asked me AGAIN if I thought people should be fired....

The whole experience was a bit surreal, and I found Stein to be a somewhat disagreeable man. He tried to come off like he was a star and that I should have been star-struck, and when I wasn't that seemed to get under his skin a bit. For example, when he came back into the office from resting in his car, I said something like "gentlemen, I've got work to do so I'd like to wrap this thing up now," he looked at me like "hey, don't you realize who I am and that you should be grateful to be talking to me?" I let him off the hook a bit in my review about his questionable comment about blacks, but I suspect he has some racist tendencies.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Hey kevin11 are you still claiming this is a documentary or have you admitted it's nothing but fundy propaganda yet?
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 26 2008,13:22

Quote (Dr.GH @ Mar. 25 2008,20:44)
   
Quote (blader @ Mar. 25 2008,10:28)
     
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 25 2008,09:05)
It looks like the remaining screenings are being completely reorganized and re-scheduled.

That's too bad. I've been collecting information about Michigan's statute 338 that applies to private security businesses and their employees. As I expected, such companies have to be bonded, and employees are issued identification cards. What I hadn't known was that was a felony for someone to falsely represent themselves as an employee of a private security business if they are not, in fact, an employee of a firm in compliance and bonded.

If Minnesota law is similar, PZ or others could see about getting an investigation into whether Mr. Security Guard at that screening was really a bona fide professional, or just someone in the entourage with a costume.

Michigan law, by the way, really appears to have it in for folks who make up fake shields and badges.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I figured it would come to this.

They are going to have to go underground and into secretive mode with their pre-screening.  They'll hold pre-screenings, but they won't tell anybody where they'll be.

Which is hilarious in so many ways if the entire point of the pre-screening campaign was to generate a buzz and interest for the broader big screen rollout.

There is some reason here to wonder if they really do have a contract to get it distributed or if that too is a bunch of BS

I know Flock of Dodo's tried hard but was never signed up for something like that.  It doesn't sound like expelled is the sort of movie you'd ever see at the Mall 16 unless it is underwritten by big, deep and really stupid pockets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't see how they can flush their "buzz machine" and make an April 18th opening.

I have a director/editor nextdoor, and he tells me that you can mess with schedules all that the budget will allow- before you have contracted/announced your opening.  Theaters must know that the advertising and the product will come together at the same time.  They are going to have dead screens, and dead screens cost lots of money.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's why I'm not worried about the whole "any publicity is good for Expelled" argument. Their publicity has peaked, and peaked too soon.

As for the film itself, it's so bad because it's vacuous. It's almost not there. Also, < did you know this about Sternberg >?
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In a November, 2005 National Public Radio report on the affair Sternberg stated "I'm not an evangelical, I'm not a fundamentalist, I'm not a young earth creationist, I'm not a theistic evolutionist". Sternberg said McVay "related to me, 'the Smithsonian Institution's reaction to your publishing the Meyer article was far worse than you imagined'." Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR's religion reporter, said Sternberg himself believes intelligent design is "fatally flawed."[33]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 26 2008,13:54

WHERE ARE MY FIVE QUESTIONS?
Posted by: dnmlthr on Mar. 26 2008,14:09

Considering his "Ilse, She-Wolf of the SS" fetish, here's one:

"Sparta preceded Darwin with over 2000 years, yet their contemporaries wrote of them practicing eugenics. Did Darwin have a time machine and if so, do you find it plausible that oiled and muscled macho men (and women) would take advice from a victorian gentleman?"
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 26 2008,14:15

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 26 2008,13:54)
WHERE ARE MY FIVE QUESTIONS?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry Richard  - Here you go: (BTW - your question almost flounced at me just like FTK!)

1.  Kevin, what is your educational background?

2.  Why were you so easily duped by Cornelius Hunter and his book "Sciences Blind Spot?

3.  Please comment on the fact that Cornelius Hunter had trouble distinguishing between a wolf and a thalycine, and tried to use a picture of a thalycine from a coloring book as a teaching tool.

4.  As an ID supporter, please tell us what the actual Theory of ID is. (Telling us what is wrong with TOE does not count.)

5.  Which god is the right god?  Is it Zeus, the Christian God (and which sect for extra credit), Allah or Other?

edited for sp

added in edit - The Corny Hunter Thread.  Coloring Book stuff on Jan 26

< http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....+hunter >

Nother edit :  I forgot about Wes taking Hunter to task for "fudging" the differences between wolves and thalycines in a presentation Hunter made...  link is at Wes' site:

< http://austringer.net/wp/?p=493 >

Rich:  So maybe ask Kevin :  What is it about Liers at the DI?
Posted by: dnmlthr on Mar. 26 2008,14:20

That would be Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

I don't seem to be able to edit my posts. Either through incompetence (likely!) or the way the board is configured. Considering the willingness of cdesign proponentsists to blackhole I can understand the reasoning for the latter however.

In all seriousness, I think the Sparta connection is interesting, because whether or not they actually practiced eugenics, their contemporaries at the very least knew of the idea.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Mar. 26 2008,14:55

You knew it was coming. Over at < UD >, jpcollado uses the trusty "Were you there?" argument.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
MacNeill @ 12:
“As far as I know, the people in line didn’t have to register at the door.”

Mr.MacNeill, did you go to any of these screenings?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe he should ask the same question of DaveTard, who seems to have an awful lot of inaccurate opinions about this incident...
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 26 2008,15:20

As to the "Events and Tours" page, I made the mistake of getting all enthused about it too.  Unfortunately, it's actually only "inviting" you the bus tour thing they had going on.  Still, it the whole idea of an invitation is foolish anyway.  It's an internet marketing campaign, for Christ's sake.  The whole idea is get people to pass stuff around and promote it for you.  What, they expected mass-emailed-to-people to keep it extra-special-super-ninja-secret? If anything, one should ask why Mathis is such a dick that he wouldn't exercise some common courtesy and invite the man in his own movie to the screening in the first place.  I mean, we all know the answer, but that doesn't mean the question shouldn't be asked as often as they harp on the lack-of-invitation crap. Sons of bitches.  There.  I feel better now.
Posted by: Zachriel on Mar. 26 2008,15:48

Quote (didymos @ Mar. 26 2008,15:20)
The whole idea is get people to pass stuff around and promote it for you.  What, they expected mass-emailed-to-people to keep it extra-special-super-ninja-secret?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course. Here are a few extra-special-super-ninja-secret websites where the invitation to the "private screenings" have been relayed in code.

  < One Great City ~ CH!CAGO >

  < Family Facts Arizona >

  < WISCONSIN FAMILY COUNCIL >

And if you RSVP and receive a confirmation, then you would certainly consider the invitation to be "official".
Posted by: godsilove on Mar. 26 2008,16:16

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 26 2008,13:22)
That's why I'm not worried about the whole "any publicity is good for Expelled" argument. Their publicity has peaked, and peaked too soon.

As for the film itself, it's so bad because it's vacuous. It's almost not there. Also, < did you know this about Sternberg >?
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In a November, 2005 National Public Radio report on the affair Sternberg stated "I'm not an evangelical, I'm not a fundamentalist, I'm not a young earth creationist, I'm not a theistic evolutionist". Sternberg said McVay "related to me, 'the Smithsonian Institution's reaction to your publishing the Meyer article was far worse than you imagined'." Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR's religion reporter, said Sternberg himself believes intelligent design is "fatally flawed."[33]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of all the notorious Intelligent Design "martyrs", the only one I have a bit of sympathy for is Sternberg.  I think that there was a conflict of interest, but that he was truthful about having the paper reviewed by other scientists.  A lot of bad papers make it through the peer review process - Meyer's paper was an example of that.  Not simply because it mentioned his design hypothesis without any positive evidence, but primarily because he tried to bite off more than he could chew.  

I think Sternberg was simply had the erroneous opinion that the paper would foster healthy debate and therefore science could gain something by it.  The problem of course is that the "design hypothesis" is a science-stopper as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says.  If the Cambrian explosion is considered to be due to Go...an "Intelligent Agent's" intervention then there would be no reason to investigate further.  I suspect Sternberg doesn't realize just how fatally flawed the idea is.
Posted by: factician on Mar. 26 2008,16:37

From one of the tards at < UncommonDuplicity >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Actually, there are links to the rsvp system that come from the Evolution News & Views website.

From Evolution News & Views, click on “Academic Freedom Petition”. From there, click on “Get Expelled”. Click on “Events & Tours” and Click on “RSVP”.

I imagine there are other ways (I found this one accidentally, while reading Evolution News & Views). This showing wasn’t a secret. This showing wasn’t a private party. This had a perfectly legit way to sign up if you were interested.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This tard is right.  It works.
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 26 2008,17:00

Quote (factician @ Mar. 26 2008,14:37)
From one of the tards at < UncommonDuplicity >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Actually, there are links to the rsvp system that come from the Evolution News & Views website.

From Evolution News & Views, click on “Academic Freedom Petition”. From there, click on “Get Expelled”. Click on “Events & Tours” and Click on “RSVP”.

I imagine there are other ways (I found this one accidentally, while reading Evolution News & Views). This showing wasn’t a secret. This showing wasn’t a private party. This had a perfectly legit way to sign up if you were interested.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This tard is right.  It works.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Nah, Factitician.  It unfortunately doesn't.  That's just the Expelled bus tour thing again.  Here's the various RSVP sites:

Bus Tour, navigable to through the standard GetExpelled site:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/movies/expelled >

Next is the one Davey helpfully posted at UD, and which PZ apparently used:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/events/list >

Thirdly, there's this one, which figures in how-I-don't-know, but which just lists the same upcoming stuff as above, only without the completed showings:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled >

It's that third page which refers to them as "Expelled Private Screenings", again despite them being listed on the "non-private" screening page.  And of course, it now has this little treat:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Due to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of “Expelled”, several of our screenings have been canceled or are being rescheduled to a new date or time. If you'd like to be notified once a new screening in your area is confirmed, please sign-up on one of the waitlists below.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I've run across various comments that the pages have been altered in ways besides the "TBD" on the showing dates and the message above, but haven't been able to find out what the supposed alterations are.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 26 2008,17:06

Quote (didymos @ Mar. 26 2008,17:00)
Quote (factician @ Mar. 26 2008,14:37)
From one of the tards at < UncommonDuplicity >:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Actually, there are links to the rsvp system that come from the Evolution News & Views website.

From Evolution News & Views, click on “Academic Freedom Petition”. From there, click on “Get Expelled”. Click on “Events & Tours” and Click on “RSVP”.

I imagine there are other ways (I found this one accidentally, while reading Evolution News & Views). This showing wasn’t a secret. This showing wasn’t a private party. This had a perfectly legit way to sign up if you were interested.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This tard is right.  It works.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Nah, Factitician.  It unfortunately doesn't.  That's just the Expelled bus tour thing again.  Here's the various RSVP sites:

Bus Tour, navigable to through the standard GetExpelled site:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/movies/expelled >

Next is the one Davey helpfully posted at UD, and which PZ apparently used:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/events/list >

Thirdly, there's this one, which figures in how-I-don't-know, but which just lists the same upcoming stuff as above, only without the completed showings:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled >

It's that third page which refers to them as "Expelled Private Screenings", again despite them being listed on the "non-private" screening page.  And of course, it now has this little treat:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Due to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of “Expelled”, several of our screenings have been canceled or are being rescheduled to a new date or time. If you'd like to be notified once a new screening in your area is confirmed, please sign-up on one of the waitlists below.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I've run across various comments that the pages have been altered in ways besides the "TBD" on the showing dates and the message above, but haven't been able to find out what the supposed alterations are.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I signed up to be on their waiting list.  I will let you all know if/when they pull themselves out of limbo, and forward me the Secret Sign / Date and Time(s).
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Mar. 26 2008,17:23

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 26 2008,14:54)
WHERE ARE MY FIVE QUESTIONS?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your call for questions arises with respect to your assertion, and Kevin Miller's denial, that his actions support the insertion of ID into public school classrooms. Right?

Were any of those "expelled," as documented by the movie, public school teachers/personnel who allegedly suffered negative consequences for their advocacy of intelligent design within that setting? Does the movie oppose such consequences?

Seems to me that opposing such consequences for ID advocacy in that setting, ipso facto, amounts to support for the insertion of ID into public school classrooms.

Same for opposition to any "expulsions" (whatever that means) that occurred as a consequence of ID advocacy at any level of school board (local, state, etc.). Opposition to consequences at that level ipso facto supports the insertion of ID into public schools.
Posted by: steve_h on Mar. 26 2008,17:52

Zachriel has already given a link to from an expelled-friendly blog site: < http://onegreatcityblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/private-screening.html >, which, on 2008-03-11, encouraged the whole world to visit  http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled

Whoever runs that site clearly thought it was ok to pass the invite on to a wider audience.  That audience included Glen Davison.  

AISI This lends weight to the "viral marketing" argument.  If the makers were indentifying specific individuals, the invite-urls would contain a reference number identifying the invitee and they wouldn't need to enter their names again.
Posted by: silverspoon on Mar. 26 2008,18:22

I see where all those invitees to the Minnesota showing who responded to personal restricted invites are pouring out of the woodwork to defend DaveScotts latest--- I mean, surely since everyone in the blogosphere is yapping about this, especially those viewers that were sympathetic to the movie who attended the Minnesota screening PZ was ushered out of.

DaveScott...........anyone...............anyone?

Or not.
Posted by: theloneliestmonk on Mar. 26 2008,18:32

Kevin has posted the "5 questions" that he was asking for earlier and has "answered" them. Please be gentle:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....omments >
Posted by: Doc Bill on Mar. 26 2008,21:15

Y'all are barking up the wrong tree because Kevin doesn't know squat.  He's just a screenwriter.  Given pap he tries to make it interesting pap.

Does he understand the science?  Clearly, no.

Does he understand the issues?  Clearly, no.

So why pester the poor dolt with a bunch of questions he's clueless to answer?

My first question, eons ago, is still unanswered.  From what was Sternberg expelled?  See the movie was the answer.

Screw that.  I don't need to see the movie because I already know the answer from the public record.  Sternberg was expelled from NOTHING.

Lose his job at the Smithsonian?  Nope, he didn't work for the Smithsonian, how could he lose a job he didn't hold?

Lost his job from the NIH?  Nope, he still works at the NIH?

Fired as editor of the Washington Bio Journal?  Nope, he ended his tenure as editor MONTHS before the infamous paper was published.

Demoted at the Smithsonian?  Again, how?  He didn't work for the Smithsonian.  He was a Research Associate at the Smithsonian sort of like a visitor to a library, if memory serves, but his sponsor DIED!  You need a sponsor to be an RA and his sponsor DIED.  Without a sponsor a researcher is classified a Research Contributor.  Sternberg wasn't demoted, his sponsor died and his title changed.

So, Kevin, please enlighten us all to the secret information about Sternberg that you know and the rest of the world doesn't.

Or, let me guess, hmmmmm, Sternberg wasn't expelled from anything.  That's the correct answer, Kevin, isn't it?
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 26 2008,21:27

My question is something even a screenwriter should know:

1.  Who made your computer simulations of a 'cell as an automated city'?

Cause the guy listed on the EXPELLED credits as 'computer animator' says he didnt have anything to do with it.

*slaps her hand over her mouth*  Uh oh!  Pahsketti-oh!

Edited to add-- The detective powers of a student that has a test at 8 am tomorrow and is procrastinating studying-- fear them.
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 26 2008,21:34

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 26 2008,19:27)
My question is something even a screenwriter should know:

1.  Who made your computer simulations of a 'cell as an automated city'?

Cause the guy listed on the EXPELLED credits as 'computer animator' says he didnt have anything to do with it.

*slaps her hand over her mouth*  Uh oh!  Pahsketti-oh!

Edited to add-- The detective powers of a student that has a test at 8 am tomorrow and is procrastinating studying-- fear them.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Seriously?  The guy had no part in the actual animation in the film. Wow. Just...what the hell? What'll they claim next I wonder: they exposed the Harvard footage to radiation and it evolved?  I really would dearly love to get a hold of the stuff from the film and do a frame by frame comparison to Harvard's.
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 26 2008,21:41

Quote (didymos @ Mar. 26 2008,21:34)
Seriously?  The guy had no part in the actual animation in the film. Wow. Just...what the hell? What'll they claim next I wonder: they exposed the Harvard footage to radiation and it evolved?  I really would dearly love to get a hold of the stuff from the film and do a frame by frame comparison to Harvard's.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, dude did other shit-- he just said he had nothing to do with that particular bit of animation.  'He said.'

Dude appears to be a genuine computer animator, so I believe him.  Copy someone elses shit, and you will never work again, plus I assume there is something about honor in art and being original.

Seems like someone else might have had a hand in this.

Someone with access to people who are not computer animators as artists, but as a, I dunno, computer animators as a mindless computer task.

I dont know who that someone might be...........

Kevin?
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 26 2008,21:47

More hilarity from UD:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

DLH

03/26/2008

12:58 pm

The Expelled buzz is spreading into more mainstream.
Unfortunately Christianity Today’s fact checkers were out to lunch or have swallowed atheistic Darwinism hook line and sinker - equating intelligent design with creationism, and claiming that the Forida Academic Freedom Act mandates creationism. Let alone parroting Myers being expelled after “legitimately signed up for the event” rather than gatecrashing an RSVP private screening.
REEL NEWS, Expelled Expels Darwinist

It made it into MideastYouth Expelling the Intelligent from the ‘Expelled’, though he can’t distinguish ID from creationism, and his article fails basic logic, claiming that 700 skeptical of Darwinism means that they are creationists, and that 99.9999% etc support evolution.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< linkage >

Bitter much? Yes, that atheistic bunch over at Christianity Today. Bastard ass fact-checkers. I hate those guys. BTW, does anyone here know what the fuck DLH is supposed to stand for?  I mean, I could take some guesses, but...
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 26 2008,23:33

OK, I found this nifty bit from a guy who saw one of the Expelled screenings:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I saw the movie on Tuesday and was given a DVD with over 30 minutes of raw clips. We were told as teachers to show it in class and use it as a debate opportunity for our students to discuss the issue of censorship, and so on. Of course, they want it to go to people who will promote it and get our friends to come out to see the movie. (Yes, it's a vast right wing conspiracy!)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Emphasis mine. Here's the full < entry >

This dude is one of the faithful as well, so no axe to grind unless it's with atheists and such.  I have to say, I'm not too enthused about them telling teachers to show this in class, and you know which class they want it shown in too.  If it's like a current events or social studies thing, I'm fairly cool with that, but the only time it should be in a science class is to provide an object lesson in pseudo. I'll try to find some corroboration on this.
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 26 2008,23:35

Oh, and notice how he reinforces the viral marketing notion as well.
Posted by: stevestory on Mar. 26 2008,23:40

Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 26 2008,15:15)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 26 2008,13:54)
WHERE ARE MY FIVE QUESTIONS?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry Richard  - Here you go: (BTW - your question almost flounced at me just like FTK!)

1.  Kevin, what is your educational background?

2.  Why were you so easily duped by Cornelius Hunter and his book "Sciences Blind Spot?

3.  Please comment on the fact that Cornelius Hunter had trouble distinguishing between a wolf and a thalycine, and tried to use a picture of a thalycine from a coloring book as a teaching tool.

4.  As an ID supporter, please tell us what the actual Theory of ID is. (Telling us what is wrong with TOE does not count.)

5.  Which god is the right god?  Is it Zeus, the Christian God (and which sect for extra credit), Allah or Other?

edited for sp

added in edit - The Corny Hunter Thread.  Coloring Book stuff on Jan 26

< http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....+hunter >

Nother edit :  I forgot about Wes taking Hunter to task for "fudging" the differences between wolves and thalycines in a presentation Hunter made...  link is at Wes' site:

< http://austringer.net/wp/?p=493 >

Rich:  So maybe ask Kevin :  What is it about Liers at the DI?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My only question is, Kevin, since you argued for a link between Darwinism and Hitler, why didn't you tell your audience that Hitler was a creationist*?

Don't bother answering, the reason is obvious.

(* < http://scienceblogs.com/dispatc....805448) >


Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 26 2008,23:48

[quote=dnmlthr,Mar. 26 2008,12:09][/quote]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Considering his "Ilse, She-Wolf of the SS" fetish, here's one:

"Sparta preceded Darwin with over 2000 years, yet their contemporaries wrote of them practicing eugenics. Did Darwin have a time machine and if so, do you find it plausible that oiled and muscled macho men (and women) would take advice from a(n over weight chronically ill) victorian gentleman?"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Minor add on edit.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 27 2008,02:45

Entered in a comment thread on IMDB:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

A possible scenario: the "Expelled" promotional team did send out email invitations to certain people. In order to fill theaters, but not overfill them, they had a website where those accepting invitations could enter their information and receive a confirmation. This website wasn't protected and did not restrict who could sign up for a screening, nor did the text make any distinction between people who might have received an email and those who instead directly accessed the page. Links to this page existed from a page showing future screenings with "RSVP" as a hyperlink. If this scenario comes close to the actual state of affairs, it explains the promoters and producers talking about people without invitations while many, if not most, attendees have the impression that specific invitations were no part of how one went about getting on the list for entry to a screening.

This sort of setup is not even quite the deprecated "security by obscurity", because the registration page link was publicly accessible. Still, the promoters may have considered their system as one implemented for the use of people that they had actively contacted rather than the public at large, though if that is the case, they were singularly inept at expressing that concept on the pages themselves.

I have signed up for a screening at a city in my state. I did not receive a specific "invitation", but merely followed publicly accessible links on their website to do so. I have received email confirmation that says that no ticket will be required. I have corresponded in email with one of the promoters for the film concerning various issues (now including when the screening might be re-scheduled).

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on Mar. 27 2008,03:15

I also ran across this in < Expelled Challenge FAQ >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Q: Will someone from our administration be able to screen the entire movie prior to the movie’s release?

A: There will be opportunities for screenings in certain markets across the country, but not in every market. Please email us at expelledchallenge@groundforcenetwork.com if you’re interested in being a part of a pre-release screening, and we’ll let you know of the availabilities in your area.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



so there's another totallly public route to finding extra-special-super-ninja-secret RSVP site.  Oh, hey, did you know RSVP means "répondez s’il vous plaît"?  That's like French and stuff for "Please respond".  DaveScot taughted me that on UD.

Of course, I can confidently predict that the response to that would be that you gamed the system by misrepresenting yourself as an educator and that you are therefore an evil Darwinist scum who's NOT INVITED.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 27 2008,09:30

Quote (didymos @ Mar. 26 2008,22:33)
OK, I found this nifty bit from a guy who saw one of the Expelled screenings:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I saw the movie on Tuesday and was given a DVD with over 30 minutes of raw clips. We were told as teachers to show it in class and use it as a debate opportunity for our students to discuss the issue of censorship, and so on. Of course, they want it to go to people who will promote it and get our friends to come out to see the movie. (Yes, it's a vast right wing conspiracy!;)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Emphasis mine. Here's the full < entry >

This dude is one of the faithful as well, so no axe to grind unless it's with atheists and such.  I have to say, I'm not too enthused about them telling teachers to show this in class, and you know which class they want it shown in too.  If it's like a current events or social studies thing, I'm fairly cool with that, but the only time it should be in a science class is to provide an object lesson in pseudo. I'll try to find some corroboration on this.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Re that blog:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Check back for my random thoughts on eschatology, world missions, God's Law and Society, theonomy, Christian Reconstruction, pro-life activism, evangelism testimonies, Neo-Puritan theology and social theory, revival and spiritual awakening, church history, and so on.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So I did.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What we [Christian Reconstructionists] do believe is that God's Law is just. If God commands execution for a capital crime, then it is a just punishment. We can't be squeamish about these Old Testament capital laws. This is what our God commanded.

Now whether our society today ought to enforce these laws "lock, stock and tablets" is another argument. There has been a change under the New Covenant regarding certain Old Covenant Laws. Every theonomist we interviewed agreed with this idea. I have always found it strange that people who are opposed to Christian Reconstruction always jump to the claim that we want to stone incorrigible children. No Reconstructionist has argued that we ought to do that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



[Emphasis mine] Oh, I’m so relieved. :(

Anyway, I left a comment merely asking who told him, as a teacher, to show it in class.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 27 2008,10:27

Quote (stevestory @ Mar. 26 2008,23:40)
Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 26 2008,15:15)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 26 2008,13:54)
WHERE ARE MY FIVE QUESTIONS?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry Richard  - Here you go: (BTW - your question almost flounced at me just like FTK!)

1.  Kevin, what is your educational background?

2.  Why were you so easily duped by Cornelius Hunter and his book "Sciences Blind Spot?

3.  Please comment on the fact that Cornelius Hunter had trouble distinguishing between a wolf and a thalycine, and tried to use a picture of a thalycine from a coloring book as a teaching tool.

4.  As an ID supporter, please tell us what the actual Theory of ID is. (Telling us what is wrong with TOE does not count.)

5.  Which god is the right god?  Is it Zeus, the Christian God (and which sect for extra credit), Allah or Other?

edited for sp

added in edit - The Corny Hunter Thread.  Coloring Book stuff on Jan 26

< http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....+hunter >

Nother edit :  I forgot about Wes taking Hunter to task for "fudging" the differences between wolves and thalycines in a presentation Hunter made...  link is at Wes' site:

< http://austringer.net/wp/?p=493 >

Rich:  So maybe ask Kevin :  What is it about Liers at the DI?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My only question is, Kevin, since you argued for a link between Darwinism and Hitler, why didn't you tell your audience that Hitler was a creationist*?

Don't bother answering, the reason is obvious.

(* < http://scienceblogs.com/dispatc....805448) >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


i was discussing this with friends last night and one piped up "But Hitler was an Atheist!". Factual correctness has no bearing on how many times it gets said at church, apparently.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 27 2008,11:06

Re: "Hitler was an atheist!"

Hitler was a nutcase with obsessions and a thirst for power. It is obvious that he (and his followers) used whatever was around opportunistically to manipulate people. It's way too simplistic to try to say that "Hitler was an X!" for just about any X that includes a substantial proportion of non-nutcase humans and pretend that we have determined the basis of what drove the Nazis to do what they did.

Did evolutionary ideas get used in Nazi propaganda? Sure. So did lots of ideas from Christianity. The mere presence of some idea in Nazi propaganda only shows directly that the propagandist thought that a chunk of his target audience would respond well to it. The notion that one can come up with simple, exclusive causes for Nazis and Hitler doing the things they did is ludicrous. Many of the folks high in the Nazi hierarchy were people without much in the way of formal education and who never showed much tendency to apply a principled view of things to their actions, even misunderstood principles. Principled application of some one viewpoint would imply a consistency in publicly-stated justifications that was notable by its absence in Nazi propaganda output.

But the modern propaganda wants us to accept that there is a clear, simple causative explanation for the phenomenon of Hitler and Nazism, and that "Darwinism" is it. In doing so, they have to discard or otherwise overlook the evidence that many other factors influenced the leaders of Nazi Germany, and that in the single most famous case, that of Hitler, one most often finds him couching his arguments in terms of allusions to Christian theology and mythology.

The rhetorical ploy, though, has features that make it function, even if it is wrong. People like simple explanations. People don't like being told that understanding will take effort and scholarship, and can't be delivered via sound bite or "Lord Privy Seal" cutaway. That all sounds too much like work.
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 27 2008,22:10

OK, indisputable proof of Hitler's true religious position:



Courtesy of  < http://www.superdickery.com/ >

(edited 11/4/2008: Image broken)
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 28 2008,01:09

Gatecrashing == BAD.  But smuggling for Jesus....:



(edited 11/4/2008: Broken image)
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 28 2008,09:28

Well, now we know what happens (or doesn't)  < when you get invited >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This is where I was supposed to be telling you what I thought about the film Expelled after having paid (yes I know, “boo, hiss”) $10 to Biola university for a ticket to “Expelled! The Movie and the Event“.

Here is their description of the event:

EXPELLED!
The Movie and the Event
with Ben Stein

Intelligent Design: What happens when a group of scientists get terminated for thinking it is reasonable to believe in ID? Actor Ben Stein makes a funny and thought-provoking movie about it. Join us for an exclusive backstage film pass and hear from Stein himself as well as a panel of experts.

“The Movie and the event”, “backstage film pass“, sounds like you might actually see the movie right? Wrong! Instead all you get for your ten clams and your forty minute drive (one way) is essentially a commercial for the movie with a few clips and a lot of ID babble from Stephen C. Meyer, Ben (Mad Dog) Stein, and three or four also spokes.

Needless to say I am a bit peeved about this.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So now they’re making people plop down $10 to see the pre-show cartoon because they’ve lost their nerve about showing the whole thing. :)

Uh-buh, uh-buh, THAT’S ALL FOLKS! :p
Posted by: k.e.. on Mar. 28 2008,10:08

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 27 2008,11:06)
Re: "Hitler was an atheist!"

Hitler was a nutcase with obsessions and a thirst for power. It is obvious that he (and his followers) used whatever was around opportunistically to manipulate people. It's way too simplistic to try to say that "Hitler was an X!" for just about any X that includes a substantial proportion of non-nutcase humans and pretend that we have determined the basis of what drove the Nazis to do what they did.

Did evolutionary ideas get used in Nazi propaganda? Sure. So did lots of ideas from Christianity. The mere presence of some idea in Nazi propaganda only shows directly that the propagandist thought that a chunk of his target audience would respond well to it. The notion that one can come up with simple, exclusive causes for Nazis and Hitler doing the things they did is ludicrous. Many of the folks high in the Nazi hierarchy were people without much in the way of formal education and who never showed much tendency to apply a principled view of things to their actions, even misunderstood principles. Principled application of some one viewpoint would imply a consistency in publicly-stated justifications that was notable by its absence in Nazi propaganda output.

But the modern propaganda wants us to accept that there is a clear, simple causative explanation for the phenomenon of Hitler and Nazism, and that "Darwinism" is it. In doing so, they have to discard or otherwise overlook the evidence that many other factors influenced the leaders of Nazi Germany, and that in the single most famous case, that of Hitler, one most often finds him couching his arguments in terms of allusions to Christian theology and mythology.

The rhetorical ploy, though, has features that make it function, even if it is wrong. People like simple explanations. People don't like being told that understanding will take effort and scholarship, and can't be delivered via sound bite or "Lord Privy Seal" cutaway. That all sounds too much like work.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Believe it or not...Mr Joseph Goebbels ...a famed Christian  said this on the 9th of January 1928

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Then one can say that a person has a worldview—not because he knows a lot or has read a lot—but because he sees all of life from a certain standpoint, and measures everything by a certain standard. I am a Christian when I believe that the meaning of my life is the heavy responsibility to love my neighbor as myself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



One could ask who were the opertunists.

....Oh we have an answer to that....



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
An evangelical minister and a politician arrived at Heaven's gate one day together. And St. Peter, after doing all the necessary formalities, took them in hand to show them where their quarters would be. And he took them to a small, single room with a bed, a chair, and a table and said this was for the clergyman. And the politician was a little worried about what might be in store for him. And he couldn't believe it then when St. Peter stopped in front of a beautiful mansion with lovely grounds, many servants, and told him that these would be his quarters.

And he couldn't help but ask, he said, "But wait, how-there's something wrong - how do I get this mansion while that good and holy man only gets a single room?" And St. Peter said, "You have to understand how things are up here. We've got thousands and thousands of clergy. You're the first politician who ever made it."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



From the man who brought god to < The Evil Empire >
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 28 2008,10:47

Ray Comfort says that < he's been invited next >. How do you like them bananas?  :angry:
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on Mar. 28 2008,13:25

The Wiki article on Expelled has been taking shape lately.  Still very messy but it's improving.  Check it out < here >
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 28 2008,15:15

The idiot Mathis has spoken again.  This is a cross-post from Talkorigins:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The public is not aware of the materialist, atheistic agenda

Yeah, funny that.  You'd think the public would be aware of a materialist, atheistic agenda pushed by pastors and priests, people from all religions, cultures, and perspectives--since that seems so unlikely and unbelievable.  But they're just not, they tend to think that if religious and irreligious folk alike can agree on chemistry, biology, and physics, that it's just chemistry, biology, and physics.  It takes a real dedicated religious moron to assume that the science done in Catholic schools is part of the materialist, atheistic agenda, and that heroic dedicated religious moron is Mark Mathis.  Here's part of his interview:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mark Mathis is Associate Producer of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a forthcoming documentary that says the Darwinists of American universities are suppressing scientific inquiry.

World on the Web: What makes Expelled different from other “radical idea” documentaries, like the ones Michael Moore has produced?

Mark Mathis: This film is not told from a conservative worldview, though that accusation will happen. Most of the documentary films that have been well done are driving an agenda that comes from the left side of the political spectrum. Films that do (come from this perspective) are less ambitious, more true to documentary form. Our agenda is that science needs to be free, and that the freedom’s not there. When you come to a Michael Moore or Al Gore film, the message is, “we have the answer; and everyone else, just shut up.” Expelled wants to do the opposite: stop the shutting down of scientific inquiry and return freedom to science.

WoW: Who is the film’s target demographic?

Mathis: Our target is the general public. The public is not aware of the materialist, atheistic agenda that is driven by elitists. We know that within the academic elitist institutions across this country, we are going to persuade almost absolutely no one. They’ve stopped looking at the evidence in an unbiased way.

WoW: And who do you think will be most interested in seeing this?

Mathis: People who care about freedom. People who are sick and tired of elitists dictate to them what truth is, people who believe that when they look at nature, they see reason to pursue scientific inquiry, and people who believe in God will have a strong interest in seeing this film. Having a free society will ultimately show us the truth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The rest is here:

< http://www.worldontheweb.com/2008/03/28/mark-mathis-interview/ >

Let's see, dishonest Mark, Stein has already told us that this is a free society, which he attributed to capitalism.  And having this free society will ultimately show us the truth?  Looks like it already did, which is why you want an unfree society to enforce your lies into the curricula and into the science labs.

And gee, Mark, you're not going to persuade anyone who's well-educated, including the many religious academics?  Why not?  Don't you have any truth to tell us?  I'd think that if you had any truth, you'd be able to persuade some people.  What's the point of merely persuading those who don't know enough to judge?   Money and propaganda?  'Fraid so.

"...People who believe in God will have a strong interest in seeing this film."

Ooh, you just contradicted yourself there, idiot boy.  You said that the academic elites wouldn't be interested, and a significant number of those happen to be religious folk (like at the Catholic university I attended for a couple of years).  The intersection between religious folk and "academic elites" just happens to make a contradictory claim by you, hence you're lying once again.  

Then again, do you ever cease to lie in your interviews, Mathis?

Glen Davidson

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 28 2008,17:06

Re: their cluelessness about the < "atheist agenda" >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Some of you know that the producers of Expelled had a conference call this afternoon…a carefully controlled, closed environment in which they would spout their nonsense and only take questions by email. I listened to it for a while, and yeah, it was the usual run-around. However, I dialed in a few minutes early, and got to listen to a tiresome five minutes of Leslie and Paul chatting away, during which time they mentioned the secret code (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!;) for the two way calls. I know. Sloppy, unprofessional, and stupid, but that's the way they work.

So … I redialed. (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!;)

Then I listened along quietly until I could take no more.

They repeated the usual lies (the Minneapolis event was a private screening [which was publicly linked on the web, where any idiot could get to it]; their blog was #1 on blogpulse [near as I can tell, it wasn't—it was my exposure of their hypocrisy that was #1]; they didn't lie to get interviews [totally bogus], etc.). They made amusing contradictions. Walt Ruloff first claims that the genesis of the movie was in 2006, when he claims to have started investigating biotechnology and discovered that there are "questions that can't be asked" and that people were suppressing information that called Darwinism into doubt — note, though, that he never stated what those unnameable questions are. A moment later Mark Mathis comes on to say that the subject of the film was a work in progress, that they hadn't settled anything, and that the name wasn't even decided upon. Come on, they registered expelledthemovie.com in early 2007, well before they asked us to be interviewed.

They threw out a bunch of softball questions to Ben Stein: "How can you be so intelligent and question Darwinism", I kid you not.

One good question got through on email: KMOX radio contested the claim that there was no distortion of the interviews of Dawkins and Myers because they surrounded the interviews with film clips of Nazis — I think it's obvious how they were trying to bias the discussion, and I was floored by Stein's reply. He wanted more goose-stepping Nazis all over the place.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stein just can't get enough Nazis.

Who's fault is it that they're such gauche twits that they can't keep up with atheists? :p
Posted by: carlsonjok on Mar. 28 2008,17:08

< Oops! He done it again! >

EDIT:  Drat. Beaten by teh witch.
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 28 2008,18:11

I wonder if that's legally considered phreaking or not. I mean, if someone dials in a minute early and you just outright say the number he goes on to dial ...
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 28 2008,18:59

Have there been any showings of EXPELLED since Good Thursday?
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 28 2008,19:23

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 28 2008,18:59)
Have there been any showings of EXPELLED since Good Thursday?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well... if you weren't wasting ALL your time studying, taking tests and doing sciencey stuff, you'd know missy...

Afaik - I think they pulled them all back, and all the "upcoming" screenings are "waitlisted", with dates and locations TBD (To Be Determined... or Thience Be Damned?)

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelled >
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 28 2008,19:26

Quote (Annyday @ Mar. 28 2008,18:11)
I wonder if that's legally considered phreaking or not. I mean, if someone dials in a minute early and you just outright say the number he goes on to dial ...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I emailed Ed Brayton about this - he knows a lot of lawyers, but it seems to me that if you have a "secret" and you blab it to the world, you kind of lose credibility
and the right to think it is still a secret.

edited
Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 28 2008,20:24

< Expelled advertising? > I submit that it's too funny to be creationist-made. No farting noises and so over-the-top it doesn't even seem pro-expelled. Really, a giant robot? It's nuanced enough that it's not preachy, even. Outside work, maybe?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Mar. 28 2008,21:30

< Tard Fight >

Don't get carried away dude.  

Sorry I was talking to myself.

God what do you call an aggregation of douchebags?  Anyone?  Bueller?  a discovery of douchebags?

dibs
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 28 2008,22:35

Hey, UD was actually useful for something.  Someone there posted a link to an mp3 of the conference call:

< http://www.skepchick.org/pzexpelled.mp3 >

I'm gonna slap a torrent of it up and seed it for a good long while, so get it that way if you wish.  I'm using open trackers currently, and I put up on Sumotracker.  I'd have put it up on piratebay, but it won't let me log in currently.
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 28 2008,22:43

Oh, and on sumo, it's named pzkilledtheexpelledstar, so search on that. I'll put it up on a couple others if I can using that name.
Posted by: Quidam on Mar. 29 2008,13:53

It seems the eXpelled folk are so worried about theaters not wanting to show their movie and no one showing up if they do, that they are now asking devotees to < "Adopt a Theater" >

Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 29 2008,13:55



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This is a campaign to engage churches, organizations, and anyone else that wants to be a part of this movement to get as many people from their church or organization out to see Ben Stein’s new movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed (opening in theaters April 2008).

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Emphasis mine.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 29 2008,14:08

Expelled: Free publicity for PZ...

< http://www.alexa.com/data....=Medium >
Posted by: Quidam on Mar. 29 2008,16:46

Quote (ERV @ Mar. 26 2008,20:41)
 
Quote (didymos @ Mar. 26 2008,21:34)
Seriously?  The guy had no part in the actual animation in the film. Wow. Just...what the hell? What'll they claim next I wonder: they exposed the Harvard footage to radiation and it evolved?  I really would dearly love to get a hold of the stuff from the film and do a frame by frame comparison to Harvard's.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, dude did other shit-- he just said he had nothing to do with that particular bit of animation.  'He said.'

Dude appears to be a genuine computer animator, so I believe him.  Copy someone elses shit, and you will never work again, plus I assume there is something about honor in art and being original.

Seems like someone else might have had a hand in this.

Someone with access to people who are not computer animators as artists, but as a, I dunno, computer animators as a mindless computer task.

I dont know who that someone might be...........

Kevin?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Annyday on Mar. 29 2008,16:55

Checking on the expelled site, I note that fifty of their current theaters are in Florida. I believe this means Florida is getting something like 20-25% of the Expelled theaters in the country, as of now. I am certain this is merely a coincidence and has nothing to do with the antievolution legislation currently in play in Florida.
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 29 2008,17:46

Quidam--

LOOOOOL!!! LUUUUUUUV!!!!

(Im sending that to Harvard, they will lol over it)
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Mar. 29 2008,18:01

Quote (Annyday @ Mar. 29 2008,17:55)
Checking on the expelled site, I note that fifty of their current theaters are in Florida. I believe this means Florida is getting something like 20-25% of the Expelled theaters in the country, as of now. I am certain this is merely a coincidence and has nothing to do with the antievolution legislation currently in play in Florida.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I recounted for all states earlier this afternoon - they're up to 496 theaters. I haven't any idea how this stuff works - isn't getting a bit late to add another 500 theaters?

Check out Texas, which has 60. They know where their audience lives.
Posted by: Quidam on Mar. 29 2008,19:05


Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 29 2008,20:51

Quote (Annyday @ Mar. 29 2008,15:55)
Checking on the expelled site, I note that fifty of their current theaters are in Florida. I believe this means Florida is getting something like 20-25% of the Expelled theaters in the country, as of now. I am certain this is merely a coincidence and has nothing to do with the antievolution legislation currently in play in Florida.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, fabulous! < Teacher sex scandals rock Florida >! :p

And Rich Hughes - good job my warlocky friend. :)
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 29 2008,21:25

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 29 2008,20:51)
And Rich Hughes - good job my warlocky friend. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


As all my work is sexi_hawt, you'll have to be more specific and lavish with your praise, witchy-one.
Posted by: ReligionProf on Mar. 30 2008,07:16

For your amusement, my latest pseudoscience satire video game. I didn't have time to do a better job, so please do improve on it!

< http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008....me.html >
Posted by: factician on Mar. 30 2008,09:34

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Mar. 29 2008,19:01)
Quote (Annyday @ Mar. 29 2008,17:55)
Checking on the expelled site, I note that fifty of their current theaters are in Florida. I believe this means Florida is getting something like 20-25% of the Expelled theaters in the country, as of now. I am certain this is merely a coincidence and has nothing to do with the antievolution legislation currently in play in Florida.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I recounted for all states earlier this afternoon - they're up to 496 theaters. I haven't any idea how this stuff works - isn't getting a bit late to add another 500 theaters?

Check out Texas, which has 60. They know where their audience lives.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And where their audience isn't.  No showings in Maryland, home of the NIH, the biotech corridor along route 70, Johns Hopkins and the plethora of U. Maryland branches.

Getting the word out to Big Science!
Posted by: raguel on Mar. 30 2008,20:46

From Kevin's "answers":



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I know there are probably many more predictions than this, but here are a few that I find compelling:...4) informational structures beyond the inherent abilities of blind natural forces and random chance will be found,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way I can see the above being true is if one can experimentally (1)  determine if a molecule is "synthetic" by it's chemical properties (specifically, it's reactivity and 3d shape) alone,  (2) can determine which molecules weren't produced by chemical reactions, and/or (3)the formation of the "structure" in question can't occur in an organism. Nothing these people say make sense.
Posted by: ERV on Mar. 30 2008,21:36

Quote (raguel @ Mar. 30 2008,20:46)
From Kevin's "answers":

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I know there are probably many more predictions than this, but here are a few that I find compelling:...4) informational structures beyond the inherent abilities of blind natural forces and random chance will be found,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


hehehehehe thanks for the repost (I missed/ignored Kevins answers) but thats a good one.  Im LUVING how all of IDs predictions sound like they were written by John Edwards/Sylvia Brown/Miss Cleo.
Posted by: raguel on Mar. 30 2008,21:47

Bah. You evilushunists claim there's an edit button, but as far as I can tell it's just another missing link.  :(
Posted by: didymos on Mar. 30 2008,22:24

That fucker Kevin Miller never did explain why the Expelled site lists a San Diego screening back in October which he claims never happened.  He's worthless for getting any real answers:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Actually, Kevin, you said he admitted it, and then just assume it. He clearly stated that he's toying with you and giving flip answers:

E.g:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

""Okay, Nestor, you've been busted. There is no Creation Museum segment in the movie, nor was there ever such a segment."

Uh, yeah. Duh.

Why do you think I responded in the tongue in cheek way that I did?
Posted by: Nestor Makhno | March 26, 2008 at 11:18 AM"

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


and prior to that:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

"I'm a little torn. Do I tell him that I didn't see the movie just to shut him up, or do I let him obssess over getting an answer to his stupid quiz?

Ah, I'll go with the former.

Okay, I didn't see the movie.

Eppur si movie.

Posted by: Nestor Makhno | March 26, 2008 at 11:04 AM"

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Plus, right before the "answer" to the museum question, was this:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

"I'm guessing it's a trick question and that Stein never went to the museum. At least in the film.

Posted by: mike | March 26, 2008 at 11:05 AM"

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


so, it's not like it was an impenetrable ploy on your part.

So, Kevin, answer me this ONE question: why does the RSVP page list a showing in San Diego at the AMC on October 11? I don't care whether you care or not what it says, or whether it is wrong or right. Call someone and find out why the information is even listed there in the first place. Please. Thank You. C'thulhu R'lyeh.

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 26, 2008 at 04:47 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Two days later:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Alright. Well, thanks for that Kevin. It's all so clear now.

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | March 28, 2008 at 11:26 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Two days after that:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

**silence**

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ah well, I gave it a shot.
Posted by: Henry J on Mar. 30 2008,22:28

Edit buttons take time to evolve. ;)

Henry
Posted by: Doc Bill on Mar. 31 2008,00:47

Nor did "documentary" screenwriter Kevin enlighten us as to from what was R. Sternberg expelled.

Of course, we know from the public record that Sternberg was expelled from nothing, but I was hopeful that Kevin would have an "Ah Ha" moment and put two and two together.

Apparently, in addition to Kevin's ability to write he lacks basic math skills.
Posted by: Damian on Mar. 31 2008,06:19

PZ-away!



From: < http://cectic.com/129.html >
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 31 2008,06:58

Quote (raguel @ Mar. 31 2008,02:46)
From Kevin's "answers":



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I know there are probably many more predictions than this, but here are a few that I find compelling:...4) informational structures beyond the inherent abilities of blind natural forces and random chance will be found,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way I can see the above being true is if one can experimentally 1)  determine if a molecule is "synthetic" by it's chemical properties (specifically, it's reactivity and 3d shape) alone,  (2) can determine which molecules weren't produced by chemical reactions, and/or (3)the formation of the "structure" in question can't occur in an organism. Nothing these people say make sense.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


1) I would LOVE to see this done. It's erm, well ahahaha, I hate to use the word but impossible to all intents and purposes (ignoring isotopic/compositional differences obviously). I look forward to vitalism being proven and Wohler spinning in his grave. On that day I shall cut my own cock off with a rusty pineapple.

The only possible way to know if a molecule is synthetic is by its isotopic composition, to take one example, synthetic/semisynthetic testosterone used in athletic steroids can often have a detectably different isotopic composition from that of the person taking the steroids own testosterone. Ignorning kinetic isotope effects (which IMO is an error, enzyme mediated reactions can be profoundly influenced by subtle kinetic effects like the isotope effect), that testosterone is chemically identical to that of the person who is taking it.

Since there is no such thing as 100% pure anything, the residual chemical impurities that are the legacy of any chemical reaction (biological or otherwise) can also be a clue to the synthetic or natural origins of a specific sample. However if we are talking about some hypothetical, idealised abstraction of a single "synthetic" and a single "natural" molecule in isolation, with no systematic information and of identical isotopic compositions then there is no way to distinguish between them. They are identical and I return to my original cock removal comment! ;-)

2)/3) All molecules are formed by a chemical reaction of some kind, by definition, but given what you said in 3) I see what you mean as being that a chemical reaction in an organisms could not have made molecule X so it had to be a chemical reaction in a lab. This is a bit different.

We can, have and will continue to make molecules and assemblies of atoms that no known chemical reaction from any known biological system could possibly make. We can and do perform chemical reactions that are utterly impossible in biological systems (if only, for example, because biological systems frequently use water as a solvent for many solution phase reactions). However, chemical reactions found in biological systems still do things we cannot yet emulate, and often with an efficiency and selectivity we can only dream of.

More than that, we can also make molecules and assemblies of atoms and perform chemical reactions that are found nowhere outside of a laboratory, be that in space, in some geological process or in some biological process. There are a great deal of things we can make that are incredibly unlikely to be found occuring in "nature".

However any chemical detail of this comment you quote from Kevin the Perpetually Bewildered, is ultimately based on some equivocation of the word "natural". It's chemically meaningless. The thing you quote from Kevin is a pseudophilosophical bit of garbage, it abounts to nothing less than concrete proof of the existance of a deity (or some such supernatural entity) which if it were found would also be concrete proof that such an entity were entirely natural! It's standard IDCist confusobabble, demonstrating yet again that ID is not science but religious wishful thinking.

Louis
Posted by: k.e.. on Mar. 31 2008,09:17

Quote (Damian @ Mar. 31 2008,06:19)
PZ-away!



From: < http://cectic.com/129.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


THAT IS 'N AD HYMENIUM ATTACK ON MY UD BOTHERING homoS :( dT
Posted by: raguel on Mar. 31 2008,15:08

Quote (Louis @ Mar. 31 2008,06:58)
     
Quote (raguel @ Mar. 31 2008,02:46)
From Kevin's "answers":

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I know there are probably many more predictions than this, but here are a few that I find compelling:...4) informational structures beyond the inherent abilities of blind natural forces and random chance will be found,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way I can see the above being true is if one can experimentally 1)  determine if a molecule is "synthetic" by it's chemical properties (specifically, it's reactivity and 3d shape) alone,  (2) can determine which molecules weren't produced by chemical reactions, and/or (3)the formation of the "structure" in question can't occur in an organism. Nothing these people say make sense.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




2)/3) All molecules are formed by a chemical reaction of some kind, by definition, but given what you said in 3) I see what you mean as being that a chemical reaction in an organisms could not have made molecule X so it had to be a chemical reaction in a lab. This is a bit different.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just so that we're clear, I understand the bolded part. What I'm getting at is based on Kevin's statement the only logical conclusion I can think of is that he doesn't. It's why I instantly objected to the whole "information" argument. It didn't make sense the first time I saw it (for the reasons I cited) and worse they pretend it doesn't matter. How are they going to show that a designer is necessary for the formation of a gene (or genes, or organisms for that matter) without a pathway? They try to hand wave this necessity away by saying "oh, we know it took a designer because it has oodles and oodles of information". They might has well say it has oodles and oodles of goobleygook. I was shocked to find out "information" actually had a legitimate scientific/mathematical meaning, but not shocked at all to learn that IDists weren't using that definition.

Now I could be wrong. I've forgotten about 80% of what I learned in college.  My understanding of biology has always been limited, to put it mildly. I still think I'm safe to say that they are full of it.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Mar. 31 2008,20:15

A couple of posts from Pharyngula, involving a statement by Kevin Miller, and his attempt to erase the history of that statement:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Oh, and Kevin Miller (who wrote Expelled with Stein) has this to say about his primary audience:

You'll have a difficult time finding any thinking Christian who believes in a literal ark anymore, Rich.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 31, 2008 at 11:42 AM

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8899512 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



To be fair to him, he does back off from that claim:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'm not saying they're not out there, Cheezits. And despite the fact my original post was somewhat derogatory, I'm not saying people who believe such things are stupid or ignorant. They just have a different perspective on biblical inspiration than I do. So I should probably revise my original statement to say, "Not all Christians believe in a literal ark, particularly those who have done a thorough study of the possible sources for that story."

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 31, 2008 at 12:34 PM

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8905852 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



My response to him:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Actually, Kevin, I'd appreciate you advertising the fact that the literalists aren't "thinking Christians," since they'll likely be your primary audience.

I'd also be extremely surprised if you, say, insert this opinion onto the "Expelled" site.

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8916890 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'd call this potential ammunition.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And the post noting that he changed his earlier post:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
re #12, Kevin Miller has changed what he'd written previously. Instead of:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You'll have a difficult time finding any thinking Christian who believes in a literal ark anymore, Rich.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 31, 2008 at 11:42 AM

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....8899512 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's now:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You'll find that a lot of Christian don't believe in a literal ark anymore, Rich.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 31, 2008 at 11:42 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He writes further down in a post: "Glen: I've amended my comment to better reflect my point of view." Uh, yeah, that's why you did it.

Even if that were the case, the dishonesty of the attempt to "change history" is appalling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: Louis on April 01 2008,03:14

Quote (raguel @ Mar. 31 2008,21:08)
Quote (Louis @ Mar. 31 2008,06:58)
     
Quote (raguel @ Mar. 31 2008,02:46)
From Kevin's "answers":

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I know there are probably many more predictions than this, but here are a few that I find compelling:...4) informational structures beyond the inherent abilities of blind natural forces and random chance will be found,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way I can see the above being true is if one can experimentally 1)  determine if a molecule is "synthetic" by it's chemical properties (specifically, it's reactivity and 3d shape) alone,  (2) can determine which molecules weren't produced by chemical reactions, and/or (3)the formation of the "structure" in question can't occur in an organism. Nothing these people say make sense.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




2)/3) All molecules are formed by a chemical reaction of some kind, by definition, but given what you said in 3) I see what you mean as being that a chemical reaction in an organisms could not have made molecule X so it had to be a chemical reaction in a lab. This is a bit different.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just so that we're clear, I understand the bolded part. What I'm getting at is based on Kevin's statement the only logical conclusion I can think of is that he doesn't. It's why I instantly objected to the whole "information" argument. It didn't make sense the first time I saw it (for the reasons I cited) and worse they pretend it doesn't matter. How are they going to show that a designer is necessary for the formation of a gene (or genes, or organisms for that matter) without a pathway? They try to hand wave this necessity away by saying "oh, we know it took a designer because it has oodles and oodles of information". They might has well say it has oodles and oodles of goobleygook. I was shocked to find out "information" actually had a legitimate scientific/mathematical meaning, but not shocked at all to learn that IDists weren't using that definition.

Now I could be wrong. I've forgotten about 80% of what I learned in college.  My understanding of biology has always been limited, to put it mildly. I still think I'm safe to say that they are full of it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh you're definitely safe to say that Kevin et al are full of it. In fact I couldn't think of anything you are safer saying!

Sorry, I was relatively sure you understood the relevant chemistry and that the goobledigook was of IDCist origin, I hope that came across in the post. I was just attempting, in the words of GW Bush, a clarificerisation.

"Information", another word that the IDCIsts just fucking LOVE to equivocate over. You've noticed one of the most fun things about playing with IDCists: the ever shifting information definition. It's definitely one of the most fun issues to press them on: "What definition of information are you using?" "Why that one?" "Here's an example of a natural process that increases/decreases that specific type of information (as well as others), this disproves your claim."

If you can shout the message over the grinding sound of them moving their goalposts it's quite an effective way to refute their garbage.

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on April 01 2008,13:29

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Mar. 31 2008,19:15)
A couple of posts from Pharyngula, involving a statement by Kevin Miller, and his attempt to erase the history of that statement:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Oh, and Kevin Miller (who wrote Expelled with Stein) has this to say about his primary audience:

You'll have a difficult time finding any thinking Christian who believes in a literal ark anymore, Rich.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 31, 2008 at 11:42 AM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My reply:    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kevin wrote: You'll find that a lot of Christian don't believe in a literal ark anymore, Rich.

So, for the third time, what's Ben Stein doing with Ken Ham on the Answers in Genesis website, then? Endorsing his museum, which features Adam and Eve with dinosaurs? ("A Meeting of Minds, Ein Stein + one Ham = a dynamic duo of Darwin-debunkers") Ken Ham believes in a literal ark, his museum portrays the Flood story as literally true, and the website shows Stein exulting in the museum's attendance numbers.

"A meeting of minds"? Is Ken Ham a thinking or a nonthinking biblical literalist, and what is Ben Stein doing with him?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< "A Meeting of Minds" here >, since Kevin's blog doesn't allow URLs.

"Ein Stein"! Isn't that cute. Süß wie eine Melone. A real nut. :p
Posted by: J-Dog on April 01 2008,13:55

Quote (Kristine @ April 01 2008,13:29)
"A meeting of minds"? Is Ken Ham a thinking or a nonthinking biblical literalist, and what is Ben Stein doing with him?[/quote]
< "A Meeting of Minds" here >, since Kevin's blog doesn't allow URLs.

"Ein Stein"! Isn't that cute. Süß wie eine Melone. A real nut. :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kristine... Don't you actually, you know, HAVE to have a mind, to have a "Meeting Of The Minds"?

Damn the Bush Administration for gutting our Truth In Advertising Laws!
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 01 2008,16:11

Does the movie even mention Behe?  It appears they left him out.  If so I wonder why.  Did this ID pig stink so much that Behe would not even touch it?
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 01 2008,16:13

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 01 2008,16:11)
Does the movie even mention Behe?  It appears they left him out.  If so I wonder why.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Probably because he hasn't been "expelled" from Lehigh. Can't have your movie sullied by those inconvenient facts...
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 01 2008,16:38

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 01 2008,16:11)
Does the movie even mention Behe?  It appears they left him out.  If so I wonder why.  Did this ID pig stink so much that Behe would not even touch it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Behe is listed as one of the persons in the movie at ARN's site about Expelled, < here. >

I assume they know it to be so.  Has anything about ID stunk enough to keep Behe away?

Glen D
Posted by: Quidam on April 01 2008,16:44

At the risk of blowing his cover, Behe actually IS on our side. And he doesn't hide it. Whenever he's pushed, he affirms that evolution is an accurate statement of reality and that he agrees with an ancient earth, common ancestry and evolution. In the meantime he milks the creationists every decade with another book that recycles tired old arguments. When he gets pulled in front of a judge, he make a token effort and either takes a dive or carefully points out the flaws in his own arguments.

His faint support is brilliant. He manages to make a career and good money from creationists while subtly castrating them. If he didn't show up someone else might.
Posted by: Kristine on April 01 2008,17:15

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ April 01 2008,15:13)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 01 2008,16:11)
Does the movie even mention Behe?  It appears they left him out.  If so I wonder why.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Probably because he hasn't been "expelled" from Lehigh. Can't have your movie sullied by those inconvenient facts...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They probably didn't want him to start talking about < how much fun > he had testifying in Dover. I think they're spooked that if Behe starts blatting about how much "fun" it was to be in Expelled, the whole thing would be jinxed. :p
Posted by: Annyday on April 01 2008,21:53

Honestly, Behe's one of the sanest IDers so far as I know. Instead of outright, fact-blind rambles a la Dembski, he makes bad arguments from personal incredulity and complains about things we do not yet know. Common descent? Sure. Old Earth? You got it. Between that and his having tenure, he doesn't make a very good Expelled story.
Posted by: Quidam on April 01 2008,23:52

I don't know if Behe is in the fillum but he's on the 'Field trip' part of the site
< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/bigscie....p_4.php >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dr. Michael Behe: Lehigh University Professor of Biochemistry

Due to Dr. Behe’s dissenting views on evolution, Lehigh University exhibits the following disclaimer on its website:

“While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally and should not be regarded as scientific.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How shocking.  They - gasp - disagreed with him - publicly.  Clearly raging, dogmatic persecution.  Professors must be given the right to express inane opinions without fear of hearing discouraging words.
Posted by: ReligionProf on April 02 2008,07:47

I've posted the latest promotional image for the movie Expelled, which I received in an e-mail, at < http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008/04/freedom-friday.html >

I don't have photoshop here, but I suspect that many of the regulars here will have even better ideas than I would for how to make the image more entertaining. I'd be delighted if you'd share your results on my blog, or allow me to...
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 02 2008,09:30

There must be some pop culture reference in this image that I don't get.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 02 2008,10:37

Here's what's ironic about this pig from Ben Stein.  Had he made this movie as a parody of how creationists attack science it would have been a howler.  Funnier than all get out.  Probably put him back on the map as a funny guy worth watching.

But as is in 10 years Expelled will be just another "Reefer Madness" that people watch to laugh at and make fun of and Ben is already being recognized within his own industray as a wingnut who's lost any hope for rational thought.

Now THAT is funny.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to buying a used DVD copy off of Ebay and putting it right next to my copy of Reefer Madness where it belongs.
Posted by: Quidam on April 02 2008,10:46

Quote (ReligionProf @ April 02 2008,06:47)
I've posted the latest promotional image for the movie Expelled, which I received in an e-mail, at < http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008/04/freedom-friday.html >

I don't have photoshop here, but I suspect that many of the regulars here will have even better ideas than I would for how to make the image more entertaining. I'd be delighted if you'd share your results on my blog, or allow me to...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have this one, but I think it's a bit wordy.

Posted by: Kristine on April 02 2008,11:08

Quote (Annyday @ April 01 2008,20:53)
Honestly, Behe's one of the sanest IDers so far as I know. Instead of outright, fact-blind rambles a la Dembski, he makes bad arguments from personal incredulity and complains about things we do not yet know. Common descent? Sure. Old Earth? You got it. Between that and his having tenure, he doesn't make a very good Expelled story.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Speaking of Behe >:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I had totally missed this in my first quick read-through of the ruling in the ACSI lawsuit against the UC. As in Dover, Michael Behe was brought in as an expert on one side. And as in Dover, he managed to score points for the other side instead. John Pieret caught it, though, and has the details. It seems that Behe was trying to argue that it was pedagogically bad for a school to tell kids that they must believe in any particular idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I’ve seen him speak in person, and I think he does considerable damage to young minds with his deceptive Power Point and outright distortions, which he has taken on the carny circuit just like Ben Stein. Michael Behe comes off as very smug, smiling like some street urchin who’s persuaded the kids to steal for him when he’s in complete control of the situation, for example speaking as a guest of the MacLaurin Institute, which has a conservative religious agenda, and speaking to young people who are easier to manipulate. I watched PZ go at him after his speech, and he became jostled. I think he’s absolutely convinced that he’s the Einstein of ID – I just don’t think he’s very smart. I didn't like him.
Posted by: Peter Henderson on April 02 2008,11:46

Philip Johnstone is the latest IDer to visit Ham's creation museum:

< http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundt....johnson >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mr. Johnson also gave some insights into the efforts by some ID proponents to influence public school science teaching. He talked about the state of the ID Movement today and observed that ID scientists are now devoting more time to scientific research into design in nature and other fields (e.g., cancer research).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
At age 67 and slowing down somewhat after two strokes, Mr. Johnson was very glad he could fly from California to pay both CCU and AiG a visit. He had heard so much about the museum and partly accepted the invitation to speak at CCU so that he could tour the Creation Museum. So, we were honored to have him visit, since he does not travel as much and also because AiG is not a part of the ID Movement (we have some important differences)—it showed what a gracious gentlemen he is despite some differences of opinion
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Now where would cancer research be without ID !
:O
Posted by: ERV on April 02 2008,11:49

Quote (Quidam @ April 01 2008,16:44)
At the risk of blowing his cover, Behe actually IS on our side. And he doesn't hide it. Whenever he's pushed, he affirms that evolution is an accurate statement of reality and that he agrees with an ancient earth, common ancestry and evolution. In the meantime he milks the creationists every decade with another book that recycles tired old arguments. When he gets pulled in front of a judge, he make a token effort and either takes a dive or carefully points out the flaws in his own arguments.

His faint support is brilliant. He manages to make a career and good money from creationists while subtly castrating them. If he didn't show up someone else might.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A major problem with your hypothesis is that Behe has nine kids.  Nine.  If he had adopted nine children, that would be wonderful-- but humans have 'children'.  They dont have 'litters'.  I doubt Behe is willing to take the 'Im just playing the role of religious wacko' to the degree he mimics their breeding habits.  Hes just a religious wacko.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 02 2008,12:22

Quote (ERV @ April 02 2008,11:49)
I doubt Behe is willing to take the 'Im just playing the role of religious wacko' to the degree he mimics their breeding habits.  Hes just a religious wacko.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think you are 100% correct, and I see that Kristine also thinks Behe is an asshole.

Question For The Class:  

Who is the biggest jerk-wad / creep - Dembski or Behe?

Teach the controversy!@
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 02 2008,12:47

Quote (J-Dog @ April 02 2008,12:22)
Quote (ERV @ April 02 2008,11:49)
I doubt Behe is willing to take the 'Im just playing the role of religious wacko' to the degree he mimics their breeding habits.  Hes just a religious wacko.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think you are 100% correct, and I see that Kristine also thinks Behe is an asshole.

Question For The Class:  

Who is the biggest jerk-wad / creep - Dembski or Behe?

Teach the controversy!@
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


At least Behe has the stones to testify.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 02 2008,13:14



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have this one, but I think it's a bit wordy.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So where is the original image without the Expelled or parody add-ons?
Posted by: ERV on April 02 2008,13:15

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 02 2008,12:47)
At least Behe has the stones to testify.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is it 'bravery'... or stupidity... or psychosis?
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 02 2008,13:29

I have assumed for some time that the Discovery Institute is operating as a mole in the creationist camp. Every court case they have participated in has sealed the door tighter against religion in the science classroom.

They are mostly lawyers. They couldn't be achieving this outcome except by design, could they?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 02 2008,15:01

The Livonia, Michigan pre-screening of "Expelled" has been cancelled entirely.

Does anybody know if they actually held any pre-screenings after the announced mass re-schedule last week?
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 02 2008,15:33

I thought it was interesting that Expelled thinks that 30% of the audience at Boston was opposed to ID.  Cross-post from Talkorigins:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It's a truly hideous piece:

< Atheists Infiltrate Events for Intelligent Design Film >


On to some specifics:


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Instead of entertaining a debate on the merits of competing theories,
the scientific establishment has moved to suppress the ID movement in
a "systematic and ruthless" way at odds with America's founding
principles, the film asserts.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




This from a bunch who complains that dissenters came to the
discussions (which were held after the movie) when they were trying to
keep them out.


And if pointing out the dishonesty and lack of evidence of the IDiots
is "systematic and ruthless" suppression, then that's the duty of
science.  Or to put it in the honest terms that Mathis would never
understand (he seems quite stupid, from his output), science has the
responsibility to keep lies like his from being portrayed as science.


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
A computer glitch, however, made it possible for certain individuals
to RSVP to some screenings when they in fact had not been invited,
Mathis said. The same glitch also occurred on March 19 in Boston where
at least 30 percent of the audience members were antagonistic toward
the film's message, he said.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




I hadn't heard about the Boston event having a lot of dissenters, who
they're trying to keep out, of course.  I had noticed that it was
labeled "full" a day or two before, so I was hoping that the educated
segment around there had representatives signed up for the film.  30%
sounds quite good.


And they're acting as if somehow people took advantage of their
inability to control their computer system, when the fact is that
there were sites out there inviting anybody who clicked on them to
RSVP and come to the movie.  Mathis is scum.


Obvious question, Mathis, what are you trying to hide?  The stupidity,
dishonesty, and sheer viciousness of your movie?  Thought so.


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Although the filmmakers noticed that Dawkins had arrived at the
Minneapolis screening uninvited, they decided to let him in anyway
after he signed in as "Clinton Dawkins," Mathis said.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Unlikely story, especially since Myers claims that Dawkins wasn't
signed in at all, but was simply an unnamed guest.


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Although Myers and dozens of blogs have seized on the idea that the
"Expelled" filmmakers, who complain about scientists being expelled
from academia are now doing the same thing, Mathis said that the real
irony is being missed.


"Myers is free to see the film once it is officially released," said
Mathis. "But those individuals who have devoted their lives to
scientific study might not ever regain their posts after exploring new
avenues of inquiry simply because they do not concur with the
Darwinian view."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Lying for Jesus isn't a matter of having "devoted their lives to
scientific study," prevaricating fool.  It's really all lies from
Mathis, from beginning to end.


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
They contend the film is edited and crafted in a duplicitous and
misleading manner that misrepresents their views, but Mathis denied
that and said the interviews were not set up under false pretenses."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




The difference is, Mark, that Dawkins has the evidence (he saw the
movie) to back up his claims.  Repeating your lies adds not a whit of
truth to their mendacity.


And that's a good note to end on.  They're ramping up the volume of
their dishonest accusations, but they have nothing worthwhile in their
claims, and nothing worthwhile in their movie.  They're only angry
that they have had their lies exposed before they were able to take
money off from the curious and the naive, so their audience is likely
to be those as dishonest as the "Expelled" bunch, plus a few who come
to laugh and/or to document the lies put out by Mathis.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: J-Dog on April 02 2008,15:43

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 02 2008,15:01)
The Livonia, Michigan pre-screening of "Expelled" has been cancelled entirely.

Does anybody know if they actually held any pre-screenings after the announced mass re-schedule last week?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I do not think so, but do not know for sure, but they canceled the one that John Lynch signed up for in AZ.

They did NOT send me a notice of cancellation for the one I had signed up to wait-list for in another state however.

I do know that they now have a link to the Theater Near You.  Nothing in downtown Chicago, and @ 3 in smaller suburbs of Chicago.  (@ 100 seat - 150 seats?)

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/theaterap.php >
Posted by: Quidam on April 02 2008,15:43


Benna the Stein

"This evolutionist is my kind of scum..."
"You mean carbonate isn't the same as carbonite?"
"No sneaking into OUR movie"
"You weak-minded fool, he's using an old evolutionist mind trick! "

Captions please :)

May the 4th be with you.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 02 2008,15:48

Presented in Tard-AO. Screen so wide it's gaping.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 02 2008,15:55

Quote (Quidam @ April 02 2008,15:43)

Benna the Stein

"This evolutionist is my kind of scum..."
"You mean carbonate isn't the same as carbonite?"
"No sneaking into OUR movie"
"You weak-minded fool, he's using an old evolutionist mind trick! "

Captions please :)

May the 4th be with you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"I have no use for his nasal tones."

"Yes, I am known as a Biggus Dickus".
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 02 2008,16:15

Quote (ERV @ April 02 2008,13:15)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 02 2008,12:47)
At least Behe has the stones to testify.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is it 'bravery'... or stupidity... or psychosis?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes.
Posted by: Kristine on April 02 2008,16:49

Quote (Quidam @ April 02 2008,14:43)

Benna the Stein

"This evolutionist is my kind of scum..."
"You mean carbonate isn't the same as carbonite?"
"No sneaking into OUR movie"
"You weak-minded fool, he's using an old evolutionist mind trick! "

Captions please :)

May the 4th be with you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"There will be no bargain, young JediDarwinist. I shall enjoy watching your theory die."
Posted by: Quidam on April 02 2008,17:16



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"There will be no bargain, young JediDarwinist. I shall enjoy watching your theory die."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I LIKE that one :)
Posted by: khan on April 02 2008,18:19



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
A computer glitch, however, made it possible for certain individuals to RSVP to some screenings when they in fact had not been invited, Mathis said. The same glitch also occurred on March 19 in Boston where at least 30 percent of the audience members were antagonistic toward the film's message, he said.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I thought blaming the computer for your own incompetence went out in the '80s.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 02 2008,20:52

Not having ever met the man in person, I have to say I've always gotten the "True Believer" vibe from Behe, as opposed to the "Lying Scam Artist" vibe I get from Dembski et. al.

I guess that's a point in his favor, if you want to call it that.
Posted by: Texas Teach on April 02 2008,21:28

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 02 2008,20:52)
Not having ever met the man in person, I have to say I've always gotten the "True Believer" vibe from Behe, as opposed to the "Lying Scam Artist" vibe I get from Dembski et. al.

I guess that's a point in his favor, if you want to call it that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I get the feeling with Behe that he would be perfectly happy as a theistic evolutionist if he hadn't gotten the idea somewhere along the way (his parents? his church?) that evolution says something ugly about his god.  I've had teaching colleagues like that, who just can't let go of their fear it will hurt their faith in some way to just accept the science as it is.  You sort of get teased that you could get through to them because you don't comprehend how tightly they have to cling to that last thread of creationism.
Posted by: Henry J on April 02 2008,22:00



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"There will be no bargain, young JediDarwinist. I shall enjoy watching your theory die."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Use the farce!

Henry
Posted by: ERV on April 03 2008,07:46

< heeeeeeeehehehehehehehehehe! >
Posted by: Kristine on April 03 2008,09:02

< Dum, dum, de dum >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kevin wrote: You'll find that a lot of Christian don't believe in a literal ark anymore, Rich.

So, for the third time, what's Ben Stein doing with Ken Ham on the Answers in Genesis website, then? Endorsing his museum, which features Adam and Eve with dinosaurs? ("A Meeting of Minds, Ein Stein + one Ham = a dynamic duo of Darwin-debunkers") Ken Ham believes in a literal ark, his museum portrays the Flood story as literally true, and the website shows Stein exulting in the museum's attendance numbers.

"A meeting of minds"? Is Ken Ham a thinking or a nonthinking biblical literalist, and what is Ben Stein doing with him?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*checks watch*
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 03 2008,10:19

Kristine, Kristine, you're so bad!

Yes, it's ironic that "Expelled" describes what creationists do to themselves but no need to rub it in.

Let's see, do we know another favorite creationist who has never answered a straight answer in her entire Kansas farm wife life?

So, you ask "What's up with Stein and Ham?"

FtKevin says:  You'll have to ask Ben.  (Not likely.  The answer is "pandering.")

You ask "From what was Sternberg expelled?"

FtKevin says:  You'll have to see the film.  (Not explained in the film.  The answer is "nothing.")

You ask "What's the age of the earth?"

FtKevin says:  Read this article on polonium halos.  (Which explains nothing.  Answer:  4.54 Gy +/- 1%)

But, you see, Kristine, if they give a straight answer they risk getting Expelled by their own people, just like Ted Haggard.  Darwinists didn't disgrace Haggard and kick him out of his church, rather, he disgraced himself and his own church kicked him out.

It's fun to watch, though, because it's so predictable!
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 03 2008,10:33

re: post 1582

Sorry Kristene, your question kind of got lost in the shuffle. It's pretty easy to answer though, especially if you read the article that accompanied the photo. Have you ever heard the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" That's what you're seeing in that picture of Ben Stein and Ken Ham. As Ken makes pretty clear in his review of the film, his group has some serious reservations about Intelligent Design. But he recognizes that both ID and Creation Science (which he sees as two distinct movements, something few people on the other side of this debate have been able to do) face a common enemy in academic suppression. So he has decided to endorse Expelled on that basis.
Posted by: blipey on April 03 2008,10:44

Quote (J-Dog @ April 02 2008,15:43)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 02 2008,15:01)
The Livonia, Michigan pre-screening of "Expelled" has been cancelled entirely.

Does anybody know if they actually held any pre-screenings after the announced mass re-schedule last week?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I do not think so, but do not know for sure, but they canceled the one that John Lynch signed up for in AZ.

They did NOT send me a notice of cancellation for the one I had signed up to wait-list for in another state however.

I do know that they now have a link to the Theater Near You.  Nothing in downtown Chicago, and @ 3 in smaller suburbs of Chicago.  (@ 100 seat - 150 seats?)

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/theaterap.php >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I love that list.  For a movie that is supposed to take the world by storm, it sure is going about it slowly.

It's going to open in 40 theaters?  That's 40 theaters, not 40 states, not 40 cities, 40 friggin' theaters?

And nation wide?  Please.  Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Arizona, and Oklahoma do not a nation make (and I live in Missouri).

Thank goodness Kansas City will be able to see this masterpiece--just about every AMC multiplex is going to show it.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 03 2008,10:47

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 03 2008,10:33)
re: post 1582

Sorry Kristene, your question kind of got lost in the shuffle. It's pretty easy to answer though, especially if you read the article that accompanied the photo. Have you ever heard the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" That's what you're seeing in that picture of Ben Stein and Ken Ham. As Ken makes pretty clear in his review of the film, his group has some serious reservations about Intelligent Design. But he recognizes that both ID and Creation Science (which he sees as two distinct movements, something few people on the other side of this debate have been able to do) face a common enemy in academic suppression. So he has decided to endorse Expelled on that basis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So, ID & Creationism have nothing in common except that they're *not* taught in colleges, but Ham declares that's enough. Otherwise, no similarities? Sure.

I won't bother you with the 'cdesignproponentsists' debacle, where all it took to change a creationist text to an ID text was a couple global search and replaces. I know you'll ignore it. We're used to that.

Out of curiosity, how old do you think the earth is, and do you believe common descent?

And do you think it's a bad thing that creationism is not taught in (real) colleges?

[ADDED IN EDIT: Kevin Miller runs away when asked direct questions, big surprise.]
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 03 2008,11:16

Arden: Have you been to my blog lately? There's no running away there. Just because I don't have time to hang around here and debate things ad nauseum does not mean I'm unwilling or afraid to answer direct questions. Just to prove my point, I'll answer a few of yours.

Out of curiosity, how old do you think the earth is, and do you believe common descent?

I don't think the age of the earth is a matter of belief. I think it's a matter of examining the evidence and then coming to a conclusion based on those facts. And to the best of my knowledge, the evidence points to the earth being approximately four billion years old. So I'm going with that until people who know more about such things begin to suspect otherwise. I realize people like Ken Hamm dispute such a position, but to be honest, I haven't really taken a good look at the evidence he presents in support of his argument. Probably because I've just assumed that belief in a young earth is untenable in light of all we know about geology, cosmology, etc. But perhaps that merely reveals a blind spot in my own thinking. I've concluded that they're wrong before I've really listened to their arguments or their evidence.

I'm pretty much in the same boat for common descent. Right now, the evidence seems to point in that direction. And I think common descent is consistent with both Intelligent Design and Neo-Darwinism. However, I realize more and more people are proposing multiple common ancestors rather than a single common ancestor. So I'm interested to learn more about that.

And do you think it's a bad thing that creationism is not taught in (real) colleges?

I'm not sure if you actually want me to answer this question, seeing as it seems completely facetious. (It's also framed poorly, in a double negative.) But as I've stated elsewhere, I am not in favor of teaching Creationism or Intelligent Design in science class. That's not what this is about for me. It's about allowing scientists to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 03 2008,11:19

What evidence is not being allowed to be pursued, Kevin?  

Tell us about the evidence.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 03 2008,11:25



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I'm pretty much in the same boat for common descent. Right now, the evidence seems to point in that direction. And I think common descent is consistent with both Intelligent Design and Neo-Darwinism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What's your take on why so many IDers (and all creationists) reject common descent?

And why do you think ID and Creationism are so different when it's possible to change a text for one into a text for the other with only a few terminology switches?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Probably because I've just assumed that belief in a young earth is untenable in light of all we know about geology, cosmology, etc. But perhaps that merely reveals a blind spot in my own thinking. I've concluded that they're wrong before I've really listened to their arguments or their evidence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



You really assume that 99.9999% of all geologists and astronomers might be wrong because Creationists say so? You really think that rejecting a young earth might be a 'blind spot' on your part?
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 03 2008,11:26

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 03 2008,11:16)
It's about allowing scientists to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who's stopping them? I understand there to be some very wealthy backers involved in the ID movement. They could fund this research. If they really believed.

Or what about the Biologic company? Formed specifically to research ID related matters. Who's stopping them following the evidence wherever it leads?

Simple question: What is the most important single bit of evidence that you believe has not been investigated as much as it deserves to be?
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 03 2008,11:29

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 03 2008,10:33)
re: post 1582

Sorry Kristene, your question kind of got lost in the shuffle. It's pretty easy to answer though, especially if you read the article that accompanied the photo. Have you ever heard the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" That's what you're seeing in that picture of Ben Stein and Ken Ham. As Ken makes pretty clear in his review of the film, his group has some serious reservations about Intelligent Design. But he recognizes that both ID and Creation Science (which he sees as two distinct movements, something few people on the other side of this debate have been able to do) face a common enemy in academic suppression. So he has decided to endorse Expelled on that basis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sort of like Bill Dembski, in the preface to Mere Creation, saying, What's a few billion years among friends?

Six thousand, 4.5 billion, they're equal in the eyes of those who oppose naturalism.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
One advocate of creation thinks it is essential that God intervene in the causal structure of the world. Another thinks it is essential that God not upset the causal structure of the world. One advocate of creation thinks it is essential to read Genesis literally and accept a young earth. Another thinks it does not matter how old the earth is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There is, however, an alternate approach to unifying the Christian world about creation. Rather than look for common ground on which all Christians can agree, propose a theory of creation that puts Christians in the strongest possible position to defeat the common enemy of creation, to wit, naturalism. Throughout history common enemies have been invaluable for suspending in-house squabbles and uniting people who should otherwise be friends. Although approaching creation through its common enemy may seem opportunistic, it is quite illuminating. We learn a great deal about something by learning what it is not. Creation is not naturalism. By developing a theory of creation in opposition to naturalism, we learn a great deal about creation. Mere creation, then, is a theory of creation aimed specifically at defeating naturalism and its consequences.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: midwifetoad on April 03 2008,11:33


Posted by: JAM on April 03 2008,11:41

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 03 2008,10:33)
But he recognizes that both ID and Creation Science (which he sees as two distinct movements, something few people on the other side of this debate have been able to do) face a common enemy in academic suppression.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin,
I'm confused about your claim of academic suppression. How about answering the following questions:

1) Were any of those whom you featured in "Expelled" actually fired, and does your movie make this fact clear to your audience?

2) Why shouldn't groups of people who claim to be scientists, but are afraid to test their own hypotheses, be ridiculed mercilessly?

3) The journal started by the ID movement hasn't published an issue in over two years. When it was published, it contained no tests of ID hypotheses anyway. How is the scientific mainstream suppressing a journal controlled by ID proponents?

4) Do you really think that science is like literary criticism?

5) Have you ever bothered to examine cases of scientists who were ridiculed but ended up with Nobel Prizes because they tested their own hypotheses instead of writing books and making movies?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 03 2008,11:48



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I don't think the age of the earth is a matter of belief. I think it's a matter of examining the evidence and then coming to a conclusion based on those facts. And to the best of my knowledge, the evidence points to the earth being approximately four billion years old. So I'm going with that until people who know more about such things begin to suspect otherwise. I realize people like Ken Hamm dispute such a position, but to be honest, I haven't really taken a good look at the evidence he presents in support of his argument. Probably because I've just assumed that belief in a young earth is untenable in light of all we know about geology, cosmology, etc. But perhaps that merely reveals a blind spot in my own thinking. I've concluded that they're wrong before I've really listened to their arguments or their evidence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's interesting -- this is just the kind of "6,000, 4.5 billion, I'm keeping an open mind" stuff that FTK peddles. The only difference is that this is how FTK would sound if she'd been to college and had a larger vocabulary.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 03 2008,11:58

The creationists keep harping about "follow the evidence" and "let's examine all the possibilities."

We did that already.

The only argument that any creationist has is that "the Bible said it different, " and "science is too hard and I don't have time to study."  Mr. Miller had time to make a propaganda film, but not the time to actually learn anything about the topic of his "work."
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 03 2008,12:12

Here are some quotes from modern Christian high school biology  textbooks:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
(1) "'Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may not be so,' is the only [position] a Christian can take. . . ."

(2) "If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."

(3) "Christians must disregard [scientific hypotheses or theories] that contradict the Bible." (Phillips Decl. Ex. B, at xi.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< source (see page 40-41) >

I think Kevin is saying he does not want these examples of open science and evidence stifled by the atheist science community.  Who can blame him?  Those quotes prove the Christian science community is clearly onto some earth shattering, cutting edge evidence and it's no wonder the atheists are scared!  This proves darwinism is wrong!

Oh and Kevin I have a question for you.  I belive 7 other people were denied tenure over the last few years at Ohio where GG is currently employed.  How many of those did you interview for Exploded? How many were the result of religious discimination.  I mean as a writer for a documentary surely you interviewed every single one of them to determine if a pattern of abuse was evident.  Of course you did.  So tell us what you found.  Thanks!
Posted by: raguel on April 03 2008,12:44

Quote (Dr.GH @ April 03 2008,11:58)
The creationists keep harping about "follow the evidence" and "let's examine all the possibilities."

We did that already.

The only argument that any creationist has is that "the Bible said it different, " and "science is too hard and I don't have time to study."  Mr. Miller had time to make a propaganda film, but not the time to actually learn anything about the topic of his "work."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ah, but scientists were only looking at the empirical/material evidence. They didn't bother to consider the other types of evidence. What other types of evidence are there besides the observable kind? You'd know the answer if you weren't so dogmatic about naturalism.  :p
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 03 2008,13:24

Here is the evidence:



We know its true, because it tells us it is. Just like every other "holy book".
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 03 2008,13:40

Oh say, Kevin, is this the kind of openness you're espousing?  Here's a post I wrote at Talkorigins:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[title added to AtBC version]Stein obliquely admits his prejudice to legislators

What a shock, Stein didn't even think of addressing evolution with an
open mind:

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"I had always been extremely dubious about Darwinism, because
Darwinism is linked to Social Darwinism," said Stein, who also has
been a game show host, law professor and Wall Street pundit since
being a speech writer for President Richard Nixon. "This is explicitly
one of the problems of the Holocaust, which killed 6 million of my
fellow Jews."


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Source, an article about Stein lobbying (and showing Expelled--sans discussion by the other side, if you can believe that Kevin's side would do such a thing) in Jefferson City >

And he's asking others to be open-minded?  Let's see, do Jews in
general, and Jews in Israel in particular, have the same mental hang-
ups about science that Stein does?


So he came to the "debate" with a highly prejudiced and perhaps
unbalanced mind, and he's the man pushing for openness and freedom.
He is a candidate for greatest hypocrite on the planet.


I know that this is a repetition of statements Ben has made before,
but apparently he is so unaware of himself and his blatant bigotry,
that even as he lobbies (see article) ostensibly for openness and
freedom, he simply reveals what a prejudiced asshole he in fact is.


Glen Davidson


Short follow-up post:

I'm not sure just how oblique this admission is, in fact, but of
course he doesn't come right out and say that he came to the issue
with a highly biased mind.

Glen Davidson
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yeah, uh, how can the "Darwinists" be so prejudiced, when the IDists' paid spokesperson is such an open-minded fellow?  [Edited because I wrote something dumb]
Posted by: Kristine on April 03 2008,15:34

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 03 2008,09:33)
re: post 1582

Sorry Kristene, your question kind of got lost in the shuffle. It's pretty easy to answer though, especially if you read the article that accompanied the photo. Have you ever heard the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" That's what you're seeing in that picture of Ben Stein and Ken Ham. As Ken makes pretty clear in his review of the film, his group has some serious reservations about Intelligent Design. But he recognizes that both ID and Creation Science (which he sees as two distinct movements, something few people on the other side of this debate have been able to do) face a common enemy in academic suppression. So he has decided to endorse Expelled on that basis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But what does Ben think of Ken? That's my question.

What does he think of Ken and Ken's dolls? Did he deposit a coin in the dinosaur ride that's just like one of those giddayup horsies that used to sit outside of grocery stores? What does he think of a museum dedicated to showing dinosaurs wearing English saddles (not meant to be ridden)?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Outside, several of them stop to be interviewed by a video crew. They have come from Indiana, one woman says, two toddlers toddling at her feet, because they have been home-schooling their children and they have given them this adventure as a kind of field trip. The whole group then bustles into the lobby of the building, where they are greeted by the long neck of a huge, herbivorous dinosaur. The kids run past that and around a corner, where stands another, smaller dinosaur.

Which is wearing a saddle.

It is an English saddle, hornless and battered. Apparently, this was a dinosaur used for dressage competitions and stakes races. Any working dinosaur accustomed to the rigors of ranch work and herding other dinosaurs along the dusty trail almost certainly would wear a sturdy western saddle.

This is very much a show dinosaur.

The dinosaurs are the first things you see when you enter the Creation Museum, which is very much a work in progress and the dream child of an Australian named Ken Ham. Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, an organization of which the museum one day will be the headquarters. The people here today are on a special tour. They have paid $149 to become "charter members" of the museum.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


from < Esquire >
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 03 2008,15:35

Kevin quickly backpeddled from his original position on 6Kers.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 03 2008,15:44

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 03 2008,15:35)
Kevin quickly backpeddled from his original position on 6Kers.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What was his original position?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 03 2008,15:46

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 03 2008,15:44)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 03 2008,15:35)
Kevin quickly backpeddled from his original position on 6Kers.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What was his original position?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....y102252 >
Posted by: ERV on April 03 2008,15:54

Kevin, I just saw your completely new and totally original animation online (a nice radical Christian group uploaded it).

1.  Kevin, who made your animation?
Posted by: hooligans on April 03 2008,16:09

I second the comment of Mr. Christopher:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
(Permalink) Posted: April 03 2008,11:19    

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What evidence is not being allowed to be pursued, Kevin?  

Tell us about the evidence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes Kevin. Please tell us about the evidence that is being supressed. I assume that because you just finished making a movie about people who have had their ideas supressed in academic circles, you can give us a list of the ideas that caused this supression. Please be detailed enough so that we can examine the ideas themselves.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 03 2008,16:12

Brace for "Darwinism can't explain....'
Posted by: Henry J on April 03 2008,16:15



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Brace for "Darwinism can't explain....'
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Surely not! :p
Posted by: JohnW on April 03 2008,16:26

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 03 2008,14:12)
Brace for "Darwinism can't explain....'
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Heavily seasoned with personal incredulity, with a steaming mound of straw man on the side.
Posted by: bystander on April 03 2008,17:34

Kevin reminds me a lot of FTK. Even worse in a way as you would assume that for any movie you would do hundreds of hours of research (at least to find out what criticisms that your opponents are going to throw at you).

Kevin is yet to give any specifics details on who is being repressed what are the actual doubts about evolution and answered any of the rebuttals about the Darwin->Hitler rubbish.

We even have a quote from Kevin's boss Mathis about Sternberg being sacked. How many seconds research does it take to know this is rubbish.

I think Kevin represents the Goebbels school of writing, no lie is too outlandish as long as it pushes your POV. The only question is how much is Morton's demon and how much is actual lying.

This is why Expelled will not get much traction. The people who have already drunk the koolaid will like but that vast rump of Americans who would be sympathetic will get turned off by the lies.

This is why I think that the creationist nonsense will only grow to a certain level. As soon as they get too public, sensible (relatively) people will take notice and kick it back down to where it belongs.

Judge Jones did a good job in Dover, but I think that what killed ID was the daily reporting of the foolish statements of the school board and Behe that got enough people to notice and reject it.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 03 2008,17:59

Quote (ERV @ April 03 2008,15:54)
Kevin, I just saw your completely new and totally original animation online (a nice radical Christian group uploaded it).

1.  Kevin, who made your animation?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Linky?
Posted by: Jim_Wynne on April 03 2008,18:21

I just received this from our friends at Expelled:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Jim,

I am emailing to let you know that we have cancelled the Milwaukee screening of Expelled on April 8th.  The Producers of the film are very busy preparing for the film's release in theaters April 18th and due to unavoidable changes in their schedules, they are unable to make it out to Milwaukee for this screening.  I've included links below to information on theaters showing the film in your area and great FREE resources.

Please reply back to let me know you got this notification.

Thanks,
Jessica


Theater Locator: < http://getexpelled.com/grouptickets.php >
Win $1000 in our Group Sales Competition:  http://getexpelled.com/groupsalesapplication.php
Download the poster and other great materials:  http://getexpelled.com/downloads.php
Order your FREE Expelled Kit:  http://getexpelled.com/ordermaterials.php
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: ERV on April 03 2008,18:28

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 03 2008,17:59)
Quote (ERV @ April 03 2008,15:54)
Kevin, I just saw your completely new and totally original animation online (a nice radical Christian group uploaded it).

1.  Kevin, who made your animation?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Linky?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Will PM to people interested.

Kevin can answer the question, then he can have linky.
Posted by: didymos on April 03 2008,20:04

ERV: Very much interested.  I've been wanting to do an exhaustive comparison for awhile now.
Posted by: ERV on April 03 2008,21:05

Quote (Jim_Wynne @ April 03 2008,18:21)
I just received this from our friends at Expelled:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Jim,

I am emailing to let you know that we have cancelled the Milwaukee screening of Expelled on April 8th.  The Producers of the film are very busy preparing for the film's release in theaters April 18th and due to unavoidable changes in their schedules, they are unable to make it out to Milwaukee for this screening.  I've included links below to information on theaters showing the film in your area and great FREE resources.

Please reply back to let me know you got this notification.

Thanks,
Jessica


Theater Locator: < http://getexpelled.com/grouptickets.php >
Win $1000 in our Group Sales Competition:  http://getexpelled.com/groupsalesapplication.php
Download the poster and other great materials:  http://getexpelled.com/downloads.php
Order your FREE Expelled Kit:  http://getexpelled.com/ordermaterials.php
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Theyre lying. >

Do not reply.

Call the theater.

Go.
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on April 03 2008,21:27

Logan Craft, one of the producers of Expelled, was on Life Today talking to TV preacher James Robison about the big bad Darwinist establishment.  Watch it < here >.  Or, starting April 4 and onward, watch it < here. >
Posted by: darwinoid on April 03 2008,21:31

Seems like we've caught them lying about cancellations - see < here >.

Eh, never mind, ERV beat me to it :)


Posted by: didymos on April 04 2008,05:49

Oh yeah, I forgot about this.  I went to the < Expelled Challenge FAQ > a little while back and sent the following to the email address therein asking about screenings:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Will there be anymore?  If so, where do I get a current list of any upcoming events?  Thanks in advance.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That was on 3/26 and I finally got a reply on 4/1.  It said:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.  If you have signed up for the Expelled Challenge then this is how it works.

Organize a group ticketing event at your local theater and take your group to see the film.  Once your group has seen the film, collect the ticket stubs from everyone that went with your group.  We will provide and address to mail those ticket stubs along with the name of your group, the date, time, and location of when you went to see the film.  The group that responds with the most ticket stubs will be given a $10,000 grant.

As far as pre-release screenings of Expelled.  We are no longer doing open pre-release screenings at this time.  My apologies.  Thank you again for your interest and support of Expelled.  Release date is April 18th.

--
Jesse Wilson
Motive Entertainment

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


(There was also a personal email and phone number for Jesse at Motive, but I wasn't sure whether or not it was a good idea to post it here.)

Funny that: they still seem to assume that just because someone sent an email, said someone must therefore be a supporter of Expelled.  Or at least Jesse does.

So anyway,  I took this to mean they likely were still doing pre-release screenings, but only under much more restricted conditions.  From the link ERV posted here, looks like that is the case indeed. So, definitely a step up in the tricky department. I wonder what deviously ingenious method they use to determine who to let in this time around. I mean it wouldn't be something ridiculously ineffectual like asking if you go to church, right?

didymos  goes and reads comments on Stranger Fruit..................


Oh, it is. Sigh.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 04 2008,07:35

< Flunked, Not Expelled: Evolving Kickback Schemes? >
Posted by: BWE on April 04 2008,07:51

Quote (ERV @ April 03 2008,15:54)
Kevin, I just saw your completely new and totally original animation online (a nice radical Christian group uploaded it).

1.  Kevin, who made your animation?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes Kevin. I'm curious too. That's pretty sophisticated for a creationist. Kudos. Who was your artist?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 04 2008,08:29

Apparently, my old correspondent Pamela Winnick has a cameo in "Expelled" being all huffy about how journalists can't give IDC a break in print. (That doesn't seem to have affected the career of the fellow at the NY Times who wrote the gushing DI-boosting article there in 2001.)

See < here > for Felix Salmon's take on his experience at a screening. I have a comment on Winnick following.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 04 2008,11:40

Hey man go to google and search on "pz myers" and you'll find this gem  

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Sponsored Links

Creationism vs Evolution
Does Evolution have all the answers
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
www.expelledthemovie.com/blog/


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



There is some satisfaction clicking on the Exploded link knowing it's costing them money.

Me!

edit:

Or you might get this link



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Sponsored Links

PZ Myers Interview
Come see PZ Myers in the movie
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
www.expelledthemovie.com/blog/



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



editIII - do a search on "Richard Dawkins" and you'll see the same sponored links.
Posted by: theloneliestmonk on April 04 2008,16:12

Kevin Miller really does = FTK???

Kevin writes,

In response to your question, Ellazim, I think you are a reasonable person. You other guys, however, need to take a primer on post-modernism. There's objective reality, and then there's our subjective experience and interpretation of that reality. All knowledge is perspectival, there's no way around it. No one can experience reality objectively, only from his or her limited point of view. That's why, when presented with the same body of evidence, people will arrive at such different conclusions. How we interpret the evidence depends on the worldview through which we view the evidence.

Here:
< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....omments >
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 04 2008,16:20

The value of pi is not socially constructed. People with all sorts of "worldviews" agree on pi, just as they agree on the findings of evolutionary biology. How can that happen if the social solipsism of dilettante post-modernists were true?


Posted by: godsilove on April 04 2008,16:20

Mike Huckabee plugs Expelled.  I'm SHOCKED!

< http://vbuttons.com/ec/8683/index.php?em_id=13156243 >
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 04 2008,17:57

Stein basically admits that he just wishes to silence scientists like Darwin.  This is a post that I have tried to put onto Talkorigins (hasn't gone through before now, anyway).  I think it really could be some good ammunition against their hypocritical attacks on science:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


More dull, ignorant repetition from the highly prejudiced Stein:

< http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000007058.cfm >

Then

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
5. What would you like to say to Darwin?

[Ben Stein]"You are a wealthy man, you married a wealthy woman, why don’t you just live quietly out in the countryside and not torture us with your half-baked suppositions, which have caused so much misery?"

I want to emphasize, Darwin was not like the crazed neo-Darwinists of today. Darwin believed in the freedom of inquiry. He encouraged there to be further study and debate. He said that in writing before he died.

Neo-Darwinists ask us to believe in things not seen. We’re not supposed to have an established religion in America, but we do, and it’s called Darwinism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




The guy can't help but contradict himself.  All he wants to happen is for Darwin, and those who accept his theory, to shut up, the complete opposite of their claims to desire freedom and open inquiry

And of course we happen to believe in freedom of inquiry, Stein is just too stupid and dishonest to even consider how this could be the case.

Certainly we don't want them to believe in things not seen (the IDists obviously do), we want people to have the freedom to observe and to follow the evidence.  The evidence of evolution is quite visible and quite easily seen, except for those who just want scientists to shut up, as Ben obviously does.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen Davidson
Posted by: Jasper on April 04 2008,19:39

< >
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on April 04 2008,19:48

Dembski watched Expelled and made a < bold prediction >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"FORT WORTH, Texas (BP)--A controversial documentary set for release nationwide April 18 could foster a cultural shift "equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall," says William Dembski, research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oh, and Dembski also added:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"One of the biggest obstacles to people coming to Christ in Western culture is the impression that science has disproved the Bible and Christianity," he said. "ID therefore helps to correct this false impression by showing that our best science supports belief in a higher intelligence responsible for life. ID does not give you the Christian God as such, but it puts you in the right ballpark."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Annyday on April 04 2008,20:03

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 04 2008,16:20)
The value of pi is not socially constructed. People with all sorts of "worldviews" agree on pi, just as they agree on the findings of evolutionary biology. How can that happen if the social solipsism of dilettante post-modernists were true?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My favorite version of this is that even the most post of postmodernists rely happily upon gravity. True social constructivists ought to fear that gravity will give out at any moment. If you abide by and coexist with gravity, for whatever reason, you ought to accept at least a modicum of shared reality.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 04 2008,20:06

i think wesley et al misunderstood my meaning. see my latest comment on the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid' post on my blog.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 04 2008,20:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 04 2008,20:06)
i think wesley et al misunderstood my meaning. see my latest comment on the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid' post on my blog.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So Kevin, why are you guys emailing people and telling them that screenings are moved or cancelled when they're not? Isn't that, like, lying?

I mean, as much as you want to keep educated people away from this film, you do realize that you can't keep them away *forever*, right?
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on April 04 2008,20:31

< Mathis changes his story again >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Some of the pro-evolution scientists and philosophers in the film have claimed the interviews were conducted under false pretenses -– a claim Stein and the producers reject. Mathis said he contacted each person, telling him or her they were working on a film about the cultural intersection of evolution, religion and Intelligent Design.

"[We said,] 'You, Mr. or Mrs. Scientist, are an outspoken person on this topic. Would you like to do an interview with us on this film? And you'll be paid.' And they said, 'Sure, we'd love to,' because they do this sort of thing all the time," Mathis said.

In some instances, he said, questions were sent to people in advance. After the interview was done, the person signed a form giving the producers the rights to use the footage as they deemed necessary. Those who believe in evolution, Mathis said, are given ample time in the film to explain their position. The producers didn't tell anyone the name of the film, he added, because the film didn't yet have one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yet, according to the < letter Mathis sent PZ > in April/2007 the film was titled "Crossroads:  The Intersection of Science and Religion."
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 04 2008,20:38

Darn. Kevin wandered off again. I really wanted to hear his explanation of why Jesus wants him to lie to people about movie times.
Posted by: didymos on April 04 2008,20:43

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 04 2008,18:13)
   
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 04 2008,20:06)
i think wesley et al misunderstood my meaning. see my latest comment on the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid' post on my blog.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So Kevin, why are you guys emailing people and telling them that screenings are moved or cancelled when they're not? Isn't that, like, lying?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



For Jesus.  That makes it OK.  Besides it's our fault for being evil and truthful.

 
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 04 2008,18:13)

I mean, as much as you want to keep educated people away from this film, you do realize that you can't keep them away *forever*, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Well, at best they've got about 2 weeks of "intellectual freedom" left.  Of course, it doesn't really matter since they've already failed multiple times. They know this, hence the enforcers in night-vision gear stalking the aisles during screenings.  Maybe they can ask Dr. Gaius Baltar to develop a Darwinist detector and have people submit a blood sample along with 12 forms of identification, a letter of recommendation from at least 3 members of the clergy/academia on the DI-approved list of those religious and "scientific" professionals who reject "Darwinism", an affidavit testifying to personal academic suppresion, forensically verified photographic evidence of church attendance, and of course their ticket stub which must actually be for Expelled. That'd probably work.  

Or, they could just decide not to release the film at all. On any medium. Ever.
Posted by: Kristine on April 04 2008,20:48

Quote (theloneliestmonk @ April 04 2008,15:12)
Kevin Miller really does = FTK???

Kevin writes,

In response to your question, Ellazim, I think you are a reasonable person. You other guys, however, need to take a primer on post-modernism. *snip*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


AGAIN?  :angry:

Kevin, the PM argument is like writing a short story in Freshman Composition about how the deer feels about hunting season. *yawn*
Posted by: Kristine on April 04 2008,21:14

Quote (Glen Davidson @ April 04 2008,16:57)
Stein basically admits that he just wishes to silence scientists like Darwin.  This is a post that I have tried to put onto Talkorigins (hasn't gone through before now, anyway).  I think it really could be some good ammunition against their hypocritical attacks on science:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


More dull, ignorant repetition from the highly prejudiced Stein:

< http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000007058.cfm >

Then

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
5. What would you like to say to Darwin?

[Ben Stein]"You are a wealthy man, you married a wealthy woman, why don’t you just live quietly out in the countryside and not torture us with your half-baked suppositions, which have caused so much misery?"*snips
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen Davidson
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


RichardDawkins.net has barf emoticons. I hereby put in a request for them at this site.

That is the end! I have never seen a bigger media whore Flaubert-for-hire, smarmy, dishonest, preening, self-inflated (except probably in critical areas), repulsive windbag fark than Ben Stein. *expels barf*
Posted by: stevestory on April 04 2008,22:27

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ April 04 2008,20:48)
Dembski watched Expelled and made a < bold prediction >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"FORT WORTH, Texas (BP)--A controversial documentary set for release nationwide April 18 could foster a cultural shift "equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall," says William Dembski, research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dembski said the Berlin Wall thing years ago, IIRC. Didn't happen then, ain't happening now.
Posted by: ERV on April 04 2008,22:50

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 04 2008,20:06)
i think wesley et al misunderstood my meaning. see my latest comment on the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid' post on my blog.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Who made your animation, Kevin? >
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 04 2008,23:58

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 04 2008,20:06)
i think wesley et al misunderstood my meaning. see my latest comment on the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid' post on my blog.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Clearing up misunderstanding could be good.

The quote from Kevin that started this:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

In response to your question, Ellazim, I think you are a reasonable person. You other guys, however, need to take a primer on post-modernism. There's objective reality, and then there's our subjective experience and interpretation of that reality. All knowledge is perspectival, there's no way around it. No one can experience reality objectively, only from his or her limited point of view. That's why, when presented with the same body of evidence, people will arrive at such different conclusions. How we interpret the evidence depends on the worldview through which we view the evidence.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Now Kevin's latest comment:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I think what's also getting missed here is the point that I'm not saying reality is socially constructed.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Don't various post-modernists say exactly that? Is that not in the recommended primer on post-modernism?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

But our interpretation of that reality certainly is.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Not *all* interpretations are socially constructed, thus my reference to the concept of pi. If pi is an exception, then so can other things be...

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Take the fossil record, for example.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Science works by not relying upon individual interpretations, but rather placing value in the evidence and inferences from that evidence that can survive a process of intersubjective criticism. It is still not the unobtainable goal of objective knowledge, but it is as close as we humans have managed to come.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

We're all working with the same body of data.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What exactly does Kevin mean when he says that he has been "working with" data from the fossil record?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

There's no question that the fossils are out there, and that these are the calcified remains of creatures that were once alive.
But over the years, people have interpreted this body of evidence in vastly different ways.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Historically, though, there were "interpretations" of the fossil evidence that held that they were more like crystals in their formation, and not the remains of once-living organisms. There were "interpretations" that God created them in situ out of whimsy.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Why is that? Because each person brings something different to the evidence.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Why then does the scientific community, comprising millions of individuals from almost every culture in the world, have just one broad consensus that the fossil record shows the history and diversity of life evolving by descent with modification showing common descent from one or a few original forms? Is that "interpretation" of only equal value to the "interpretation" of the long-dead people who didn't even believe that fossils were anything but odd mineral deposits? Or can there be "interpretations" that can be demonstrated to be superior to other "interpretations" by consistent criteria? Whether Dawkins notes it or not, ignorance is common. Do the "interpretations" of people who are ignorant count just the same as the interpretation hammered out over decades of intersubjective criticism and testing by thousands of domain experts?
The science community subjects interpretations to intersubjective criticism and ruthlessly discards the unworkable, meaningless, and counterfactual interpretations. Does that count for anything in the end product?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

We all view it through a different worldview. After all, if the data truly were conclusive--if we were all able to view it objectively--the proper interpretation should be plainly evident to everyone, not just a select few. (which brings us back to the stupid/ignorant/insane/wicked thing, I know).

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Actually, with the fossil record, the interpretation of common descent is accepted by the great preponderance of those who have spent their lives gaining expertise in paleontology. Isn't it instead only a few hundred people with advanced degrees of any sort at all who insist on a different "interpretation", as in the DI "Dissent from Darwin" list?

Is post-modernism a field comprised of independent claims that don't have to be taken as any sort of coherent whole? Doesn't post-modernism espouse moral relativism? Don't some post-modernists deny an objective reality? Why do religious antievolutionists invoke select parts of post-modernism that conveniently immunize claims from criticism, but fail to adopt the rest of the post-modernist agenda?

I'm all for clearing up possible misunderstanding, so let's reduce this to practice. Let's recall that Kevin has tossed his hat in the ring as someone who has enough understanding of the fossil evidence to be able to justify his own "interpretation" of what it means (that pronoun "we" implies just that). So, Kevin, let's see your "interpretation" of what the evidence in the following reference to the peer-reviewed literature shows. I say it shows an instance of speciation, something that Ben Stein likes to imply doesn't happen.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Pearson, P.N.; Shackleton, N.J.; and Hall, M.A., 1997. Stable isotopic evidence for the sympatric divergence of _Globigerinoides_trilobus_ and _Orbulina_universa_ (planktonic foraminifera). Journal of the Geological Society, London, v.154, p.295-302.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Happily, Don Lindsay has put various of the < figures online > for your viewing pleasure.

Someone claiming to be "working with" the evidence of the fossil record in some substantive sense should either already be familiar with the cited work or have no difficulty in locating and retrieving the actual paper for study.

Is there an alternative "interpretation" that follows from a principled examination of the evidence?

There are a lot of ways to argue to set aside this research that have nothing to do with the evidence at all. This is where religious antievolutionists shine. The following is from a challenge I make to people who claim that no transitional fossil sequences exist.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Evidentiary and Non-Evidentiary Responses to Challenges

There are two main ways in which respondents can deal with the Transitional Fossil Existence Challenge. The intellectually honest and appropriate way is with specific discussion of the fossil evidence as described and discussed in the primary literature. This is by far the least common approach taken by those who have been given the TFEC, and typically only follows after a long period of non-response, the elapsed time apparently serving as an index of the claimant’s unfamiliarity with the specific evidence.

The other category of approach is to ignore, so far as possible, any mention or discussion of actual fossil evidence. These varied strategies are what I term “non-evidentiary” responses, since they are completely independent of empirical data. There are many routes to achieving this end. The simplest is non-response. The challenged person may decide that not saying anything further is the best option, sometimes in the hope that there will be no long-term penalty for this behavior, and that eventually few, if any, persons will remember the abandonment of the original claim. Another common non-evidentiary response is digression. Bringing up a different topic as if it held some relevance to the TFEC allows someone to give a semblance of a reply, even though few will be fooled by it. Yet another strategy is to discuss theoretical issues as if theory did away with the need to actually look at the empirical data. A variant of the theory strategy is the quote-mining of those people who expound theory. Usually, though, quotes reveal nothing about the specific data at hand, and often come from sources whose opposition to anti-evolutionary action is otherwise well-known. Still another variant upon the theory strategy is the definition game. One can construct connotations of “transitional” such that no real-world evidence can satisfy all the piled-on conditions. It is useful to know when an anti-evolutionist simply defines evidence out of existence, though. Another possible tactic is to dismiss the taxonomic category from which the cited example comes. A respondent can claim that they really meant no transitional fossils in some other taxonomic hierarchy, but they often seem to forget that this means that the “no transitional fossils” claim is then self-admittedly false. A particularly brazen non-evidentiary response is to play an “even if” game, as in, “Even if this is true, it doesn’t mean anything.” That ignores that if the cited sequence does contain transitional fossils, it at least means that the claim of no transitional fossils is false.

The following is a short form for response to the TFEC, if a challenged person wishes to ignore the evidence and simply adopt one of the non-evidentiary tactics for their own. Simply indicate which one or more of the following Non-Evidentiary Response Items (NERI) fits what would otherwise involve a bunch of redundant typing.

Non-Evidentiary Response Items:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Let me note that each of the following items follows a pattern of being like a response that I have actually received from challenged religious antievolutionists at least once, and for many of these I've seen that same sort of dodge from many different antievolutionists. They span the gamut from ignorant through stupid to insane, and maybe some wicked thrown in to boot. None of them comes anywhere near the thing that would put that statement from Dawkins in any danger, a principled denial of evolution based on the evidence.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

A. You have your faith; I have mine.

B. I meant that no vertebrate transitional fossils exist.

C. I meant that no transitional fossils above taxonomic rank  (fill in blank), which means that none can exist.

D. I have quotes from  (give list of names) that say that no transitional fossils exist.

E. My understanding of _ theory (fill in blank) is that transitional fossils cannot exist.

F. My connotation of “transitional fossils” is __ (fill in blank), which means that none can exist.

G. I have a cool rebuttal of _ (fill in blank). What were you saying about transitional fossils?

H. Even if the cited example does show transitional fossils, it doesn’t mean anything.

I. I cannot be bothered to support my claim, so I will not be giving you a reply.

J. I promise to support my claim Real Soon Now. I will be in touch. My reply will be devastating to you and completely and utterly convincing to everyone. Just you wait. It’s in the mail.

K. Provide the fossils for the transition from X to Y, which will let me ignore these fossils that actually exist. (Courtesy of “edwin voltaire” aka “evossler” 20030210.)

L. Person X says this challenge is bogus, therefore I don’t have to provide any response to actual evidence of transitional forms.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Kevin has the opportunity to prove Dawkins wrong the right way, by making a principled argument against evolution having occurred that is based upon the specific evidence at hand. Will he do that?
Posted by: BWE on April 05 2008,00:44

Quote (ERV @ April 04 2008,22:50)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 04 2008,20:06)
i think wesley et al misunderstood my meaning. see my latest comment on the "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid' post on my blog.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Who made your animation, Kevin? >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My oh my. Kevin, if you don't answer this question by the lady, I'm going to have to assume you have bad manners. Then, I could believe anything about you couldn't I?

Who made you animation? Do you pay royalties to the artist?
Posted by: JMax on April 05 2008,01:02

Heard a small story about the marketing of Expelled on Marketplace on NPR.

< http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display....d_movie >
Posted by: bystander on April 05 2008,01:17

Wes you left out

M. I have already shown this so many times, I'm not going to do it again.

Michael
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 05 2008,01:35

Wesley: You could probably have saved yourself a lot of time (and a lot of words) by simply saying, "I'm going with the majority." But you of all people should know that consensus science is like patriotrism--the last refuge of a scoundrel.

By your logic, it was right for Galileo to be persecuted for his views, because the overwhelming majority of astronomers were certain that geocentrism was right and heliocentrism was wrong. The evidence was just so overwhelmingly obvious.  The same goes for virtually any other scientist that revolutionized his discipline.

On a related note, on my blog, Kristene said, "Try this on for size: It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet someone who claims not to believe in heliocentrism, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that.)"

I think she believes this refutes my point. But she's merely proven it instead. Prior to Copernicus, no one would have agreed with her statement, even though they were studying the same body of evidence that led Copernicus to conclude that the earth orbited the sun and not the other way around. Heliocentrism was just so obviously wrong. Wrong, because even though people were examining the same data as you, they brought a completely different worldview to their study and completely different methods, which led them to completely different conclusions.

So, as I said earlier, just because something seems obviously true to you does not mean that it is. Who knows when new information will shed new light on our observations? Isn't that what science is about? Looking for new information so we can understand the world better? Or is it merely about confirmning our pre-existing dispositions?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 05 2008,01:37

Who made our animation? Some nondescript place with no sign called "Plagermation." Seemed legitimate to me...
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 05 2008,02:34

So Kevin, why are you guys emailing people and telling them that screenings are moved or cancelled when they're not? Isn't that, like, lying? Isn't that supposed to be bad in your religion?

I mean, as much as you want to keep educated people away from this film, you do realize that you can't keep them away *forever*, right?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 05 2008,02:35



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So, as I said earlier, just because something seems obviously true to you does not mean that it is. Who knows when new information will shed new light on our observations? Isn't that what science is about? Looking for new information so we can understand the world better? Or is it merely about confirmning our pre-existing dispositions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



We do understand the world in many ways, Kevin.

And a 6,000 year old earth is a load of shit.

You're a conman, Kevin. I really can't imagine how you convince yourself that Jesus wants you to lie like this. You're a despicable advertisement for your faith.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 05 2008,02:50



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
By your logic, it was right for Galileo to be persecuted for his views,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



As I recall it was you guys who did that, right Kev?
Posted by: MillstoneCam on April 05 2008,04:15

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 05 2008,07:37)
Who made our animation? Some nondescript place with no sign called "Plagermation." Seemed legitimate to me...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Who made our animation? Some nondescript place with no sign called "Plagermation." Seemed legitimate to me...

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Google suggests "Plagiarization" since it finds no hits with "Plagermation".
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 05 2008,04:55

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 05 2008,01:35)
Wesley: You could probably have saved yourself a lot of time (and a lot of words) by simply saying, "I'm going with the majority." But you of all people should know that consensus science is like patriotrism--the last refuge of a scoundrel.

By your logic, it was right for Galileo to be persecuted for his views, because the overwhelming majority of astronomers were certain that geocentrism was right and heliocentrism was wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


While I think arguing about science with a screenwriter is about as productive as a monkey humping a football, I had to comment on this little gem.

Kevin, much hay is made by the anti-evolution crowd about majority views when polls are published indicating that only a minority of the general American public believes in evolution.  Apparently, some majorities are better than others?  It is especially ironic when the anti-evolution side (of which I, for the moment, presume you are part) prefers the majority view of unschooled scientific layman over the  views of people who have actually, you know, learned the subject over many years of scholarship.  This, in and of itself, is a form of scoundrel majoritarianism with it's rejection of expertise in favor of "the will of the people."

As far as Galileo, you should know that there is a well-worn, and proven, path to advancing controversial ideas in the sciences. It is called "returning to the lab and building a case" and it is the stuff Nobels are made out of.  But, that is not the path the advocates of ID have chosen.  Not content to be censored by Big Science, they have been reduced apparently to censoring themselves.  Their own journals are defunct. < Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design > (William Dembski, General Editor) has not been published in almost 2 and half years. < Origins and Design > has not been published in nearly 8 years.  And  let us not forget the < Biologic Institute >, who's website is a moribund shell, a fitting metaphor for their scientific output despite being incorporated and funded three years ago outside the selective pressure of the dogmatic Darwinists of Big Science.

The fact of the matter is that the anti-evolution crowd is just not interested in actually, you know, doing science.  There are plenty of religious universities that are sympathetic to the ID movement and many even have < science departments >. Yet none are engaged in supportive scientific research even though they have the means and motive to do so. Why do you suppose that is?  Why is it so important to dump poison in the well by attacking scientists while offering absolutely nothing in return?  Just how much satisfaction are you getting from those 30 pieces of silver?

No sir, our intrepid advocates of the nascent, groundbreaking science of Intelligent Design have eschewed such a proletarian strategy of actually building their case. They are much more content to put the cart in front of the horse and publish textbooks, help dimwitted legislators draft various bills, and film movies.  Good luck with that. In the meantime Big Science continues to roll along providing new medicines and treatments that both our families will benefit from.  I suppose it is a good thing (for you anyway) that you don't have to actually believe in evolution to benefit from the knowledge of it.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 05 2008,05:31

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 05 2008,01:35)
Who knows when new information will shed new light on our observations? Isn't that what science is about? Looking for new information so we can understand the world better? Or is it merely about confirmning our pre-existing dispositions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Would you then approve of skinheads teaching nazi ideology at a Jewish school?

Or teaching that different colours of skin indicate different moral values?

Or teaching that women are not equal to men and should stay at home?

Or perhaps how the lumps on your head define your personality?

Teach the controversy!

I asked you several times, as have others, but what is the single most important piece of evidence that materialist scientists have not followed where it lead?

What's the starting point once the revolution has happened Kevin? What will be lab project number 1?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 05 2008,07:08

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 05 2008,01:35)
Wesley: You could probably have saved yourself a lot of time (and a lot of words) by simply saying, "I'm going with the majority." But you of all people should know that consensus science is like patriotrism--the last refuge of a scoundrel.

By your logic, it was right for Galileo to be persecuted for his views, because the overwhelming majority of astronomers were certain that geocentrism was right and heliocentrism was wrong. The evidence was just so overwhelmingly obvious.  The same goes for virtually any other scientist that revolutionized his discipline.

On a related note, on my blog, Kristene said, "Try this on for size: It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet someone who claims not to believe in heliocentrism, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that.)"

I think she believes this refutes my point. But she's merely proven it instead. Prior to Copernicus, no one would have agreed with her statement, even though they were studying the same body of evidence that led Copernicus to conclude that the earth orbited the sun and not the other way around. Heliocentrism was just so obviously wrong. Wrong, because even though people were examining the same data as you, they brought a completely different worldview to their study and completely different methods, which led them to completely different conclusions.

So, as I said earlier, just because something seems obviously true to you does not mean that it is. Who knows when new information will shed new light on our observations? Isn't that what science is about? Looking for new information so we can understand the world better? Or is it merely about confirmning our pre-existing dispositions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Kevin appears to be delusional. By his logic, science either must accept every hare-brained counterfactual notion that anyone posits, or it is equivalent to the Inquisition. News flash: this not only is not true now, it wasn't true when Galileo advocated heliocentrism. It wasn't his empirical-minded colleagues that Galileo ran into trouble with, because Galileo backed up his arguments by reference to the evidence. It was, in fact, the Inquisition that caused trouble for Galileo, and they had no use for science, consensus or otherwise. The only scoundrel here is Kevin for implying that I'm casting myself as part of the Inquisition. Nothing I've written even implies that science can't get behind a new idea that comes with evidence and tests of relevant hypotheses.

Let's go through this step by step.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Wesley: You could probably have saved yourself a lot of time (and a lot of words) by simply saying, "I'm going with the majority."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This wasn't about what *I* thought. The exchange was about what *Kevin* thought. Kevin claimed that I misunderstood him. I asked questions to figure out in what way I might have misunderstood him. Kevin chooses to skip over clearing up misunderstanding and goes directly to bait and switch, trying to make this about me instead. I'm not buying it, Kevin.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

But you of all people should know that consensus science is like patriotrism--the last refuge of a scoundrel.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That statement alludes to facts not in evidence. The scoundrels I'm familiar with in the developing story of the forthcoming propaganda film are the producers, and it appears, the writer. The evidence speaks clearly that false claims are made in the movie and that false claims are made in promotion of the movie. It's not just one "interpretation" that John Lynch was told that the Tempe, AZ screening had been cancelled when the promoter knew full well that the screening would proceed.

I'm not talking, as Kevin has to be, about "consensus" imposed artificially from the top down. We scientists know what that looks like. It looks like the Inquisition that harassed Galileo. It looks like Lysenko's discarding of genetics and the evolutionary biology of the west in favor of a Stalinist form of Lamarckism. (Scientists died for standing up to Lysenko, by the way.) It looks like a socio-political movement that will do anything and call its arguments by any label to force them into public school classrooms without having passed muster via the scientific process.

What I was pointing out is that a scientific consensus is different, it proceeds from the evidence through hypotheses that are tested, and a community that criticizes the arguments until what convinces that community is the consilience of evidence and theory, not the personal authority of either any one individual or even the collective authority of the community. The process doesn't always proceed smoothly, as Kuhn noted in discussing paradigm shifts. But what happens even then is driven by the various and sundry individuals of the scientific community, each of whom by Kevin's earlier (and apparently abandoned) argument having their own separate worldview and thus without any expectation under Kevin's argument that they could possibly agree upon some one view, and yet that is exactly what the history of science shows us has happened time and again.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

By your logic, it was right for Galileo to be persecuted for his views, because the overwhelming majority of astronomers were certain that geocentrism was right and heliocentrism was wrong. The evidence was just so overwhelmingly obvious.  The same goes for virtually any other scientist that revolutionized his discipline.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



No, Kevin, that's your logic and your sublime ignorance of history, not mine. The fact is that it wasn't any "overwhelming majority of astronomers" who put Galileo under house arrest; it was the Inquisition. Nor is there any evidence cited that Galileo's secular astronomical colleagues had any particular fondness for geocentrism. In other words, the folks without a predisposition to a particular religious doctrinal view were open to the evidence and arguments Galileo produced for heliocentrism.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

On a related note, on my blog, Kristene said, "Try this on for size: It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet someone who claims not to believe in heliocentrism, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that.)"

I think she believes this refutes my point. But she's merely proven it instead. Prior to Copernicus, no one would have agreed with her statement, even though they were studying the same body of evidence that led Copernicus to conclude that the earth orbited the sun and not the other way around. Heliocentrism was just so obviously wrong. Wrong, because even though people were examining the same data as you, they brought a completely different worldview to their study and completely different methods, which led them to completely different conclusions.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Again, this is historically inaccurate. Copernicus himself was influenced by Greek and Muslim scholars who developed either heliocentric models or at least posited motion of the earth, a stance at odds with the geocentrism espoused in particular religious doctrines. The fact of the matter is that in doing science, what is commonly accepted can and does change, when the new concept comes with evidence and convincing arguments (testable hypotheses that aren't found false when tested).

Robert Park cast this in terms of Galileo, and it is relevant to this discussion: "To wear the mantle of Galileo, it is not enough to be persecuted by an unkind establishment. One must also be right."

Copernicus was right on at least some of his propositions. Galileo was right on at least some of his propositions. Both of them were willing to put in the work needed to collect evidence and attempt to convince the scientific community of the worth of their ideas. The IDC community, on the other hand, does not propose to convince the scientific community. They are actively seeking to evade scrutiny by the scientific community, to promulgate their conjectures as if they were science, but without doing the work needed to justly do so. Your movie, Kevin, seeks to disestablish the scientific community as a body worthy of respect by falsely imputing the sort of top-down enforcement of edict that characterized the Inquisition. There's a word for that; it's called projection.

Kristine is right.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

So, as I said earlier, just because something seems obviously true to you does not mean that it is. Who knows when new information will shed new light on our observations? Isn't that what science is about? Looking for new information so we can understand the world better? Or is it merely about confirmning our pre-existing dispositions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Again, projection is a wholly satisfactory description for this note from Kevin. What is IDC except a long-running attempt at confirming pre-existing dispositions? IDC was taken up and discussed by the scientific community. We call that "the 19th century". It was given a fair hearing and discarded. IDC is not itself "new information". The four major arguments of IDC proceed directly from precursor arguments found in the Rev. William Paley's 1802 book, "Natural Theology". That includes "irreducible complexity", "specified complexity", various arguments about anthropic principles, and the argument about observability popularized in "The Privileged Planet".

Science is open to genuinely new information. Evolutionary biology has seen quite a few new ideas arise, be criticized, and then be accepted when the proponents did the hard work of collecting, analyzing, and presenting evidence along with tests of hypotheses to establish that what they were saying had scientific merit. This happened for transposons. This happened for the endosymbiotic hypothesis. This happened for the neutral theory. This happened for punctuated equilibria. Also, evolutionary biology since Darwin has cleared away a number of once popular theories that simply didn't measure up to the evidence. Bathmism is gone. Darwin's own pangenesis was discarded. Orthogenesis and aristogenesis? Gone. The notion that evolutionary biology is a closed shop with a fixed top-down enforcement of doctrine is demonstrably poppycock. Only someone who is either ignorant of the actual history, or who is willing to lie to spread a false view of that history could say otherwise.

Now, back to stuff Kevin skipped right over. Kevin said something about the fossil record and working with the data. I brought up a particular piece of research that presented evidence of speciation and asked Kevin to expound upon it.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Kevin has the opportunity to prove Dawkins wrong the right way, by making a principled argument against evolution having occurred that is based upon the specific evidence at hand. Will he do that?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The answer, it appears, is "No."


Posted by: pzoot on April 05 2008,09:23

You can't make this up.

< http://www.google.ca/search?q=Plagermation >

"Did you mean: Plagiarization"
Posted by: hooligans on April 05 2008,09:47



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

pzoot Posted: April 05 2008,09:23  

You can't make this up.

< http://www.google.ca/search?q=Plagermation >

"Did you mean: Plagiarization"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I think Kevin was trying to make a funny. But, alas, the question goes unanswered. Furthermore, I second, again, oldmanintheskydidit's request to show us what other evidence has been suppressed by academia. Seriously, we should know this. Please inform us. Right now, I am unaware of any data collected that put into doubt evolution's power to explain the diversity of creatures on our planet.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 05 2008,09:57


Posted by: wheatdogg on April 05 2008,12:31

I've been posting a detailed analysis of the Leader's Guide for Expelled on my blog. I'd welcome comments and criticism. I've divided it into parts: 5 so far.
Visit www.wheatdogg.com.

Thanks!
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on April 05 2008,13:24

A review of Expelled < here > claims:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Executive Producer Walt Ruloff said scientists also told them that federal health and science institutions and universities have instructed them to stop conducting publicly funded genomic, microbiological and other research into intelligent design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uhhh, what research would that be?
Posted by: silverspoon on April 05 2008,13:59

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ April 05 2008,13:24)
A review of Expelled < here > claims:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Executive Producer Walt Ruloff said scientists also told them that federal health and science institutions and universities have instructed them to stop conducting publicly funded genomic, microbiological and other research into intelligent design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uhhh, what research would that be?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It probably means they were told to stop reading Behe & Dembski’s books on the job.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 05 2008,15:07

Quote (silverspoon @ April 05 2008,13:59)
Quote (Jason Spaceman @ April 05 2008,13:24)
A review of Expelled < here > claims:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Executive Producer Walt Ruloff said scientists also told them that federal health and science institutions and universities have instructed them to stop conducting publicly funded genomic, microbiological and other research into intelligent design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uhhh, what research would that be?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It probably means they were told to stop reading Behe & Dembski’s books on the job.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, it means they had to throw out the mushrooms they had growing in the basement.
Posted by: deejay on April 05 2008,15:50

Very nice reply, Wes.  But are you prepared for the ultimate < rebuttal >?
Posted by: silverspoon on April 05 2008,15:53

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 05 2008,15:07)
No, it means they had to throw out the mushrooms they had growing in the basement.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well that explains it. They were doing ‘double super secret’ experiments for the Biologic Institute at taxpayer expense. :p
Posted by: BWE on April 05 2008,17:23

Quote (silverspoon @ April 05 2008,15:53)
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 05 2008,15:07)
No, it means they had to throw out the mushrooms they had growing in the basement.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well that explains it. They were doing ‘double super secret’ experiments for the Biologic Institute at taxpayer expense. :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Don't think it's easy to grow mushrooms in your basement. It's really darn difficult.

???
Posted by: Henry J on April 05 2008,20:54



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Don't think it's easy to grow mushrooms in your basement. It's really darn difficult.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



But they are such fun gi's, aren't they?

Henry
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 05 2008,21:17

It gets a lot easier if you sterilize your workspace.  The inside of a hot oven door is a great workbench.

I'm just saying.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 06 2008,02:26

Once again, like a good reductionist, Wesley misses the forest for the trees. Despite his apparent fisking of my post, all he really did was throw up a lot of smoke in order to avoid my main argument, which is that no one approaches the evidence as a blank slate. All of us interpret the evidence through a different worldview. What is clearly evident to one person is not so to the next. Why? Because we all bring something different to the data. Are you denying this, Wesley? Because if you are, why aren't we in agreement on this matter?
Posted by: bfish on April 06 2008,03:05

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 06 2008,00:26)
All of us interpret the evidence through a different worldview. What is clearly evident to one person is not so to the next. Why?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Um.....Level of education? Level of understanding? Familiarity with the data? I'm just shooting in the dark here.

< "Ignatius,  what's all this trash on the floor?" >

"That is my worldview that you see. It still must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step."


Hey, Kevin - seriously - where did the animation come from? Little jokes aside, we'd all like to hear about that.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 06 2008,03:16

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 06 2008,03:26)
Once again, like a good reductionist, Wesley misses the forest for the trees. Despite his apparent fisking of my post, all he really did was throw up a lot of smoke in order to avoid my main argument, which is that no one approaches the evidence as a blank slate. All of us interpret the evidence through a different worldview. What is clearly evident to one person is not so to the next. Why? Because we all bring something different to the data. Are you denying this, Wesley? Because if you are, why aren't we in agreement on this matter?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course, Wesley can speak for himself.

But there is a simple reply that will be apparent to most reading this: it doesn't follow from the fact that "no one approaches the evidence as a blank slate" or that "all of us interpret the evidence through a different worldview" or that "what is clearly evident to one person is not so to the next" that the results of those subjective interpretative moves all have equal validity, or scientific value.

The cycle of hypothesis, prediction, and empirical test that represents the engine of science embodies the invention of a form of "social cognition" that provides tools - perhaps the only tools there are - for lifting our collective efforts to know the world out of the solipsism and relativism and subjectivity you describe. Intelligent design creationism does not employ those tools and indeed inherently abjures those tools because it rejects the essential constraints of methodological naturalism and embraces supernatural explanatory stories that are not subject to test by means of the tools of science. Contemporary evolutionary science, through the collective application of this cycle of hypothesis, prediction and empirical test, has an epistemological warrant that ID will never possess because genuine science avails itself of tools that, to a significant degree, constrain the subjectivity to which you refer.

It is irrelevant to this collective scientific efficacy that individuals and subcultures (such as you, and the community to which you are committed) continue, for subjective reasons, to construe the world in ways that ignore or deny the genuine yield of that scientific engine. It is also irrelevant to that efficacy that you and yours instead cling to the subjectivity you are defending as a way to protect overvalued ideas that may otherwise recognized as untenable in light of the yield of science. You're entitled to that choice. It doesn't follow that your choice has equal epistemological merit from the perspective of the scientific community. It doesn't.

Postmoderism got that part wrong: a modest realism is in fact attainable.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 06 2008,06:48

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 06 2008,02:26)
Once again, like a good reductionist, Wesley misses the forest for the trees. Despite his apparent fisking of my post, all he really did was throw up a lot of smoke in order to avoid my main argument, which is that no one approaches the evidence as a blank slate. All of us interpret the evidence through a different worldview. What is clearly evident to one person is not so to the next. Why? Because we all bring something different to the data. Are you denying this, Wesley? Because if you are, why aren't we in agreement on this matter?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Apparent fisking?

I do not disagree with Kevin on the simple observation that people do come with different worldviews. I never have disagreed with that. What I have disagreed with is the assertion that this diversity of worldviews means that those disparate people with their disparate worldviews will not, in fact, agree on various issues when approached via the scientific method. We can see that over and over again in the way that scientists of almost all cultures and traditions do come to agree on matters where the evidence and arguments demonstrate consilience.

Kevin is again trying to make this exchange be about me, apparently to distract from the fact that his assertions do not survive the slightest scrutiny. Of course, we have reports that this distressing tendency to give up on trying to grapple with concepts and instead cast everything in terms of persons extends to Kevin's movie. And even in trying to attack me, Kevin is incompetent.

Nothing I've said so far here touches upon the issue of reductionism. My master's thesis, though, explicitly argues for an increased role for a synthetic approach to artificial neural system modeling, so the scattershot accusation Kevin makes is rather wide of the mark. Kevin, just so you don't have to go down yet another wrong turn in your next reply, I'll note that I'm not an atheist, either.

And, no, I have not "avoided" Kevin's main argument. I have directly addressed the contention that the mere existence of individual worldviews means that the scientific process cannot pick out a superior explanation from a field of candidates.

Kevin started with an assertion that post-modernism meant that everybody will come to a different conclusion about an issue in science because of worldview differences:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

In response to your question, Ellazim, I think you are a reasonable person. You other guys, however, need to take a primer on post-modernism. There's objective reality, and then there's our subjective experience and interpretation of that reality. All knowledge is perspectival, there's no way around it. No one can experience reality objectively, only from his or her limited point of view. That's why, when presented with the same body of evidence, people will arrive at such different conclusions. How we interpret the evidence depends on the worldview through which we view the evidence.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I pointed out that this wasn't true, that people with widely divergent worldviews actually often come to the same conclusion in science:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The value of pi is not socially constructed. People with all sorts of "worldviews" agree on pi, just as they agree on the findings of evolutionary biology. How can that happen if the social solipsism of dilettante post-modernists were true?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Kevin then claimed that he was misunderstood, and referenced a discussion where he had muttered some selective statements about post-modernism. And I responded again to the point that differing worldviews must lead to differing conclusions by reference to what we actually observe happen, which does not support Kevin's "point".



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I think what's also getting missed here is the point that I'm not saying reality is socially constructed.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Don't various post-modernists say exactly that? Is that not in the recommended primer on post-modernism?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

But our interpretation of that reality certainly is.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Not *all* interpretations are socially constructed, thus my reference to the concept of pi. If pi is an exception, then so can other things be...

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And again I pointed out that despite wide differences in worldview, those examining the fossil record through the scientific method have overhwelmingly settled upon one "interpretation":



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Why is that? Because each person brings something different to the evidence.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Why then does the scientific community, comprising millions of individuals from almost every culture in the world, have just one broad consensus that the fossil record shows the history and diversity of life evolving by descent with modification showing common descent from one or a few original forms? Is that "interpretation" of only equal value to the "interpretation" of the long-dead people who didn't even believe that fossils were anything but odd mineral deposits? Or can there be "interpretations" that can be demonstrated to be superior to other "interpretations" by consistent criteria? Whether Dawkins notes it or not, ignorance is common. Do the "interpretations" of people who are ignorant count just the same as the interpretation hammered out over decades of intersubjective criticism and testing by thousands of domain experts?
The science community subjects interpretations to intersubjective criticism and ruthlessly discards the unworkable, meaningless, and counterfactual interpretations. Does that count for anything in the end product?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And I hit upon this point again in my next reply:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

What I was pointing out is that a scientific consensus is different, it proceeds from the evidence through hypotheses that are tested, and a community that criticizes the arguments until what convinces that community is the consilience of evidence and theory, not the personal authority of either any one individual or even the collective authority of the community. The process doesn't always proceed smoothly, as Kuhn noted in discussing paradigm shifts. But what happens even then is driven by the various and sundry individuals of the scientific community, each of whom by Kevin's earlier (and apparently abandoned) argument having their own separate worldview and thus without any expectation under Kevin's argument that they could possibly agree upon some one view, and yet that is exactly what the history of science shows us has happened time and again.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'm afraid that I simply cannot fathom how my responses from the start have not addressed Kevin's point. Maybe Kevin would like to pretend I never said these things, but the simple fact is that I did.

Why is it that Kevin has chosen to ignore the fact that I did address his point, several times over in fact, and instead simply asserts that I have "missed" that point? I think it is because Kevin has discovered he has no argument that would support his position, and yet doesn't want to admit error. Unfortunately for this tactic, there is not an "infinitely plastic past" that he can reshape into a course of history where he could possibly be winning on the merits. The history clearly shows that I *have* addressed his point, such as it is, over and over again.

Kevin brought up the Galileo incident, arguing that Galileo couldn't have successfully argued with his colleagues in scientific endeavor about heliocentrism given that a pre-existing explanation of geocentrism was commonly accepted. I noted that there is no evidence that those approaching the evidence and arguments of Galileo empirically had, in general, any difficulty seeing the consilience between evidence and the inference of heliocentrism. The new explanation not only explained the old data, but also made sense of Galileo's new evidence collected via telescope observations. It was, in fact, the Inquisition of the Catholic Church whose "worldview" forced them to reject Galileo's arguments, based not upon consideration of the available scientific evidence, but rather upon a commitment to a pre-existing religious doctrine.

In the current discussion of IDC, it is the advocates of IDC who regularly skip over the hard work of examining the relevant evidence. Consider, for example, Kevin Miller, who recently claimed:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Take the fossil record, for example. We're all working with the same body of data. There's no question that the fossils are out there, and that these are the calcified remains of creatures that were once alive. But over the years, people have interpreted this body of evidence in vastly different ways.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And so I said, fine, let's do work with the same data, here's a paper that presents evidence of speciation in the fossil record; what is your considered reason on the evidence that we shouldn't consider it to be just that?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Pearson, P.N.; Shackleton, N.J.; and Hall, M.A., 1997. Stable isotopic evidence for the sympatric divergence of _Globigerinoides_trilobus_ and _Orbulina_universa_ (planktonic foraminifera). Journal of the Geological Society, London, v.154, p.295-302.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Happily, Don Lindsay has put various of the figures online for your viewing pleasure.

Someone claiming to be "working with" the evidence of the fossil record in some substantive sense should either already be familiar with the cited work or have no difficulty in locating and retrieving the actual paper for study.

Is there an alternative "interpretation" that follows from a principled examination of the evidence?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



When Kevin failed to address this other "point" that he himself introduced into the discussion, I said this:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Now, back to stuff Kevin skipped right over. Kevin said something about the fossil record and working with the data. I brought up a particular piece of research that presented evidence of speciation and asked Kevin to expound upon it.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Kevin has the opportunity to prove Dawkins wrong the right way, by making a principled argument against evolution having occurred that is based upon the specific evidence at hand. Will he do that?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The answer, it appears, is "No."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 06 2008,09:41

Huh. I seem to have ticked off Kevin Miller. He has a post on his blog placing me in the class of scoundrels, and the post is categorized as "Mofos". I have a weblog, too, it turns out:

< The Miller/Elsberry Omnibus >
Posted by: Louis on April 06 2008,10:21

Everytime I read IDCists' (or indeed other denialists/antiscience promoters/anti-Enlightenment stooges) "arguments" I hear one overriding message coming through:

"(My) ignorance and lack of understanding is just as valid and just as important as (your) knowledge and understanding".

The personal pronouns are in brackets because the form of the argument remains the same, some however prefer to frame it as a universal as opposed to an ad hominem argument.

It's the eternal legacy of a cultural perspective in which it is impossible to mention someone's ignorance without creating drama but it is perfectly acceptable to mention their lack of ability to run the hundred metres in 10 seconds. The hypocrisy and double standards when it comes to matters intellectual is amusing in the extreme.

Sorry boys and girls, if you're going to ignore data, remain clueless about the available evidence and play postmodernist word games with "worldviews" you've lost your right to claim an equal intellectual footing. Elitist? Condescending? Unpleasant? Perhaps so. But also honest, true, and demonstrably accurate. As well as the most important one for you: eminently correctable.

Watch how THAT is misunderstood.

Louis
Posted by: J-Dog on April 06 2008,10:36

I dunno Louis.  While you have made an excellent point, surely we must be able to see both sides of an issue?

For example, I think we would be fair, and teach both sides, and could frame this entire argument with Kevin Miller as :

1.) Kevin Miller - Big stinky squishy turd?

0r

2.) Kevin Miller - World Class Turd?

HTH :)
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 06 2008,10:50



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

"(My) ignorance and lack of understanding is just as valid and just as important as (your) knowledge and understanding".

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Somehow that put me in mind of the Simpson's episode where Lisa has just wished for "peace on earth" via a magical monkey's paw. The aliens take this as their cue to invade, and so one alien is shown running down a street after some guy. The alien is menacingly waving a stick with a nail in the end and shouts, "Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"

I can't say that I busted a gut laughing then, since I have had the actual experience of busting a gut in 2004, but I did find it quite amusing.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 06 2008,11:01

I wonder if the courts are going to go with PoMo when Harvard asks the theater chains to turn over all Expelled revenues to the rightful owner of the cell video.

Courts are known for considering all world views -- those of the defendants and of witnesses -- to be equally valid. That's their job, isn't it?
Posted by: Louis on April 06 2008,11:09

Quote (J-Dog @ April 06 2008,16:36)
I dunno Louis.  While you have made an excellent point, surely we must be able to see both sides of an issue?

For example, I think we would be fair, and teach both sides, and could frame this entire argument with Kevin Miller as :

1.) Kevin Miller - Big stinky squishy turd?

0r

2.) Kevin Miller - World Class Turd?

HTH :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's like the Bill Hicks comment about pro-lifers, an issue so divisive he and all his friends were bitterly split on the issue. One camp of friends thought they were evil fucks, the other camp thought they were annoying idiots. Bill, ever the peacemaker, said "Brothers, sisters, can't we all just come together and agree that they are annoying evil idiot fucks?".

It's a technique I find curiously appropriate when it comes to IDCists.

But seriously, we have to remember in all this that they are still people. Not very honest people to be sure, but people still. If anyone has reason to be offended by the fact of common descent it is not the creationists objecting to being distant cousins with modern monkeys, it's us having mighty cause to be offended by virtue of being much closer cousins to creationists and their ideological ilk. They do our species far greater disservice than any monkey cousin could.

Louis
Posted by: Louis on April 06 2008,11:17

Oh and I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Who knew that the anti-science, anti-Enlightenment postmodernist drivel of the worst elements of the pompous, self-righteous, politically left wing academic social studies gurus would gel so beautifully with the anti-liberal, anti-science, anti-Enlightenment, reconstructionist neo-facism of the pompous, self-righteous, politcally right wing, theocratic ignoramuses?

Who knew that Pat Robertson would be so methodologically identical to Jacques Derrida, at least in certain limited aspects.

Louis
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 06 2008,11:44

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 06 2008,02:26)
Once again, like a good reductionist, Wesley misses the forest for the trees. Despite his apparent fisking of my post, all he really did was throw up a lot of smoke in order to avoid my main argument, which is that no one approaches the evidence as a blank slate. All of us interpret the evidence through a different worldview. What is clearly evident to one person is not so to the next. Why? Because we all bring something different to the data. Are you denying this, Wesley? Because if you are, why aren't we in agreement on this matter?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin, why are you ignoring my question?

I'll ask again: why are you lying to people about movie times? Isn't that supposed to be something your religion says is bad?

I mean, we all know your movie is lying about everything else as well, but let's just focus on you guys sending out dishonest emails to keep undesirables out. How do you morally rationalize that?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 06 2008,11:48

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 06 2008,10:50)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

"(My) ignorance and lack of understanding is just as valid and just as important as (your) knowledge and understanding".

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Somehow that put me in mind of the Simpson's episode where Lisa has just wished for "peace on earth" via a magical monkey's paw. The aliens take this as their cue to invade, and so one alien is shown running down a street after some guy. The alien is menacingly waving a stick with a nail in the end and shouts, "Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"

I can't say that I busted a gut laughing then, since I have had the actual experience of busting a gut in 2004, but I did find it quite amusing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Homer forgets to pick up Bart from a soccer game. After a couple hours, he finally remembers and he finds Bart sitting outside in a horrendous rainstorm. Homer's defense is "now Bart, let's not argue about who forgot to pick up who".
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 06 2008,16:01



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Not *all* interpretations are socially constructed, thus my reference to the concept of pi. If pi is an exception, then so can other things be...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I don't know about Pi being "socially constructed," but most of us on the continental side of philosophy would indeed consider Pi to be a construct.

Basically it all goes back to Kant, that we can't know a "thing in itself".  Or, to take Nietzsche's interpretation of these matters, even supposing that there is a "thing in itself" is an abomination.  All that we know is what is in our heads, our interpretations, we don't know anything about some "Pi" existing outside of us.

However, this does not inevitably lead to the kind of relativistic nonsense that Kevin would invoke to shield his IDist nonsense.  I mention Kant in particular because he was quite deliberately telling us how it is that we can do science using evidence, even though we don't know that our "categories" and senses tell us how the world "actually is."  Kant was a scientist himself, and he understood that, construct (not his term) or no, we observe the world and come to reasonable shared conclusions, or as later philosophers would say, to "intersubjectively sound conclusions."

Be that as it may, Pi remains a construct, perhaps a "social construct," because it is simply a way in which we humans understand the world.  3.1415926... is not something that we found in the world, it is something that our minds abstracted (or inferred) out of our observations (which themselves are already interpretation before they even hit consciousness).  

It is not relativistic (in the usual sense, even if it must be in any absolutist framework--hence we reject absolutist frameworks), however, because it is the only honest interpretation possible from dividing the circumference of a circle by the diameter of the same circle.  Given the proper context, anyone who can think will come to similar conclusions regarding "Pi", from its initial definition, to its use in trigonomic equations.

And the same holds for evolutionary conclusions.  These are all constructs as well, but the only honest ones involve agreed-upon understandings of equations (like those involving Pi), evidence, and what indicates that one thing descended from another thing.  It's all a construct, just like paternity judgments and microevolution are, yet it's unquestionable that any honest person will use the same framework for understanding macroevolution as microevolution and paternity evidence--unless given a very good reason to do otherwise.  As we have observed, Kevin et. al haven't given us a very good reason to do otherwise, and we consider their objections to be intellectually dishonest.

Whether or not this makes sense to Wesley or others is not the point.  Mostly I wouldn't bring up these matters in a science discussions, for the issue of our construction of "reality" just doesn't enter into the normal discourse of science.  It does when the IDists are trying to score points with cheap philosophical tricks, however, which is why I now point out that we do indeed consider "Pi" to be a construct, yet do not consider it to be thereby relativistic or in any serious dispute whatsoever.  

This whole discussion is substantially why nothing in science is considered to be Truth, for we don't know "the world," we only know what we understand of our perceptions.  Yet it is essential that we maintain the "truth-values" which we construct out of our shared understandings, or we can't do science.  That should be obvious when ID is brought up, since it would only be the death of scientific explanation, due to its egregious attempts to distort our understanding of "truth" in science.  

I dare say that Kevin brought up post-modernism only in order to similarly distort science (not all post-modernists are relativists, I would point out, and a favorite of post-modernists, Nietzsche, was no relativist in scientific matters), which he must do because ID cannot succeed in normal, more or less Kantian, science.  He seems to understand neither philosophy nor science well, and instead uses both to try to obscure the non-relativistic (or at least, "intersubjectively sound") aspects existing in both.

Glen D
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 06 2008,16:14

kevin and the rest of his fellow travellers care nothing about philosophy nor science.  they are simply concerned with constructing the narrative that is most appealing to the particular audience at hand at any particular moment.  He comes by here for kicks, since he knows himself to be deeply and fundamentally dishonest, he doesn't care what the science is or about arguing for his points.  It's the Gish Gallop all over again, with an AC/DC album cover.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 06 2008,16:25

Since this discussion is occurring across two forums, I'll include my response to the post "Consensus science, the first refuge of scoundrels--and Wesley R. Elsberry" on Kevin's forum:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What a hideous distortion of what "inter-subjective agreement" is about.

All that it really comes down to is the fact that in science we are capable of coming to agreement about what evidence means.  The exact conclusion to be reached may be in doubt for many years, as has been the case in many evolutionary matters, but honest scientists largely agree on classical cause and effect scenarios and analysis of those scenarios (such as inferring evolutionary descent and change).

When IDists come along and try to say that the evidence that we all agree points to descent with modification (sans divine intervention) in the matter of microevolution or some such thing[, yet] does not point to macroevolution, even though the same inferences are made using the same sorts of evidence, then we know that we are dealing with intellectually dishonest folk.

That has nothing to do with everyone agreeing on scientific conclusions, as indeed, the point of being a scientist is to come up with new hypotheses and conclusions, sometimes destroying accepted ones in the doing.

Plus, this is pure bilgewater:

"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had."

The consensus of scientists is that Newton's laws of motion and gravity are essentially reliable under non-relativistic conditions and non-QM precision (and some hold even in these cases).  They have been reliable for almost 400 years, and the IDists don't even pretend to have any question about them.

Glen D

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Actually, I think the first refuge of scoundrels is to attack, like Kevin has done from the very beginning.  And he's either too stupid or too dishonest, or both, to understand Wes's positions.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 06 2008,16:49

Noticed this on Kevin's thread (by Kevin):

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Despite his apparent fisking of my post, all he really did was throw up a lot of smoke in order to avoid my main argument, which is that no one approaches the evidence as a blank slate. All of us interpret the evidence through a different worldview. What is clearly evident to one person is not so to the next.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Of course we don't approach the evidence as a blank slate.  That's why we teach logic and evidence.  What Kevin wants is for any viewpoint to be the equal of any other, even though he never answers the question of whether or not he'd like to be tried under anything but normal scientific and judicial rules of evidence if he were charged in a murder (he might like it, if he could claim that magic is why his blood is on the victim, but would not like it if he is accused of killing by witchcraft).

Sure, what is obvious to those who have learned how to interpret evidence reliably, is not obvious to Kevin.  But that's all for the good.  And that is why we wish to teach science, for people like Kevin are unable to understand vast swathes of our culture, all because he is far too ignorant, as well as highly prejudiced.

More importantly, people across cultures are able to understand the sense and reliability of what was originally largely a Western point of view, at least in its fullest understanding--using cause and effect analysis to get at the facts (yes, I know that nearly all cultures have done so to some extent--which only gets back to how really reliable such methods are, for it derives from a completely human, cross-cultural, understanding of the world).  Japanese, Chinese, and Westerners, all agreed upon mathematical conclusions, the specifics being developed separately in many cases.  And the Japanese who were being shielded from Western science found the little bit that leaked in (anatomy, and some physiology) to be dramatically superior to the then-current Japanese ideas about anatomy..  Eventually the Japanese were to adopt Western science fully, without having to worry about the culture or religion of those from whom they originally adopted it (sure, our science disagreed with some of their religious beliefs, which wasn't much objection to at least the better educated Japanese).

What is ironic is that most of the world has accepted scientific methods as superior to superstition and supposed "revelation," while the US which descended directly from the Enlightenment ideals of France and the UK, continues to battle anti-Enlightenment forces such as Kevin, Stein, and the DI.  It may even come to the point where China and Japan accept the reliability of cause and effect analysis of science matters, while the United States does not.  After all, science works no matter who you are or where you are, and so does the hatred of science--the latter only brings stupidity, misery, and death.

Glen D
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 06 2008,18:16

Hilary Putnam has had very interesting things to say on this matter. Here I quote myself from an earlier post on the now dormant "faith vs. reason" thread, summarizing his view of realism in a social context. I think very much on topic, with notions that very much reinforce Glen's remarks:

What are often considered objective descriptions of physical systems are inherently entangled with the conceptual and intentional commitments of the observer (and here we need not even resort to quantum observer effects).

See, for example, Hilary Putnam's very interesting argument in The Many Faces of Realism.

Putnam invites us to imagine a pressure cooker on which the safety valve has jammed, causing the cooker to explode. Why did the cooker explode? We say that the cooker exploded because the valve failed to open. We don't say that the cooker exploded because an arbitrary section of the wall of the cooker, say one centimeter square, was in place and hence retained the steam, even though, from the perspective of physics, the stuck valve and this arbitrary section of cooker wall play identical roles: the absence of either would have allowed the steam to escape and averted the explosion.

Why do we insist that the faulty valve caused the explosion, and not an arbitrary area of the wall? Because we know that the valve "should" have let the steam escape - that is its function, what it was designed to do. On the other hand, the arbitrary bit of surface was not doing anything wrong in preventing the steam from escaping; containing the steam is the function of that patch of cooker surface. Hence, in the instance of this human artifact, there is an inescapably normative element to what superficially appears to be a simple physical explanation.

Putnam concludes that, in asking Why did the explosion take place - and knowing what we know and knowing what interests we have - our explanation space consists of the alternatives:

(1) Explosion taking place
(2) Everything functioning as it should.

What we want to know is why (1) is what happened, as opposed to (2). We are simply not interested in why (1) is what happened as opposed to an infinite collection of alternatives such as, 3) An arbitrary patch of surface is missing, and no explosion takes place.

In short, our interests dictate that the presence of a given area of the wall of the cooker, and countless other facts about the physics of the explosion, take their places as background conditions rather than causes of the explosion. This discrimination between causes and background conditions cannot be provided by an account of the explosion supplied by mathematical physics, because the normative, designed aspects of the cooker cannot be deduced at the level of physics. Consideration of causation in this sense requires knowlege of the history of the mechanism - the story of its origins and purpose - in addition to its present physical state. Hence an irreducible explanatory relativity must be introduced if we are to understand the cause of this explosion.

This is not, however, to say that there is no objective adjudication to be had regarding the truth of the assertion that the stuck valve caused the explosion. Quite the contrary. Once we have specified our interests, given the nature of our language, and, indeed, given our scientific practices (all of which help us discriminate foreground and background), it would be simply false to say that the wall of the pressure cooker caused the explosion - even though the physics of the explosion dictate that had that area of wall not been present the explosion would not have occurred. In fact, it is only once we have identified our conceptual commitments and our interests that the determination of the cause of the explosion at the level of our interests becomes an adjudicable, objective fact. Hence, unless one is to abandon the idea that the stuck valve on the pressure cooker caused the explosion is an adjudicable, objective fact (in a court of law, for example), one must acknowledge the importance of those interests and abandon the notion that an idealized, purely observer-independent perspective is inherently more correct or more useful. We want to know why what should have happened failed to happen - or why what should not have happened, happened, a statement of our values and perspective that cannot be deduced from physics. (In the instance of organisms, this "intentional" dimension of "function" maps onto the contingent story of descent with modification by means of natural selection - a notion that advocates of ID just can't seem to wrap their heads around).
Posted by: Henry J on April 06 2008,18:49



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Be that as it may, Pi remains a construct, perhaps a "social construct," because it is simply a way in which we humans understand the world.  3.1415926... is not something that we found in the world, it is something that our minds abstracted (or inferred) out of our observations (which themselves are already interpretation before they even hit consciousness).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That, and the value follows as a direct consequence (i.e., by logical deduction) of the rules of the kind of geometry that people use most of the time for anything that involves geometry (i.e., Euclidean geometry).

Henry
Posted by: Henry J on April 06 2008,19:06

In short, our interests dictate that the presence of a given area of the wall of the cooker, and countless other facts about the physics of the explosion, take their places as background conditions rather than causes of the explosion.

Or, one could compare the attributes of the one that exploded to the larger majority of pressure cookers that didn't. ;)

Henry
Posted by: Kristine on April 06 2008,21:14

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 06 2008,15:14)
kevin and the rest of his fellow travellers care nothing about philosophy nor science.  they are simply concerned with constructing the narrative that is most appealing to the particular audience at hand at any particular moment.  He comes by here for kicks, since he knows himself to be deeply and fundamentally dishonest, he doesn't care what the science is or about arguing for his points.  It's the Gish Gallop all over again, with an AC/DC album cover.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


FTKevin and his ilk don't even know what a Gish Gallop is. He came here and made an ass of himself just as creationists do, because they fall into the same patterns out of ignorance. These people have no clue how cookie cutter their "freedom of [same] speech" is, but they have the arrogance to take on legitimate scientists (like Wesley again) when they have little education and obviously no idea how to get one.

I find it astonishing that people like him repeat the same old refuted crap as if they actually thought of it themselves. Next we'll being hearing about how "NASA found the missing day." *yawn*
Posted by: J-Dog on April 07 2008,07:49

Quote (Kristine @ April 06 2008,21:14)
Next we'll being hearing about how "NASA found the missing day." *yawn*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kristine - Kevin is @ 2 posts away from posting this:

Future Kevin Posts:  Because it was all the wimmens fault.  They let the dust get too deep on the moon, and the Lost Day got buried.  If them womens were better with the house cleanings, that Day would never have been lost.  That's why GOD gave Man dominion over womens.

And how's that diner coming along ?

Kristine Responds:Kevin:  &^%$#99 You %^&^#$%$^&, and *&^$^&, so, in conclusion, &&&^%$%^&&^&!!!!
Posted by: Kristine on April 07 2008,09:45

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 05 2008,00:35)
Wesley: You could probably have saved yourself a lot of time (and a lot of words) by simply saying, "I'm going with the majority." But you of all people should know that consensus science is like patriotrism--the last refuge of a scoundrel.

By your logic, it was right for Galileo to be persecuted for his views, because the overwhelming majority of astronomers were certain that geocentrism was right and heliocentrism was wrong. The evidence was just so overwhelmingly obvious.  The same goes for virtually any other scientist that revolutionized his discipline.

On a related note, on my blog, Kristene said, "Try this on for size: It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet someone who claims not to believe in heliocentrism, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that.)"

I think she believes this refutes my point. But she's merely proven it instead. Prior to Copernicus, no one would have agreed with her statement, even though they were studying the same body of evidence that led Copernicus to conclude that the earth orbited the sun and not the other way around. Heliocentrism was just so obviously wrong. Wrong, because even though people were examining the same data as you, they brought a completely different worldview to their study and completely different methods, which led them to completely different conclusions.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is that so? < Wrong to whom >, FTKevin?
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The heliocentric concept, which followed the geocentric one, did not originate with Copernicus. He became aware that in the third century B.C. the Greek natural philosopher Aristarchus had proposed the Sun as the center of planetary motion. In his treatise, On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, Aristarchus estimated that the Sun is 20 or so times farther from the Earth than the Moon (the actual value is about 400), and since both have approximately the same angular size, the Sun must be 20 times larger than the Moon or, he reasoned, about 7 times the Earth's diameter (the actual value is almost 109 times). From these estimates he apparently thought it natural to put the largest and only self-luminous body in the Solar System, the Sun, at the center of the system. Additionally, Aristarchus attributed the daily movement of the heavens to the rotation of the Earth on its axis. Annual changes in the sky and the planet`s motions could be explained if they and the Earth then revolved about the Sun. Even prior to Aristarchus, the Greeks were aware that the Moon, and possibly the planets, "shine" by reflecting sunlight, a notion they probably came to by observing lunar eclipses. It is also possible that Aristarchus recognized that the stars were self-luminous and conceivably like the Sun only farther away, but this is speculation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Wrong again, Kevin. *eyeroll*
Posted by: Kristine on April 07 2008,10:08

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ April 05 2008,12:24)
A review of Expelled < here > claims:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Executive Producer Walt Ruloff said scientists also told them that federal health and science institutions and universities have instructed them to stop conducting publicly funded genomic, microbiological and other research into intelligent design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uhhh, what research would that be?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This kind of research >, apparently.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Some Christians interpret diseases such as SARS as a judgement from God against the sinfulness of the world. Others see them as attacks from Satan. Still others regard SARS and other diseases as the natural consequences of living in a fallen world.

Whatever the true cause of SARS, we do know one thing: No matter how deadly the disease is or how far it spreads, God is still in control, and his will, will prevail.

Where is God in all of this? He’s right where he always is: living in the hearts of every believer. We have no reason to give in to the fear and gloom that the rest of the world feels when confronted with such epidemics. Thus, rather than cower in fear, secretly celebrate the imminent demise of the world, or sit in smug judgement on the world’s sins, it is our duty to be agents of grace, love and hope to those who do not share the same assurance in God that we have. In the face of a threat such as SARS, it is always wise to take precautions. But we should never respond in fear.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bwa ha ha! :D So I guess people shouldn't be alarmed at all the Nazis in Expelled, eh?
Posted by: Louis on April 07 2008,10:17

Kevin and ilk seem incapable of realising that no matter how hard or often we vote we cannot repeal the law of gravity. (Just to satirise this nonsensical accusation of consensus once more)

I also have to mention that I LOVE IDCists invoking Galileo. If Galileo was persecute then who was this persecution one by? Could it have been by some religious body on the basis of dogma?
Galileo, for all his flaws, made the case for heliocentrism on the basis of the evidence available to him. It wasn't some doctrinal or dogmatic shift that demonstrated the earth orbits the sun rather than vice versa, it was the evidence.

So we appear to be right back to where we started! Got any evidence Kevin? Do bear in mind that others, vastly better informed than you, have already seen all the claimed "evidence" that IDC is touted as having, and sorry but these things have been found wanting. They do not do the job they claim to do, nor are they the "evidence" they claim to be. Anything new? Perhaps an ISCID paper...no?

Didn't think so.

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on April 07 2008,10:32

< Is Ben Stein "God Crazy" >?
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 07 2008,10:41

QUOTE]It wasn't some doctrinal or dogmatic shift that demonstrated the earth orbits the sun rather than vice versa, it was the evidence.[/QUOTE]

If it's all a matter of interpretation, perhaps Kevin could make the case for geocentrism, based on the evidence available at the time of Galileo.
Posted by: Bob O'H on April 07 2008,11:04

midwifetoad - didn't Feyerabend do that?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 07 2008,11:11

I'm having a ball in this < Tard Mine >

Constructing narratives and what not.  Good old Feyerabend
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 07 2008,11:21

A geocentric, geostatic model coupled with the restriction that nothing goes faster than the speed of light yields the observation that the universe is a sphere of about 27.5 astronomical units radius, maximum.

That is, if I managed not to shift any decimal places on the back of my envelope here.
Posted by: tacitus on April 07 2008,11:42

Ben Stein's been spewing the word about Expelled again this morning, this time to the faithful of James Dobson's flock at Focus on the Family.  Here is a link to the broadcast:

< http://focusfamily.edgeboss.net/wmedia-....211.asx >

(or go to family.org and follow the links to today's broadcast if that doesn't work).

Short critique -- it's the usual drivel. No time to provide a longer critique, I'm afraid, though in his potted explanation of ID Stein mentions something about "inorganic cells" being impossibly complex.  I Googled the term and found nothing but scifi and woowoo references -- is it even a real biological term?

Stein also smugly recounts his supposed bamboozling Richard Dawkins with his startlingly audacious "1%, 49%, 51% chance of ID being real" argument.  It sounds even more lame here than it does in the movie.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 07 2008,11:43

Quote (Bob O'H @ April 07 2008,11:04)
midwifetoad - didn't Feyerabend do that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He seems to have argued that the Church had the better argument, but I haven't seen how he would account for the dynamics of a geocentric system. I suspect it took Newton's dynamics to put heliocentrism on firm rational ground.
Posted by: JohnW on April 07 2008,11:54

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 07 2008,09:21)
A geocentric, geostatic model coupled with the restriction that nothing goes faster than the speed of light yields the observation that the universe is a sphere of about 27.5 astronomical units radius, maximum.

That is, if I managed not to shift any decimal places on the back of my envelope here.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's what I got, Wesley.  I look forward to Kevin's explication of other worldviews, with different, equally valid interpretations of the speed of light, the length of a day, and the circumference of a circle.
Posted by: Kristine on April 07 2008,12:01

Quote (tacitus @ April 07 2008,10:42)
Ben Stein's been spewing the word about Expelled again this morning, this time to the faithful of James Dobson's flock at Focus on the Family.  Here is a link to the broadcast:

< http://focusfamily.edgeboss.net/wmedia-....211.asx >

(or go to family.org and follow the links to today's broadcast if that doesn't work).

Short critique -- it's the usual drivel. No time to provide a longer critique, I'm afraid, though in his potted explanation of ID Stein mentions something about "inorganic cells" being impossibly complex.  I Googled the term and found nothing but scifi and woowoo references -- is it even a real biological term?

Stein also smugly recounts his supposed bamboozling Richard Dawkins with his startlingly audacious "1%, 49%, 51% chance of ID being real" argument.  It sounds even more lame here than it does in the movie.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, they're really stuck on him, aren't they? From Bill Dembski to Ben Stein, the whole intelligent design movement is just an expression of Dawkins envy.
Posted by: Louis on April 07 2008,12:30

Quote (Bob O'H @ April 07 2008,17:04)
midwifetoad - didn't Feyerabend do that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Erm in a wurd: No.

Feyerabend is a baddy and a big old meanie poobumface. I know cos I done a fillosfy of psienz course at university one day and that's what mah instructor done said. So there.

I splain in teh pickchures:









See?

Louis
Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 07 2008,12:40

Quote (JohnW @ April 07 2008,11:54)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 07 2008,09:21)
A geocentric, geostatic model coupled with the restriction that nothing goes faster than the speed of light yields the observation that the universe is a sphere of about 27.5 astronomical units radius, maximum.

That is, if I managed not to shift any decimal places on the back of my envelope here.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's what I got, Wesley.  I look forward to Kevin's explication of other worldviews, with different, equally valid interpretations of the speed of light, the length of a day, and the circumference of a circle.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd actually quite like astrology to be taught in science*. I read this book, you see, about Pagan astrology, and it had all these diagrams and calculations, so there's something to teach already. It'll fill the gap nicely while we wait for ID to be finished.

*no, honestly. I much prefer magical fairies and elemental monsters to the weird dominatrix bloodlust of Christianity. And if it comes to all-worldviews-are-equal, Paganism has the upper hand - after all, it's already based on nature.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,12:49

Hey Wes: For the record, I'm not ticked off with you. If you'll notice, I also put myself (and all other Kevin Millers on imdb) into the mofo category. It's a tongue in cheek thing. I may not agree with a lot of what people like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers have to say, but I still admire their chutzpah, and I’d gladly have a beer with them (and you) any time. So wear it as a badge of honor. I'm just trying to have a little fun here.

As for your responses to my statements, despite appearances to the contrary, I'm not coming into this discussion with the assumption, "Everything Wes Elsberry says is wrong." I am listening, and pondering. And I am open to revising my views in light of new and better information. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't dive into a line-by-line response to your posts right away. It’s not an admission of defeat. I just need time to process the various arguments. (Plus, it's been a busy weekend, we have a new baby in the house, and I'm just plain tired.) But even if it turns out that everything you’ve said is right and everything I’ve said is wrong, I’m okay with that, because for me, this has never been about winning or losing. It's about learning. The only thing that really matters to me is getting at the truth, because the truth benefits everyone no matter what side of the debate they’re on. Contrary to how some critics have depicted the film, Expelled is not about promoting a singular point of view, namely, Intelligent Design. It’s about ensuring that all points of view receive a fair and adequate hearing. We made this film because we had good reason to believe that this was not the case with ID, and I stand by that assertion. In addition, my hope is that the film will prompt people on all sides of the issue to engage with one another. Because what I've observed over the past two years is complete polarization. The various camps sit in their respective corners cackling about how stupid the other guys are, but they rarely talk to each other—except to hurl insults. Very few people engaged in this debate seem open to an honest pursuit of the truth. Most are more interested in scoring debating points, looking clever, and promoting their own agenda.

So what I’m trying to do both here and on my blog is engage. In the process, I may say some things that come off as stupid, ignorant or inflammatory. I may hurl a few insults from time to time, and I may needle a few people who need to be needled. After all, I’m only human. But the learning process is often messy and confused. So you’ll have to excuse me if I cack up the joint from time to time.

In light of the above, I do want to ask Wes (and anyone else who cares to respond) a couple of questions:

1) How does science distinguish between a paradigm problem and a research problem? In other words, when a researcher encounters an anomaly, how does he/she determine whether the anomaly is a result of a problem with the data rather than a problem with the theory under which the data is being examined?

2) I understand that you're a Christian, Wes. And yet I get the sense that you believe divine influence is not something that should be factored into your study of the natural world. Fair enough. So my question is, if God doesn't influence the world through natural processes, such as evolution, how does he engage with nature? For example, I assume that you pray. How does God answer your prayers? Does he do so in any scientifically detectable way? Or do you take the Ken Miller approach and say he influences things on the quantum level in a way that we are unable to observe?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,12:54

Somehow I think I'm never going to hear Kevin's rationalization for lying to 'undesirables' to keep them from seeing Expelled.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 07 2008,12:58

shhhhhh Tarden he's trying to act smart.  Don't make him blow it.
Posted by: JohnW on April 07 2008,13:06

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,10:49)
Because what I've observed over the past two years is complete polarization. The various camps sit in their respective corners cackling about how stupid the other guys are, but they rarely talk to each other—except to hurl insults. Very few people engaged in this debate seem open to an honest pursuit of the truth. Most are more interested in scoring debating points, looking clever, and promoting their own agenda.

So what I’m trying to do both here and on my blog is engage.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How does associating the theory of evolution with Naziism further "an honest pursuit if the truth," Kevin?  To me, that looks a lot more like "scoring debating points, looking clever, and promoting (your) own agenda."
Posted by: Louis on April 07 2008,13:08

I was going to ask Kevin a few questions of my own. I realised I was wasting my time.

Enjoy the concern trolling. It seems this is the "latest" IDCist ploy.

Just remember Kevin, sometimes people are "mean" because they are annoyed at the idiocy/mendacity of someone else, not because they are frightened by them or occupying an equally entrenched but opposed position or trying to advance some dogma. Perhaps, just perhaps, the people you've chucked your lot in with are the bozos we claim them to be.

Why is it creationists and their stooges are so fond of projection?

Louis
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,13:10

Here's my response, Arden: I was involved in writing the film, not marketing it. The decisions about who does and who doesn't get to see a pre-screening of the film are entirely in the hands of our producers and our marketing team. If you sincerely want an answer to your question, I suggest you contact Motive Marketing or Premise Media.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,13:15

JohnW: Like it or not, Hitler was influenced by Darwinian science and philosophy. So it's not about scoring points, looking clever or promoting an agenda. It's about setting the record straight. Whether Hitler hijacked Darwinian science for his own purposes or merely followed it to its logical ethical conclusions is a matter of debate. As I've said elsewhere, Expelled didn't invent these arguments. So if you want to quibble over them, I direct you to the people who make them in our film.
Posted by: ERV on April 07 2008,13:20

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,12:49)
... a paradigm...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


PARA-DIG-UM!

LOL! FAIL!

Louis-- We had a visiting lecturer last week, one of the big dogs at the NIH.  Very nice fellow (I couldnt bully him into a fight either, where are these mean scientists I keep hearing about?), loved to talk about languages.  He was amazed I knew the history behind 'Abigail'.  Anyway, he said that when you start thinking in a language, thats when you are officially fluent.  I think/dream in lol-speak.  I just thought you should know that.
Posted by: JohnW on April 07 2008,13:22

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,11:15)
JohnW: Like it or not, Hitler was influenced by Darwinian science and philosophy. So it's not about scoring points, looking clever or promoting an agenda. It's about setting the record straight. Whether Hitler hijacked Darwinian science for his own purposes or merely followed it to its logical ethical conclusions is a matter of debate. As I've said elsewhere, Expelled didn't invent these arguments. So if you want to quibble over them, I direct you to the people who make them in our film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hitler was influenced by a lot of things.  If you're claiming that Darwinian science and philosophy was the primary, or even a major, influence on his ideas, I'd like to see some evidence.

And on a related note, what are the "logical ethical conclusions" of Darwinian science?  Are they different from the logical ethical conclusions of the atomic theory of matter, Bayes' Theorem, or any other branch of science?  If so, why?
Posted by: ERV on April 07 2008,13:23

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:15)
As I've said elsewhere, Expelled didn't invent these arguments. So if you want to quibble over them, I direct you to the people who make them in our film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You dont know who made your animation, you dont make any arguments about Darwin-->Hitler, you were just a writer, you didnt have anything to do with promoting the film, etc etc etc...

LOL! PARA-DIG-UM FAIL!
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,13:28

JohnW said, "If you're claiming that Darwinian science and philosophy was the primary, or even a major, influence on his ideas, I'd like to see some evidence."

I'd highly recommend you read Richard Weikart's book, "From Darwin to Hitler." In it, Weikart presents loads of evidence that Darwinian science had a significant influence on Hitler.

"And on a related note, what are the "logical ethical conclusions" of Darwinian science?"

Essentially, that humans are not qualitatively different from any other animal, that ethics and morals only exist in the human mind, that they are merely evolutionary adaptations as opposed to universal truths, etc. Weikart goes into full detail on this in his book as well.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 07 2008,13:31

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:15)
As I've said elsewhere, Expelled didn't invent these arguments. So if you want to quibble over them, I direct you to the people who make them in our film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You know as a writer working on a film called "Crossroads", that explores the intersection between science and religion, I would have thought that you might feel some responsibility to ensure that such bold statements were supported by the facts. Of course, you are just the writer. We probably can't hold you responsible, since it is the producer who is, ultimately, in charge. You were probably just following orders.

But, fear not, friend. When you and the Expelled team start feeling beseiged by all those nasty evolutionists, just get together and remind each other that "Gott Mit Uns."
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 07 2008,13:32

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,12:54)
Somehow I think I'm never going to hear Kevin's rationalization for lying to 'undesirables' to keep them from seeing Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's a mistake to think you can get anywhere in HWood by sleeping with the writer.
Posted by: Louis on April 07 2008,13:36

Quote (ERV @ April 07 2008,19:23)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:15)
As I've said elsewhere, Expelled didn't invent these arguments. So if you want to quibble over them, I direct you to the people who make them in our film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You dont know who made your animation, you dont make any arguments about Darwin-->Hitler, you were just a writer, you didnt have anything to do with promoting the film, etc etc etc...

LOL! PARA-DIG-UM FAIL!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not that I would ever suggest a Nazi connection but I do wonder if Kevin was just following orders? ;-)

I wonder if Kevin knows how much Hitler was influenced by christianity, and just how irrelevant to the factual accuracy of either evolutionary biology or christianity such "arguments" are. I wonder a lot of things like this.

Louis

P.S. You think in LOLSpeak? I'd love to claim that's a bad thing but I had a dream in LOLSpeak the other night where I was discussing something with the guy I did my PhD with, so I'm going to go all out and claim this makes you a genius. Also "I has (a) you" has become something of a deliberately nauseating catchphrase at work. This one, at least, is not my fault. The endless repetions of  "where are caek DAMMIT" might be though. I'm working out how to fit it into my annual review. I foresee: EPIC FAIL! lol
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,13:38

Carlsonjok: I'm not trying to duck a bullet here; you are. I believe Weikart's arguments linking Darwinian science to Hitler's ethics are credible. Rather than stand and mock, study them for yourself and then offer a reasoned response.
Posted by: Shirley Knott on April 07 2008,13:41

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:28)
JohnW said, "If you're claiming that Darwinian science and philosophy was the primary, or even a major, influence on his ideas, I'd like to see some evidence."

I'd highly recommend you read Richard Weikart's book, "From Darwin to Hitler." In it, Weikart presents loads of evidence that Darwinian science had a significant influence on Hitler.

"And on a related note, what are the "logical ethical conclusions" of Darwinian science?"

Essentially, that humans are not qualitatively different from any other animal, that ethics and morals only exist in the human mind, that they are merely evolutionary adaptations as opposed to universal truths, etc. Weikart goes into full detail on this in his book as well.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What about the pernicious effect of Lutheranism on Hitler?
Considerably stronger than Darwinism, and much much easier to document.

As to your ridiculous point about the "ethical implications" of Darwinism being that "ethics and morality are all in the mind", I, for one, would love to see a logical argument that starts from Darwin's work and finds any way at all to bring ethics into mind.
And then explain why this is true, in your world, for ethics, but not for the absolute truth of, oh, say, 2+2=4, or pi aproximates 3.14159.
Do please try, it is your argument, pitiful tho it may be, and it should be elaborated on and defended, or dropped as the poxy whore-son babble that it truly is.

no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott
any one of whose professors would have eviscerated her for such an absurd claim as KW's
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,13:43

Louis said, "I wonder if Kevin knows how much Hitler was influenced by christianity, and just how irrelevant to the factual accuracy of either evolutionary biology or christianity such "arguments" are."

I'm fully aware of how Hitler was influenced by christianity, enough to know that he fully rejected Christian ethics as weak and unnatural. His overriding ethic was that only the strongest should be allowed to survive. That was the rule of nature, so we should do everything possible to help evolution along. How does this bear on the factual accuracy of evolutionary biology? Not at all. But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it? All scientific theories and philosophies have consequences, intended or otherwise. So you can't just pretend like the connection doesn't exist. Hitler isn't the only one to pick up on the ethical implications of Darwinism. They were evident to Darwin himself and everyone else who initially heard his theory.
Posted by: JohnW on April 07 2008,13:43

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,11:28)
JohnW said, "If you're claiming that Darwinian science and philosophy was the primary, or even a major, influence on his ideas, I'd like to see some evidence."

I'd highly recommend you read Richard Weikart's book, "From Darwin to Hitler." In it, Weikart presents loads of evidence that Darwinian science had a significant influence on Hitler.

"And on a related note, what are the "logical ethical conclusions" of Darwinian science?"

Essentially, that humans are not qualitatively different from any other animal, that ethics and morals only exist in the human mind, that they are merely evolutionary adaptations as opposed to universal truths, etc. Weikart goes into full detail on this in his book as well.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Explain why it would be worth my while, Kevin.  Tell me about the loads of evidence.  Given that Weikard is a DI fellow, and the Discovery Institute's record of integrity and accuracy is something less than stellar, I'm not going to devote time and/or money to this without a good reason to do so.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 07 2008,13:46

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:38)
Carlsonjok: I'm not trying to duck a bullet here; you are. I believe Weikart's arguments linking Darwinian science to Hitler's ethics are credible. Rather than stand and mock, study them for yourself and then offer a reasoned response.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought I just got through offering Kevin an opportunity to do exactly that with respect to a claim he made concerning the fossil record. I seem to recall being thoroughly snubbed on that.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 07 2008,13:46

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:38)
Carlsonjok: I'm not trying to duck a bullet here; you are. I believe Weikart's arguments linking Darwinian science to Hitler's ethics are credible. Rather than stand and mock, study them for yourself and then offer a reasoned response.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, you pretty much ducked right into the punch. I was alluding to the influence of Christian thought on Hitler, but you apparently are a bit slow to catch on.  Never let it be said I am not a generous sort, so allow me to state that "Gott Mit Uns" is, as you might expect, German for "God is with us" and was found on SS belt buckles.  

So, your mission, if you choose to accept it (and I am willing to bet you won't) is to explain why the integration of overtly Christian language into Hitler's speeches and writings should be held to a different standard to the far more scattered and oblique references to evolution.  For bonus points, explain away the influence of the virulently anti-semitic Martin Luther.

For more info, < see here >
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,13:48

JohnW: I understand your skepticism re: Weikart. I was skeptical when I picked up the book as well. And Weikart, himself, was skeptical when he started down the road to researching the topic. And in no way does he draw a direct line from Darwin to Hitler or say that Darwinian science was the defining influence on Hitler's ethics. Hitler's influences are complicated and difficult to trace, but there's no doubt that Darwinian science was a significant factor. Just where or how he imbibed these ideas is still not quite clear. The book is well researched and well substantiated by quotes from original sources as well as other scholarly works on the topic. This is not a shrill tome that's bent on proving Wiekart's thesis no matter what. I do believe it is a fair and balanced treatment of the evidence.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,13:50

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:43)
Louis said, "I wonder if Kevin knows how much Hitler was influenced by christianity, and just how irrelevant to the factual accuracy of either evolutionary biology or christianity such "arguments" are."

I'm fully aware of how Hitler was influenced by christianity, enough to know that he fully rejected Christian ethics as weak and unnatural. His overriding ethic was that only the strongest should be allowed to survive. That was the rule of nature, so we should do everything possible to help evolution along. How does this bear on the factual accuracy of evolutionary biology? Not at all. But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it? All scientific theories and philosophies have consequences, intended or otherwise. So you can't just pretend like the connection doesn't exist. Hitler isn't the only one to pick up on the ethical implications of Darwinism. They were evident to Darwin himself and everyone else who initially heard his theory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quotes from Adolf Hitler Expressing Belief & Faith in God


Adolf Hitler had Faith in God that His Agenda was Divinely Ordained If Adolf Hitler was an atheist, why did he keep saying that he believed in God, had faith in God, and was convinced that he was doing God's work? Adolf Hitler was not just certain that his attacks on Jews were divinely mandated, but also his efforts to clamp down on society by restoring traditional morality. Christian apologists only seem to claim that Hitler was an atheist because they cannot handle the idea that a Christian theist would cause so much evil in the name of their God.


1. Adolf Hitler: Acting According to God's Will


I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 2


2. Adolf Hitler: Thanking God


Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 5


3. Adolf Hitler: Deutschland Über Alles


I had so often sung 'Deutschland über Alles' and shouted 'Heil' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 5


4. Adolf Hitler: God's Grace Smiles


Once again the songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful children.


- Adolf Hitler reflecting on World War I, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 7


5. Adolf Hitler: Fulfilling God's Mission


What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 8


6. Adolf Hitler: Fate of God


But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 10


7. Adolf Hitler: Sin Against the Will of God


In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following: (a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered; (b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 11


8. Adolf Hitler: Sacrilege Against God


Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1


9. Adolf Hitler: Confidence in God


Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 1


10. Adolf Hitler: Gold has Replaced God


It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2


11. Adolf Hitler: Sin Against the Will of God


It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2


12. Adolf Hitler: Creation of God


That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2


13. Adolf Hitler: Don't Just Talk About Fulfilling God's Will


The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will.


- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 10


14. Adolf Hitler: Doing Justice to God


To do justice to God and our own conscience, we have turned once more to the German Volk.


- Adolf Hitler in speech about the need for a moral regeneration of German, February 10, 1933


15. Adolf Hitler: Going Where God Wills


I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.


- Adolf Hitler, Speech, March 15, 1936, Munich, Germany


16. Adolf Hitler: May God Bless Us


May divine providence bless us with enough courage and enough determination to perceive within ourselves this holy German space.


- Adolf Hitler, Speech, March 24, 1933


17. Adolf Hitler: When We Appear Before God...


We don't ask the Almighty, 'Lord, make us free!" We want to be active, to work, to work together, so that when the hour comes that we appear before the Lord we can say to him: 'Lord, you see that we have changed.' The German people is no longer a people of dishonor and shame, of self-destructiveness and cowardice. No, Lord, the German people is once more strong in spirit, strong in determination, strong in the willingness to bear every sacrifice. Lord, now bless our battle and our freedom, and therefore our German people and fatherland.


- Adolf Hitler, Prayer, May 1, 1933


18. Adolf Hitler: Fighting for the Lord's Work


I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.


- Adolf Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936


19. Adolf Hitler in Conversation with Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber


The Catholic Church should not deceive herself: if National Socialism does not succeed in defeating Bolshevism, then Church and Christianity in Europe too are finished. Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of the Church as much as of Fascism. ...Man cannot exist without belief in God. The soldier who for three and four days lies under intense bombardment needs a religious prop.


- Adolf Hitler in conversation with Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Bavaria, November 4, 1936




from < http://atheism.about.com/od.....01.htm >
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,13:52

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:10)
Here's my response, Arden: I was involved in writing the film, not marketing it. The decisions about who does and who doesn't get to see a pre-screening of the film are entirely in the hands of our producers and our marketing team. If you sincerely want an answer to your question, I suggest you contact Motive Marketing or Premise Media.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How do you feel about their lying to viewers, and do you consider it to be consistent with Christian belief?
Posted by: ERV on April 07 2008,13:53

Quote (Louis @ April 07 2008,13:36)
Not that I would ever suggest a Nazi connection but I do wonder if Kevin was just following orders? ;-)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How did you know what I was thinking??  I think youre right about the genius thing.  What is your IQ score, calibrated by your SAT scores at the age of 23?  I find that scale to be the most useful.

Anyway Kevin, as much as Im enjoying your tap-dance routine here, just gotta put this out there since you apparently *dont know* some things about your own movie: If you dont know who the fall guy is, its you.

btw-- < FAIL, loser. >
Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 07 2008,13:54

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,12:49)
Hey Wes: For the record, I'm not ticked off with you. If you'll notice, I also put myself (and all other Kevin Millers on imdb) into the mofo category. It's a tongue in cheek thing. I may not agree with a lot of what people like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers have to say, but I still admire their chutzpah, and I’d gladly have a beer with them (and you) any time. So wear it as a badge of honor. I'm just trying to have a little fun here.

As for your responses to my statements, despite appearances to the contrary, I'm not coming into this discussion with the assumption, "Everything Wes Elsberry says is wrong." I am listening, and pondering. And I am open to revising my views in light of new and better information. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't dive into a line-by-line response to your posts right away. It’s not an admission of defeat. I just need time to process the various arguments. (Plus, it's been a busy weekend, we have a new baby in the house, and I'm just plain tired.) But even if it turns out that everything you’ve said is right and everything I’ve said is wrong, I’m okay with that, because for me, this has never been about winning or losing. It's about learning. The only thing that really matters to me is getting at the truth, because the truth benefits everyone no matter what side of the debate they’re on. Contrary to how some critics have depicted the film, Expelled is not about promoting a singular point of view, namely, Intelligent Design. It’s about ensuring that all points of view receive a fair and adequate hearing. We made this film because we had good reason to believe that this was not the case with ID, and I stand by that assertion. In addition, my hope is that the film will prompt people on all sides of the issue to engage with one another. Because what I've observed over the past two years is complete polarization. The various camps sit in their respective corners cackling about how stupid the other guys are, but they rarely talk to each other—except to hurl insults. Very few people engaged in this debate seem open to an honest pursuit of the truth. Most are more interested in scoring debating points, looking clever, and promoting their own agenda.

So what I’m trying to do both here and on my blog is engage. In the process, I may say some things that come off as stupid, ignorant or inflammatory. I may hurl a few insults from time to time, and I may needle a few people who need to be needled. After all, I’m only human. But the learning process is often messy and confused. So you’ll have to excuse me if I cack up the joint from time to time.

In light of the above, I do want to ask Wes (and anyone else who cares to respond) a couple of questions:

1) How does science distinguish between a paradigm problem and a research problem? In other words, when a researcher encounters an anomaly, how does he/she determine whether the anomaly is a result of a problem with the data rather than a problem with the theory under which the data is being examined?

2) I understand that you're a Christian, Wes. And yet I get the sense that you believe divine influence is not something that should be factored into your study of the natural world. Fair enough. So my question is, if God doesn't influence the world through natural processes, such as evolution, how does he engage with nature? For example, I assume that you pray. How does God answer your prayers? Does he do so in any scientifically detectable way? Or do you take the Ken Miller approach and say he influences things on the quantum level in a way that we are unable to observe?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll have a go, Kevin.

1) All those statistical methods and repetitions that scientists perform are their way of checking the data. On the other hand, paradigm problems occur when the current theory is meeting events that it can't explain.

Relativity, for example, came about when Newtonian gravity just wasn't working at the scale of planets. Einstein showed that his way was much better, and everyone saw that it was true. No all-interpretations-are-equal there: relativity explained what they saw, and Newton didn't.

Or take quantum theory. Classical physics wasn't working - scientists were getting silly results like infinite energies being radiated in the ultraviolet frequency, and they couldn't explain why electrons were able to orbit nuclei without losing energy and spiralling in. It took a scientist to take the utterly stupid step of fudging the math to pretend that all the electrons were stuck in energy levels, and everyone laughed at him (I think it was Bohr) - until they found that it predicted what they were seeing perfectly.

Note the common theme in those two. They made predictions which they then showed to be true. If you can do that, you don't NEED this debate.

The theory of evolution HAS done this part already. It predicts the pattern of life on Earth to astonishing accuracy.

ID, on the other hand... it's hard even to tell exactly what they're trying to do. Can you name even one prediction of ID? I can't. About the most you can get out of them is 'junk DNA has function' (an old creationist claim, of course, but what do you expect), and if you ask them how that prediction follows from their theory then you'll hear a lot of running away before you realise that there is no theory from which to make predictions. Seriously. There is no logical link between the various scraps that IDers throw about. It's pretty pathetic.

I'm not making any of that up. Check for yourself. See if you can do it. And see if you can get them to tell you how to do it, which is even harder.

2) There isn't anything to stop God throwing lightning bolts or inseminating women. Science doesn't rule that out - it just says we can't study it, because we can't repeat observations. You have mixed up 'science cannot describe this' with 'this does not happen'. No one says science explains everything. It doesn't.

If we regularly saw God chuck lightning bolts out of the sky, we could take measurements of the kind of electricity he uses. How much more powerful is divine lightning? What's the spectrum of that? How does he target people without it being attracted by other bodies? We can experiment and theorise.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,13:54

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:15)
JohnW: Like it or not, Hitler was influenced by Darwinian science and philosophy. So it's not about scoring points, looking clever or promoting an agenda. It's about setting the record straight. Whether Hitler hijacked Darwinian science for his own purposes or merely followed it to its logical ethical conclusions is a matter of debate. As I've said elsewhere, Expelled didn't invent these arguments. So if you want to quibble over them, I direct you to the people who make them in our film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Martin Luther was a vastly bigger influence on Hitler. (Hitler never once mentions Darwin, though he mentioned Jesus and God plenty of times.) So can I rely on you to make your next film denouncing Martin Luther, and, by extension, Protestantism?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,13:54

Carlsonjok said, "Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to explain why the integration of overtly Christian language into Hitler's speeches and writings should be held to a different standard to the far more scattered and oblique references to evolution.  For bonus points, explain away the influence of the virulently anti-semitic Martin Luther."

I'm not saying they should be held to a different standard. I'm saying exactly the opposite. Just as Christians can't gloss over the fact that Hitler used elements of Christianity to justify his actions, neither can proponents of Darwinian evolution gloss over the fact that Hitler did the same with this theory. As for Luther's influence on Hitler's anti-semitism, there's no need to explain it away. It's patently clear. No one is saying Darwinian science inspired Hitler's anti-semitism, he just used it to provide a scientific justification for what he believed.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,13:57

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:54)
As for Luther's influence on Hitler's anti-semitism, there's no need to explain it away. It's patently clear. No one is saying Darwinian science inspired Hitler's anti-semitism,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Last I checked, that's exactly what Ben Stein says. He seems to think antisemitism never existed in Europe until 1933, or perhaps 1859 at the earliest.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 07 2008,13:57

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 07 2008,13:31)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:15)
As I've said elsewhere, Expelled didn't invent these arguments. So if you want to quibble over them, I direct you to the people who make them in our film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You know as a writer working on a film called "Crossroads", that explores the intersection between science and religion, I would have thought that you might feel some responsibility to ensure that such bold statements were supported by the facts. Of course, you are just the writer. We probably can't hold you responsible, since it is the producer who is, ultimately, in charge. You were probably just following orders.

But, fear not, friend. When you and the Expelled team start feeling beseiged by all those nasty evolutionists, just get together and remind each other that "Gott Mit Uns."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


For Kevin:

I think that in the German, this is "befel est befel".

It means "I was only following orders". You heard a lot of Germans uttering these words.  In Nuremburg, in 1945 and 1946.  We hung a lot of the knuckleheads that tried to use this defense.  

Would you like to try again?
Posted by: Louis on April 07 2008,13:57

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,19:43)
[SNIP]

But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it?

[SNIP]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


O RLY?

Evidence please, what else is evolutionary biology about if it isn't science? Can I have a shadowy conspiracy theory please. Don't disappoint.

I'd also love to see your rationalisation for Hitler abandoning christian ethics, given the very well documented links and Lutheran precedents he had for certain ideas. No doubt you'll equivocate on "christian". I think I'll leave it to the massing hoardes to point out just how wrong you are about this. And even then, it's still a total irrelevance.

The "debate" exists because the doctrines of a limited number of predominantly christian (although by no means exclusively so) religious sects are believed by their adherents to be in conflict with certain aspects of modern science. These sects have been lobbying for decades, particularly and most obivously in the USA, for their dislike of these certain aspects of modern science to be legislated for. Period. Your delusions to the contrary are not evidence. Your ignorance is not evidence. Your obvious bias and prejudice is not evidence.

Louis
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,14:00

But Hitler never mentions Darwin. Are we playing 6 degrees of Adolf Hitler? Kevin Bacon should have told him that the rich history of Biblical genocide predates Darwin, artificial selection (which we've know about since the year dot - pets, crops, etc) is not natural selection and arguing to [perceived] consequences is idiocy - reality is not contingent on our approval.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,14:01

Venus: Thanks for taking my questions seriously. I have a question about your second response:

You said, "There isn't anything to stop God throwing lightning bolts or inseminating women. Science doesn't rule that out - it just says we can't study it, because we can't repeat observations. You have mixed up 'science cannot describe this' with 'this does not happen'. No one says science explains everything. It doesn't."

Actually, lots of people say science explains everything. That's why we have no need for God. But that's beside the point. If God does influence this world, is this influence measureable in any scientific way? If not, how can it be detected? I'm really interested to hear from anyone who approaches this from a theistic position.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,14:03

Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point. His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
Posted by: Louis on April 07 2008,14:04

Quote (ERV @ April 07 2008,19:53)
Quote (Louis @ April 07 2008,13:36)
Not that I would ever suggest a Nazi connection but I do wonder if Kevin was just following orders? ;-)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How did you know what I was thinking??  I think youre right about the genius thing.  What is your IQ score, calibrated by your SAT scores at the age of 23?  I find that scale to be the most useful.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


{deeeeeep breath}

MY IQ IS 15000 CALCULATED BY TAKING THE RATIO OF MY NUMBER OF BRAIN CELLS TO MY WAIST SIZE. I AM A CHEEZY POOF LOVING AUTODEFIBRILATOR WHO WOULD ONLY DO IT WITH AN ESKIMO WOMAN IF SHE BEGGED ME AT LEAST TWICE AS HARD AS A NORMAL WOMAN. WOMEN ALL BEG TO HAVE MY CHILDRENS. I AM EXCEEDINGLY WELL ARMED AND HAVE BRED A DOG DAVETARD HYBRID PACK TO GUARD MY PROPERTY PORTFOLIO WHICH IS WORTH $180000000000 AND WAS GIVEN TO ME BY MICHAEL DELL AFTER I PERFORMED AN INTIMATE PERSONAL SERVICE ON HIM A COUPLE OF TIMES. JUST CALL ME DYSON.

I DON'T LIKE CLOWNS. FEAR TEH CLOWNS. HOMOS


{breathes out cleansing breath}

Louis

P.S. I can't take Kevin seriously. The concern trolling, it's just too much. She canna take any more Captain. If we get one more millikobold of concern trolling she'll blow. {mutters something about trilithium, after all Star Trek (of which I am not a fan) had more science in it than IDC. And THAT is saying something}
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 07 2008,14:06

I'm not one who would claim that evolutionary ideas could not have played a role in Nazism.  But of course it would be one thing to note how eugenics (which certainly preceded Darwin--and Mendel) might have used "Darwinism" as a vehicle and influenced the Nazis, and quite another to suppose that "Darwinism" caused Nazism.

Hitler was badly abused as a boy, and much of his psyche was predictable (and predicted, even) according to the abused child syndrome.  What one has to do after noting that, is to look at the cultural influences surrounding him (after all, the Nazi party cannot really be thought of as separate from him--prior to him it was a different party), eugenicists, Luther, European anti-Semitism (which, contrary to what many think, was not particularly strong in Germany in the 19th century), World War I and Versailles, and the occult.

In fact, it is believed that the occult probably had a major influence upon Hitler and the other Nazis, for Jews were portrayed in the occult as unclean devilish characters.  Luther and the eugenicists in fact are probably lesser influences, even if useful in Nazi propaganda, because Hitler probably wasn't really a Christian, and killing gypsies and Jews wasn't eugenics (how stupid are the IDiots?  They keep trying to pretend that massacring the Jews was eugenics, when it wasn't that at all?).

European anti-Semitism played a major role, of course (coupled with Christian conceptions of blood guilt upon the Jews), and the idea that international Jewish conspiracies were behind the Versailles treaty was common among the Nazis.

Any honest (leaves Kevin out--I don't care how ignorant he is, he has an obligation to learn about issues before he writes a movie script about those issues) historical evaluation of Nazis and their atrocities will include these matters (including why eugenics and Luther were useful to propagandize the public) and many others as well.  Simplistic garbage is what we get from Kevin and his cohorts, by contrast, and we're supposed to read the prejudiced account of Weikert.

Forget it Kevin.  I've studied reasonably well for a layperson into this, and while I don't deny that there could be a "Darwinist" component to the growth of the Nazis, no one has the evidence to suggest that "Darwinism" was necessary to the triumph of the Nazi party in Germany.  There are much larger causal factors (while "Darwinism," as I pointed out, isn't even certain as a causal factor, even if it is likely a vehicle for causes behind the Nazis) that cannot be dismissed at all, from Hitler's boyhood abuse, to the aftermath of World War I and occult depictions of Jews.  Any "Darwinistic" component pales by comparison, and the theory of evolution cannot even be shown to be a causal factor, let alone an important vehicle for other causes driving Nazism.

The truth is that Kevin relies on junk history as much as he does junk science to write his dishonest movie.  This indicates that, far from being a threat to evolution alone, ID threatens all of scholarship if it manages to hijack the government for its sectarian goals.  The fact that the movie is so inept and unconvincing to anyone with a decent education is our main hope that the movie will not whip up the kind of mob mentality that fascists have always relied upon.

Glen D
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,14:07

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:03)
Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point. His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwinian language and ideas! Really. Natural selection, not artificial selection, which predates Darwin by millenia?

Link me up, Kevin!! I'll have a look!

Strange how he does all that without saying "Darwin". Still arguing to phantom consequences? Even if your Hitler-Darwin link was true, would that make NDE any less real?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,14:07

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:03)
Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Beside the point? Well, if you want to lie about AH's motives, I can see that being 'beside the point'.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Given the far vaster influence that Jesus and Luther had on AH, I fail to see why don't blame them for Hitler. (And of course, write movies condemning Luther and Christianity.)

Again, do you think that it is consistent with Christianity for your promoters to deliberately lie about your movie to potential viewers?
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 07 2008,14:07

Somebody remind me.  What do Nazis have to do with "Expelled?"

Kevin?  Kevin?  Anybody?
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 07 2008,14:08

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:01)
Actually, lots of people say science explains everything. That's why we have no need for God.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But none of them are scientists; most of them are religionists like yourself, with a minimal yet twisted concept of what science is all about.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,14:09

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,14:07)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:03)
Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point. His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwinian language and ideas! Really. Natural selection, not artificial selection, which predates Darwin by millenia?

Link me up, Kevin!! I'll have a look!

Strange how he does all that without saying "Darwin". Still arguing to phantom consequences? Even if your Hitler-Darwin link was true, would that make NDE any less real?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh, I found the quote Kevin's talking about, on page 926 of Mein Kampf:

"Since I am an atheist, when I come into power in Germany in 11 years, I will kill all the Jews. In this I am merely following the orders of that English guy who wrote that Origin of Species book. Unfortunately I can't remember his name right now, but you know who I mean."
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 07 2008,14:14

Kevin may be interested in some video of a debate I had with William Dembski.

Haverford conference video, 2001/06/17:

< William Dembski's presentation >

< My presentation >

< Dembski and Elsberry panel >

< Dembski and Elsberry audience Q&A >

< My PowerPoint file for presentation >
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,14:14

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,14:09)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,14:07)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:03)
Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point. His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwinian language and ideas! Really. Natural selection, not artificial selection, which predates Darwin by millenia?

Link me up, Kevin!! I'll have a look!

Strange how he does all that without saying "Darwin". Still arguing to phantom consequences? Even if your Hitler-Darwin link was true, would that make NDE any less real?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh, I found the quote Kevin's talking about, on page 926 of Mein Kampf:

"Since I am an atheist, when I come into power in Germany in 11 years, I will kill all the Jews. In this I am merely following the orders of that English guy who wrote that Origin of Species book. Unfortunately I can't remember his name right now, but you know who I mean."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Louis on April 07 2008,14:14

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,20:03)
Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point. His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nature red in tooth and claw precedes Darwin, precedes modern evolutionary biology even.

You knew that, right?

Oh wait, this isn't about facts for you is it, it's about implications, or rather the implications YOU see as being present. Heard of the Is/Ought fallacy? Look it up.

Louis
Posted by: Bob O'H on April 07 2008,14:21



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's not because evolutionary biology has never been just about the science, it's because creationism has never been just about the science.  You've managed to spot the wrong culprit in a short-list of two.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'm not saying they should be held to a different standard. I'm saying exactly the opposite. Just as Christians can't gloss over the fact that Hitler used elements of Christianity to justify his actions, neither can proponents of Darwinian evolution gloss over the fact that Hitler did the same with this theory. As for Luther's influence on Hitler's anti-semitism, there's no need to explain it away. It's patently clear. No one is saying Darwinian science inspired Hitler's anti-semitism, he just used it to provide a scientific justification for what he believed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So how did Crossroads, a film about the relationship between science and religion, only discuss the effects of science on Hitler, and not religion?  Or was that part expunged after the script was written?
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 07 2008,14:21

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:54)
I'm not saying they should be held to a different standard. I'm saying exactly the opposite. Just as Christians can't gloss over the fact that Hitler used elements of Christianity to justify his actions, neither can proponents of Darwinian evolution gloss over the fact that Hitler did the same with this theory. As for Luther's influence on Hitler's anti-semitism, there's no need to explain it away. It's patently clear. No one is saying Darwinian science inspired Hitler's anti-semitism, he just used it to provide a scientific justification for what he believed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But, you are holding them to a different standard.  You are using Hitler's supposed misuse of science as a cudgel against scientists and scientific concepts you don't like, while handwaving away the influence of religion.  If you were to hold science to the same standard as religion vis-a-vis Nazism, you wouldn't have a movie.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,14:24

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 07 2008,14:21)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:54)
I'm not saying they should be held to a different standard. I'm saying exactly the opposite. Just as Christians can't gloss over the fact that Hitler used elements of Christianity to justify his actions, neither can proponents of Darwinian evolution gloss over the fact that Hitler did the same with this theory. As for Luther's influence on Hitler's anti-semitism, there's no need to explain it away. It's patently clear. No one is saying Darwinian science inspired Hitler's anti-semitism, he just used it to provide a scientific justification for what he believed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But, you are holding them to a different standard.  You are using Hitler's supposed misuse of science as a cudgel against scientists and scientific concepts you don't like, while handwaving away the influence of religion.  If you were to hold science to the same standard as religion vis-a-vis Nazism, you wouldn't have a movie.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You wouldn't have a [Fundy] audience, is closer to the truth, I suspect...
Posted by: stevestory on April 07 2008,14:26

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:49)
Because what I've observed over the past two years is complete polarization. The various camps sit in their respective corners cackling about how stupid the other guys are, but they rarely talk to each other—except to hurl insults. Very few people engaged in this debate seem open to an honest pursuit of the truth. Most are more interested in scoring debating points, looking clever, and promoting their own agenda.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He says this, then goes to his typewriter and types "Darwin makes Nazis eat your babies!!!!1111"

What a piece of work.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 07 2008,14:27

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,14:09)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,14:07)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:03)
Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point. His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwinian language and ideas! Really. Natural selection, not artificial selection, which predates Darwin by millenia?

Link me up, Kevin!! I'll have a look!

Strange how he does all that without saying "Darwin". Still arguing to phantom consequences? Even if your Hitler-Darwin link was true, would that make NDE any less real?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh, I found the quote Kevin's talking about, on page 926 of Mein Kampf:

"Since I am an atheist, when I come into power in Germany in 11 years, I will kill all the Jews. In this I am merely following the orders of that English guy who wrote that Origin of Species book. Unfortunately I can't remember his name right now, but you know who I mean."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Arden - Good, solid research work.

And in MY copy of Mein Kampf, presented to me with my Anthropology Degree, by The Darwinista Cabal, on Page 927, Hitler writes about a eugenic experiment he would have his Darwinian followers perform, involving a goat, a couple of gerbils and a Certain "Mrs XXXX Miller."

In one of the few humorous moments in the book, Hitler really opens up and shows his lighter side when "poking it to the chimp-boy Kevin" that would be the result of his influence by his favorite English author D___.
Posted by: JohnW on April 07 2008,14:29

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,11:54)
Carlsonjok said, "Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to explain why the integration of overtly Christian language into Hitler's speeches and writings should be held to a different standard to the far more scattered and oblique references to evolution.  For bonus points, explain away the influence of the virulently anti-semitic Martin Luther."

I'm not saying they should be held to a different standard. I'm saying exactly the opposite. Just as Christians can't gloss over the fact that Hitler used elements of Christianity to justify his actions, neither can proponents of Darwinian evolution gloss over the fact that Hitler did the same with this theory. As for Luther's influence on Hitler's anti-semitism, there's no need to explain it away. It's patently clear. No one is saying Darwinian science inspired Hitler's anti-semitism, he just used it to provide a scientific justification for what he believed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But you are holding them to a different standard.

You are saying (as, I gather, is Weikard) that Hitler mentions evolution, therefore evolution is an indispensible part of Hitler's worldview, and therefore the Holocaust is Darwin's fault.  Hitler's much more extensive use of Christian language and ideas, however, is not held to the same standard - it does not mean that it's also Jesus' fault*.


* In case it's not clear, I don't think it's Jesus' fault either.  Christianity, like the theory of evolution, has been cited as justification for everything from fascism to laissez-faire capitalism to communism to anarchism.  What that says to me is that both Christianity and evolution say nothing at all about politics.  People take out of them exactly what they brought in.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,14:30

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,14:14)
 
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,14:09)
   
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,14:07)
   
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:03)
Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point. His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwinian language and ideas! Really. Natural selection, not artificial selection, which predates Darwin by millenia?

Link me up, Kevin!! I'll have a look!

Strange how he does all that without saying "Darwin". Still arguing to phantom consequences? Even if your Hitler-Darwin link was true, would that make NDE any less real?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ooh, I found the quote Kevin's talking about, on page 926 of Mein Kampf:

"Since I am an atheist, when I come into power in Germany in 11 years, I will kill all the Jews. In this I am merely following the orders of that English guy who wrote that Origin of Species book. Unfortunately I can't remember his name right now, but you know who I mean."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,14:33

Albatrossity said, "But none of them are scientists; most of them are religionists like yourself, with a minimal yet twisted concept of what science is all about."

Is this how you would describe PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Will Provine and Eugenie Scott?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,14:35

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:33)
Albatrossity said, "But none of them are scientists; most of them are religionists like yourself, with a minimal yet twisted concept of what science is all about."

Is this how you would describe PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Will Provine and Eugenie Scott?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You're dodging an awful lot of questions, Kevin.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,14:36

Thank you for the links, Wes. I will definitely have a look.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,14:36

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,14:35)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:33)
Albatrossity said, "But none of them are scientists; most of them are religionists like yourself, with a minimal yet twisted concept of what science is all about."

Is this how you would describe PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Will Provine and Eugenie Scott?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You're dodging an awful lot of questions, Kevin.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwin ----> "Darwinist Language" ---> Hitler?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on April 07 2008,14:37

Rich: Always with the question-dodging.
Posted by: stevestory on April 07 2008,14:38

Quote (Louis @ April 07 2008,15:14)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,20:03)
Rich: Whether or not Hitler ever mentioned Darwin is completely beside the point. His writings and speeches are rife with Darwinian language and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nature red in tooth and claw precedes Darwin, precedes modern evolutionary biology even.

You knew that, right?

Oh wait, this isn't about facts for you is it, it's about implications, or rather the implications YOU see as being present. Heard of the Is/Ought fallacy? Look it up.

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Any decent Philosophy of Science class would do Kevin a world of good and prevent him from making embarrassing mistakes.
Posted by: Thought Provoker on April 07 2008,14:39

Hi Kevin,

Something I would like to emphasize for you to address.

Do you understand Glen's point that eugenics clearly preceded Darwin?

The Spartans threw deformed babies off a cliff for the purpose of improving the quality of their soldiers.

Is this the kind of implied "Darwinism" you are painting the Nazi's with?

How are you so certain Nazism was influenced by more than simple the eugenics practiced by Spartans and dog groomers for centuries when Hitler made no reference to Darwin or his research?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,14:40

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:37)
Rich: Always with the question-dodging.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do you have an answer for me as to how you rationalize your promoters lying to 'undesirables' to keep them away from your movie, and how this squares with Christianity?

Do you have an answer for why you blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, but not Luther or Christianity?

Didn't think so.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,14:40

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:37)
Rich: Always with the question-dodging.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You've never answered any question in a comprehensive way, Kevin.

"See the film!"
"Some other church-Tard told me! Take it up with him"
"We have the same epistemological issues!"
"Yes, I knew about that already, it just didn't make the final cut!"

Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,14:42

Quote (stevestory @ April 07 2008,14:38)
Any decent Philosophy of Science class would do Kevin a world of good and prevent him from making embarrassing mistakes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Embarrassing at 1000 theatres near you!

Like all of ID, its about moving product to Fundies, not searching for anything of meaning.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 07 2008,14:42

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,11:38)
Carlsonjok: I'm not trying to duck a bullet here; you are. I believe Weikart's arguments linking Darwinian science to Hitler's ethics are credible. Rather than stand and mock, study them for yourself and then offer a reasoned response.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You have very arrogantly assumed we have not read Weikart’s trash book.  I have it on my lap at the moment I write this.  It is so full of crap I could fertilize a cornfield with it.  But in order to know this you would actually need to read the original authors Weikart misrepresented, Darwin not the least, but dozens of others.  Even recent historians such as Robert Proctor are misrepresented by Weikart.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 07 2008,14:44

I think Kevin is going to re-play the famous gambit of The Sgt Schultz Defense:  I Know Nothing!  Ask The Producers!



edited
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 07 2008,14:44

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,14:40)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:37)
Rich: Always with the question-dodging.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do you have an answer for me as to how you rationalize your promoters lying to 'undesirables' to keep them away from your movie, and how this squares with Christianity?

Do you have an answer for why you blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, but not Luther or Christianity?

Didn't think so.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let me help, Arden.


Posted by: Quidam on April 07 2008,14:46

Quote (JohnW @ April 07 2008,13:29)
You are saying (as, I gather, is Weikard) that Hitler mentions evolution, therefore evolution is an indispensible part of Hitler's worldview, and therefore the Holocaust is Darwin's fault.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't think Hitler ever mentioned Evolution or Darwin  in any writings or speeches. Please prove me wrong.

Whatever 'Darwinian language' there may be it has to be imagined into his works. Simple assertions that talk of racial purity and weakening bllodlines is not 'Darwinian language',  it is Biblical language:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ezra
9:1 Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.  
9:2 For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass
...
9:11 Which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying, The land, unto which ye go to possess it, is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness.  
9:12 Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth for ever: that ye may be strong, and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Occam's Aftershave on April 07 2008,14:54



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'm not saying they should be held to a different standard. I'm saying exactly the opposite. Just as Christians can't gloss over the fact that Hitler used elements of Christianity to justify his actions, neither can proponents of Darwinian evolution gloss over the fact that Hitler did the same with this theory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hitler used high explosives and poison gas too.  Why isn't Expelled going after those nasty chemists and their atomic theory of chemistry?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As for Luther's influence on Hitler's anti-semitism, there's no need to explain it away. It's patently clear. No one is saying Darwinian science inspired Hitler's anti-semitism, he just used it to provide a scientific justification for what he believed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The Unabomber used the industrial revolution as a scientific justification for his murders.  Does that mean the industrial revolution is evil and wrong, and that we should go back to the 1700's?

Why do you think the misapplication of a scientific theory for nefarious purposes somehow invalidates the theory itself?
Posted by: stevestory on April 07 2008,14:55

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,15:42)
Quote (stevestory @ April 07 2008,14:38)
Any decent Philosophy of Science class would do Kevin a world of good and prevent him from making embarrassing mistakes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Embarrassing at 1000 theatres near you!

Like all of ID, its about moving product to Fundies, not searching for anything of meaning.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, you're probably right, I was just trying to give Kevin the benefit of the doubt and assume he has no understanding of science, philosophy, or 1,000 years of Europeans murdering Jews, not that he did and is just lying.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 07 2008,14:57

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:33)
Albatrossity said, "But none of them are scientists; most of them are religionists like yourself, with a minimal yet twisted concept of what science is all about."

Is this how you would describe PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Will Provine and Eugenie Scott?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry kevintyleven, you'll need to bring those goalposts back over here.

Show me where one of those says, as you claimed in < this comment >, that "science explains everything".
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,14:57

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 07 2008,14:44)
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,14:40)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:37)
Rich: Always with the question-dodging.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do you have an answer for me as to how you rationalize your promoters lying to 'undesirables' to keep them away from your movie, and how this squares with Christianity?

Do you have an answer for why you blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, but not Luther or Christianity?

Didn't think so.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let me help, Arden.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This whole debate is much clearer with three lolcats.
Posted by: BopDiddy on April 07 2008,15:02

Ok, here's me trying to piece this all together in my mind.

(My bolding)

       
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:54)
As for Luther's influence on Hitler's anti-semitism, there's no need to explain it away. It's patently clear. No one is saying Darwinian science inspired Hitler's anti-semitism,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



         
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:43)
But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it? All scientific theories and philosophies have consequences, intended or otherwise. So you can't just pretend like the connection doesn't exist. Hitler isn't the only one to pick up on the ethical implications of Darwinism. They were evident to Darwin himself and everyone else who initially heard his theory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Assuming an honest and objective genesis to these statements, I can only conclude that they're saying "Hitler used Darwin's theories as an excuse and justification for his actions" and clearly not (given the top quote) "Hitler was inspired by Darwin's theories to attempt genocide."  If my conclusion is wrong, then I ask Kevin how I should reconcile his comments.

If my conclusion is right, and Hitler used whatever conceptual tools available to justify his actions, it directly follows (with ample evidence, as well as the remainder of the top quote) that Martin Luther was just as "responsible" for Hitler's actions as Darwin was.

I must have misinterpreted Kevin, though, otherwise there's simply no reason for all the Nazi stuff to be in the movie.  What point is being made with the Nazi clips, then? Please unconfuse me.
Posted by: Thought Provoker on April 07 2008,15:10

For what it is worth, I apologize for not giving more credit to others for the...

Eugenics DOES-NOT-EQUAL Darwinism

...point.  While I'm partial to my Spartans throwing babies off cliffs example, I can see that many people have pointed this out to Kevin which he has ignored.

I suggest Louis may have the best approach, recognize a troll as a troll.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,15:11

< This > one must have been Darwin's fault, it was in England and everything:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Massacres at London and York (1189–1190)
Richard I had taken the cross before his coronation (September 3, 1189). A number of the principal Jews of England presented themselves to do homage at Westminster; but there appears to have been a superstition against Jews being admitted to such a holy ceremony, and they were repulsed during the banquet which followed the coronation. The rumour spread from Westminster to the City of London that the king had ordered a massacre of the Jews; and a mob in Old Jewry, after vainly attacking throughout the day the strong stone houses of the Jews, set them on fire at night, killing those within who attempted to escape. The king was enraged at this insult to his royal dignity, but took no steps to punish the offenders, owing to their large numbers. After his departure on the crusade, riots with loss of life occurred at Lynn, where the Jews attempted to attack a baptised coreligionist who had taken refuge in a church. The seafaring population rose against them, fired their houses, and put them to the sword. So, too, at Stamford fair, on March 7, 1190, many were slain, and on March 18 fifty-seven were slaughtered at Bury St. Edmunds. The Jews of Lincoln saved themselves only by taking refuge in a castle.

Isolated attacks on Jews occurred also at Colchester, Thetford, and Ospringe, but the most striking incident occurred at York on the night of March 16 (the day of the Jewish feast of Shabbat ha-Gadol, the shabbat before Passover) and March 17, 1190. The Jews of York were alarmed by the preceding massacres and by the setting on fire of several of their houses by the anti-Jewish rioting in the wake of religious fervor during crusaders' preparations for the Third Crusade against the Saracens, led by Richard.
Their leader Josce asked the warden of York Castle to receive them with their wives and children, and they were accepted into Clifford's Tower. However, the tower was besieged by the mob of crusaders, demanding that the Jews convert to Christianity and be baptized. Trapped in the castle, the Jews were advised by their religious leader, Rabbi Yomtov of Joigney, to kill themselves rather than convert; Josce began the self-immolation by slaying his wife Anna and his two children, and then was killed by Yomtov. The father of each family killed his wife and children, and then Yomtob stabbed the men before killing himself. The handful of Jews who did not kill themselves surrendered to the crusaders at daybreak on March 17, leaving the castle on a promise that they would not be harmed; they were also killed. In the aftermath the wooden tower was burnt down.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 07 2008,15:11

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:01)
Venus: Thanks for taking my questions seriously. I have a question about your second response:

You said, "There isn't anything to stop God throwing lightning bolts or inseminating women. Science doesn't rule that out - it just says we can't study it, because we can't repeat observations. You have mixed up 'science cannot describe this' with 'this does not happen'. No one says science explains everything. It doesn't."

Actually, lots of people say science explains everything. That's why we have no need for God. But that's beside the point. If God does influence this world, is this influence measureable in any scientific way? If not, how can it be detected? I'm really interested to hear from anyone who approaches this from a theistic position.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who is saying science explains everything? Not scientists, that's for sure, and they would know. I know Ben Stein is saying that evolutionary science should explain everything up to and including the origin of the universe, so perhaps you should stop listening to him.

There isn't any reason why we couldn't see the effects of God's action on the natural world, but God is not a scientific phenomenon and we can't describe him that way, any more than we can model the likelihood of students coming into fields with planks and making crop circles. The question doesn't make sense really.
Posted by: Cheezits on April 07 2008,15:44

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:43)
Louis said, "I wonder if Kevin knows how much Hitler was influenced by christianity, and just how irrelevant to the factual accuracy of either evolutionary biology or christianity such "arguments" are."

I'm fully aware of how Hitler was influenced by christianity, enough to know that he fully rejected Christian ethics as weak and unnatural. His overriding ethic was that only the strongest should be allowed to survive. That was the rule of nature, so we should do everything possible to help evolution along. How does this bear on the factual accuracy of evolutionary biology? Not at all. But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it? All scientific theories and philosophies have consequences, intended or otherwise. So you can't just pretend like the connection doesn't exist. Hitler isn't the only one to pick up on the ethical implications of Darwinism. They were evident to Darwin himself and everyone else who initially heard his theory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:43)
But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Because scientifically illiterate fundies can't understand it and can't cope with the truth.  They've had it drummed into them by their pastors that if evolution is true then God can't exist and their lives have no meaning.  Don't blame biologists for making fundies believe they can't live without their fairy tale version of God!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,16:09

FTK + Ned Flanders + 2 years film school = Kevin Miller


I CAN HAZ MATHS?
Posted by: BopDiddy on April 07 2008,16:11

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:10)
Here's my response, Arden: I was involved in writing the film, not marketing it. The decisions about who does and who doesn't get to see a pre-screening of the film are entirely in the hands of our producers and our marketing team. If you sincerely want an answer to your question, I suggest you contact Motive Marketing or Premise Media.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The Producers?





---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------

GOEBBELS ENTERS LAUGHING.

                        GOEBBELS
           Heil, baby!  I just finished the
           morning propaganda broadcasts.

                        LSD
           What did you tell the people?

                        GOEBBELS
           I told them we were launching to
           a thousand theaters!

                        LSD
           Hey, baby, that's good!  How'd we
           come out?

                        GOEBBELS
           We won the Oscar, the Emmy, the
           Tony and the Templeton!

                        LSD
           Groovy!  Darwin's the real tyrant, baby!

THEY SMACK HANDS.

---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on April 07 2008,16:13

Just an aside: It's interesting that on the right wing there is a < parallel conversation > going on about how much Adolf Hitler supposedly admired and drew inspiration from Islam. I have heard this claim before, mostly from the white supremacist groups that are being tracked and reported on by the SPLC (of which I am a member).

That is not something that I got from Mein Kampf (which I read for college, long, long ago), so I don't know how to assess the validity of this argument, but it is apparently an urban legend among many who are fundy Muslims because it appeals to their particular anti-Semitism, and therefore makes them claim to admire Hitler, which is worrisome. (Relationships between Jews and Arabs, particularly Palestianians, are complicated, however. The Intelligence Report, an SPLC publication, in 2002 reported on a neo-Nazi rally in America in which the Palestinian flag was waved; a counter-protest of Palestinians formed telling the neo-Nazis where to stick it - both groups naturally claimed to hate Israel.)

My personal opinion of Adolf Hitler is that he admired and worshipped Adolf Hitler above all others. At any rate, there is a relationship between current neo-Nazi thought and radical Islamist thought: < more on these ties here >. This and the rise (once again) of anti-Semitism is a real problem - all this BS about "dangerous Darwinism" is not.

In fact I would assert that for the right wing to pretend that the left is not patriotic, are Nazis/fascists and thus divide this nation as they have, and for Stein to alienate a whole group of people (including secular Israelis - Israel is a center for culture and science) at this crucial time in the history of the Middle East and at a turning point for Israel (with the growth of settlements along with an Arab-Israeli constituency that may soon outnumber Jews in Israel, resulting in perhaps an apartheid system, or universal suffrage that would render Israel a divided nation itself) is outright foolish, short-sightened, and unbelievably self-indulgent.

*edit - corrected spelling*
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,16:16

Wow.. is there anything that didn't influence Hitler?

Can we have Hitler wanted gay marriage / gun control?
Posted by: Kristine on April 07 2008,16:19

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,15:16)
Wow.. is there anything that didn't influence Hitler?

Can we have Hitler wanted gay marriage / gun control?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, he was also a vegetarian... ;)
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,16:30

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,16:16)
Wow.. is there anything that didn't influence Hitler?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes. Christianity.
:angry:
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 07 2008,16:31

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,16:16)
Wow.. is there anything that didn't influence Hitler?

Can we have Hitler wanted gay marriage / gun control?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am in the midst of watching Ken Burn's WWII documentary and Hitler actually sent many homosexuals to their death in the concentration camps.  Isn't it just like the Darwinists to hate Teh Gayz?  Thank goodness we have religious conservatives as a bulwark against this mindless persecution.

Oh, wait........
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,16:34

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,16:30)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,16:16)
Wow.. is there anything that didn't influence Hitler?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes. Christianity.
:angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's like the more you write about it .... the less it effects you.
Posted by: silverspoon on April 07 2008,16:34

In the sequel to EXPELLED Kevin will explore Gregory Mendel's laws of heredity, and how Mendelian Genetic thinking propagated Nazi thinking. Kevin will interview well known theologians of today. Pay no attention when these interviews are interspersed with footage of Nazis goose-stepping, and bodies of dead Jews. And the name of this sequel is-----

From Mendel to the Wannsee Conference.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. But most of all you’ll tell Kevin to go pound sand.


Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,16:46

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,16:34)
   
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,16:30)
   
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,16:16)
Wow.. is there anything that didn't influence Hitler?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes. Christianity.
:angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's like the more you write about it .... the less it effects you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The way I see it, it's VERY suspicious that Hitler never once mentioned Darwin or evolution. I mean -- what was he trying to hide?
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 07 2008,16:54

According to an interview with famed scientist and intellectual, R.C. Sproul,  Ben Stein discloses that our Kevin had nothing to do at all with the film "Expelled."

Nothing at all.

Ben claims that "Expelled" was put together by "very smart people," unlike himself (nice admission, there, Ben), yes, very smart people.

That category, VSP, would exclude our Kevin, who no can haz teh smartz.

Kevin claims to have written part of "Expelled," yet he has not demonstrated that he has the foggiest clue what the film is about.  Who was expelled? Kevin doesn't know.  What's with the Nazis?  Kevin doesn't know?  Were the Nazis expelled?  Kevin doesn't know.

But, I will give Kevin credit for at least having the cahonies to show up on this site and engage people who have teh smartz.  Where's Behe?  Where's Dembski?  Where's Wells?  Cowards all.

Yes, our Kevin is a regular Paul Nelson.  Cut from the same cloth, or Shroud of Turin, as the case may be.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 07 2008,17:11

I see that kevineleven is still here    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
kevinmillerxi   Viewing a topic in: After the Bar Closes...   April 07 2008,16:58
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hopefully he is going to provide evidence for his assertion that the scientists mentioned in < this comment > actually said that "science explains everything".

I'm pretty sure he has that backwards - his compatriots in the bible biz are the ones who think that their book explains everything, and somehow project that evidence-free attitude to those of us in the reality-based world.

[chirp chirp]
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 07 2008,17:22

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,16:46)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,16:34)
   
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,16:30)
     
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,16:16)
Wow.. is there anything that didn't influence Hitler?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes. Christianity.
:angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's like the more you write about it .... the less it effects you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The way I see it, it's VERY suspicious that Hitler never once mentioned Darwin or evolution. I mean -- what was he trying to hide?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Has it been mentioned yet that Darwin's books were banned (and burned) by the Nazis?  Oh it has?  Sorry for the duplication.

Well no doubt Kevin11 went out of his way to make sure this important fact is made in the movie so as not to give the viewer the wrong impression.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 07 2008,17:29

Oh, I forgot to ask...Kevin since you're the resident expert on the relationship between Darwinism and Hitler, could you shed some light on what specific part of Darwin's theory of evolution did the Nazis take and run with?  I ask this because I don't recall Darwin ever writing that blonde hair blued eyed people had the right or obligation to murder everyone else.  I also seem to have missed the part where Jews were respondible for all of Germany's problems.  

Maybe you could provide some quotes by Hitler on the subject or at least the evidence that you and Stein used to concluded Darwin's theory lead to Nazism?

What specific books or other study did you use to come to your Darwinism = Nazism conclusion.  If you will provide the same evidence you used in your research we could go read the same and no doubt come to the same conclusions.

Thanks!
Posted by: Thought Provoker on April 07 2008,18:57

Hi Mr. Christopher,

You got my attention with banned/burnt Darwin books.

I made the effort to find < Nick's Panda's Thumb post > on this.

It provides evidence Darwin's ideas were banned by Nazis (which is telling enough).

Do you have any further evidence that Darwin's books were actually burnt?

The irony in the ID/Darwin wars never ceases to amaze me, not matter which side you look at it from.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 07 2008,19:14

Ooooh. Origin.. banned. Anything anti-Christian... banned. Hitler sure loved atheism and Darwin..
Posted by: khan on April 07 2008,19:33

Quote (Cheezits @ April 07 2008,16:44)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:43)
Louis said, "I wonder if Kevin knows how much Hitler was influenced by christianity, and just how irrelevant to the factual accuracy of either evolutionary biology or christianity such "arguments" are."

I'm fully aware of how Hitler was influenced by christianity, enough to know that he fully rejected Christian ethics as weak and unnatural. His overriding ethic was that only the strongest should be allowed to survive. That was the rule of nature, so we should do everything possible to help evolution along. How does this bear on the factual accuracy of evolutionary biology? Not at all. But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it? All scientific theories and philosophies have consequences, intended or otherwise. So you can't just pretend like the connection doesn't exist. Hitler isn't the only one to pick up on the ethical implications of Darwinism. They were evident to Darwin himself and everyone else who initially heard his theory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:43)
But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Because scientifically illiterate fundies can't understand it and can't cope with the truth.  They've had it drummed into them by their pastors that if evolution is true then God can't exist and their lives have no meaning.  Don't blame biologists for making fundies believe they can't live without their fairy tale version of God!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It is very common for cranks/loons to accuse rational folks of being unreasonable/emotional when they point out factual/logical errors.
Posted by: melatonin on April 07 2008,20:16

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 07 2008,17:29)
I ask this because I don't recall Darwin ever writing that blonde hair blued eyed people had the right or obligation to murder everyone else.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Arthur de Gobineau was big on blue-eyed aryan hunks. They were descended from Adam, don't ya know?

Unsurprisingly, Hitler liked this dude a lot.
Posted by: steve_h on April 07 2008,20:19

Quote (silverspoon @ April 07 2008,22:34)
In the sequel to EXPELLED Kevin will explore Gregory Mendel's laws of heredity, and how Mendelian Genetic thinking propagated Nazi thinking. Kevin will interview well known theologians of today. Pay no attention when these interviews are interspersed with footage of Nazis goose-stepping, and bodies of dead Jews. And the name of this sequel is-----

From Mendel to the Wannsee Conference.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. But most of all you’ll tell Kevin to go pound sand.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I was just thinking that "Expelled 2: A different viewpoint" - coming to lots of theaters near you for a very short time - would show a clip of Dembski; A monotone narrator would point out that Demsbki was a Christianist and an Intelligent Designist and they would suddenly cut to:

A concentration camp (not any of the ones used in the first film).  Ben Stein is looking very, very sad because he has just learned that Jews (Nooooh, not again!) were exterminated there as well. Furthermore it turns out that most of the people who carried out the orders were Christianists (cut back to Dembski smiling,  then cut back to the CC again) by people using principles of intelligent (human) selection to intelligently weed out the poorer races (cut back to smiling Dembski again, then back to the CC) and direct the human species to a Christianist Ideal (Adam, Noah, whatever)  (cut back to extremely smug looking Demsbki who thinks he's in a film called "Heroes of Intelligent Design", then back to the CC again).

Ben Stein explains how Christianism leads to "Christianist Language" leads to genocide - or Kevin Miller does it for him, doesn't matter really so long as everyone sticks to strictly documentarian standards.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 07 2008,21:25

Kevin Miller:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I think something that all of you--and Mr. Elsberry--are missing here is that there's a big difference between experimental science, which tends more toward empircism, and historical science, which tends more toward rationalism. So of course, it's ridiculous to say that if there is a scientific consensus that 2+2=4, we should immediately hold such an equation suspect. That's because this is an empirical statement. No interpretation required. Worldview doesn't play a role. But when we're talking about an historical science, such as paleontology, it's all about interpretation of evidence. And in such cases, our presuppositions going into the investigation will have a significant effect on the conclusions we come out with.

Posted by: Kevin Miller | April 07, 2008 at 09:20 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I heard YEC Norm Geisler in 1987 saying much the same thing. It doesn't seem to have improved since then; not making sense doesn't usually get better on its own.

Back in 1987, I was Mr. Elsberry. Now, though, I'm either Wesley or I'm Dr. Elsberry.

Now, this part is really interesting:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

But when we're talking about an historical science, such as paleontology, it's all about interpretation of evidence. And in such cases, our presuppositions going into the investigation will have a significant effect on the conclusions we come out with.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I take it that Kevin hasn't yet bothered to get and read the reference I've been asking him to expound upon:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Pearson, P.N.; Shackleton, N.J.; and Hall, M.A., 1997. Stable isotopic evidence for the sympatric divergence of _Globigerinoides_trilobus_ and _Orbulina_universa_ (planktonic foraminifera). Journal of the Geological Society, London, v.154, p.295-302.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is a paleontological research paper. In it, there is a test of a hypothesis that I think one would have to strain quite a bit to come up with excuses not to call it an experiment. But Kevin apparently knows as little about this paleontologic research as he does about < pre-screening decisions > for the movie he wrote.

Concerning (1), part of the paradigm-describing business is pretty much that one only sees it in retrospect. I already addressed this, though; look for "Kuhn".

Concerning (2), I take it Kevin is unfamiliar with discussion of primary and secondary causes and the work of theologians such as John Haught. I don't recall having requested an Inquisitorial house call.
Posted by: don_quixote on April 07 2008,21:34

Hi Kevin! As you will probably want to publish a book to accompany the film, I took the liberty of doing the front cover for you. From what I've heard of the movie so far, I think it should be eminently suitable...




Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 07 2008,21:35

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 07 2008,19:14)
Ooooh. Origin.. banned. Anything anti-Christian... banned. Hitler sure loved atheism and Darwin..
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hitler was very clever, you see: he only banned books on atheism and evolution to trick future generations into thinking that the holocaust wasn't based on atheistic Darwinism. That's also why he invoked God and Jesus so much in Mein Kampf -- to put future researchers off the scent. That devious bastard!
Posted by: Henry J on April 07 2008,21:44

Has anybody mentioned that eugenics is closer to artificial selection than to natural selection?

Not to mention also that if evolution teaches anything, it teaches that more variety = better chance of surviving a disaster that wipes out 1 or 2 of the current varieties. Otoh, less variety = the next disaster might wipe out the 1 variety that the eugenics program left intact (i.e., oops).

Henry
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 07 2008,21:48

Quote (Henry J @ April 07 2008,19:44)
Has anybody mentioned that eugenics is closer to artificial selection than to natural selection?

Not to mention also that if evolution teaches anything, it teaches that more variety = better chance of surviving a disaster that wipes out 1 or 2 of the current varieties. Otoh, less variety = the next disaster might wipe out the 1 variety that the eugenics program left intact (i.e., oops).

Henry
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Even if they have, it bears repeating.  Kevin probably needs to hear this several times.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 07 2008,21:53

In 1938 the Nazi "Office of Racial Policy" publication Inromationsdienst Martin Luther’s advice on the “proper” treatment of Jews was given prominent display:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
... to put their synagogues and schools to fire, and what will not burn, to cover with earth and rubble so that no-one will ever again see anything there but cinders ... Second, one should tear down and destroy their houses, for they do also in there what they do in their schools and synagogues ... And third, one should confiscate their prayer books and Talmud, in which idolatry and lies, slander and blasphemy is taught” From Proctor 1988: 88.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The founder of Protestant Christianity was a greater inspiration to the Nazis than any scientist.  Science, politicized by the same conditions that radicalized both Left, and Right, was used as justification for actions long advocated as “Christian.”  The political philosophy that was called Social Darwinism only in the 1940s was infuential in the organization of the Society for Racial Hygiene (Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene) through the efforts of Alfred Poletz and to a lesser degree Ernst Haeckel and others.  Poletz was a believer in Nordic superiority, and he quickly formed a secret group of racists active within the Society who were strongly influenced by the racial theories of Arthur Comte de Gobineau published in the early 1850s (well before Darwin's books).  This followed the creationist theories of the "pre-Adamites" who went so far as to claim that Negroes had been created on the Genesis fifth day with "other beasts of the field."

Finding 19th century American racists is not hard.  Finding American fascists is not hard, even today.  Showing that they owe their bigotry to evolutionary biology is a fallacy.  For example, as Küehl himself observed, the 1936 Nazi Party recommended reading list on human heredity, (Rassenkunde: Eine Auswahl des wichtigsten Scrifttums aus dem Gebit der Rassenkunde, Vererbungslehre, Rassenpflege und Bevölkerunspolitik) mentioned only two non-German authors: American Madison Grant's Passing of the Great Race (translated into German in 1925, and French Arthur Comte de Gobineau's The inequality of Human Races (1853-1855).  

Gobineau had a strong influence on Grant's work and was very influencial with German,  American, and British racists for that matter, and published his book well before Darwin's works became public.  

Robert N. Proctor's 1988  book Racial Hygene:Medicine Under the Nazis (Boston: Harvard University Press) has a much better analysis of not only the connections between international racists, but the intellectual associations of the Nazi death machine than the miserable crap by Weikart.

There is an excellent passage in Evans pg. 92-93:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"The minutes [taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt] for the second day's meeting, on 17 April 1943, recorded a statement by Ribbentrop, in Hitler's presence, to a point made by Horthy: "On Horthy's retort, what should he do with the Jews then, after he had pretty well taken all means of living from them-- he surely couldn't beat them to death-- the Reich Foreign Minister [Ribbentrop] replied that the Jews must either be annihilated or taken to concentration camps. There is no other way."

Hitler almost immediately confirmed Ribbentrop's explicitly murderous statement at some length: Hitler: "Where the Jews were left to themselves, as for example in Poland, gruesome poverty and degeneracy had ruled. They were just pure parasites. One had fundamentally cleared up this state of affairs in Poland. If the Jews there didn't want to work [in Third Reich concentration camps], they were shot. If they couldn't work they had to perish. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, from which a healthy body could be infected. That was not cruel, if one remembered that even innocent natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so that no harm was caused. Why should one spare the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism more? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished." (references and footnotes are found in Evans, 2001:92-93)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Here we have Hitler, in his argument to Hungary's Admiral Horthy, invoking not an übermench racist position, but an anti-Bolshevik, and nationalist one.  If Hitler tried to draw rhetorical support from Social Darwinism arguing in Mein Kampf, it is not evident anywhere from the text, and in any event was at most merely a twig on the trunk of his anti-Semitism. His opposition is to what he considered a Marxist threat, not drawn from Darwin, which was at most a rationalization of his hatred than its origin.  Further, the theoretical models and dominant metaphors Hitler drew from did  not include evolution at any event, but the Germ Theory of Disease, and Christianity.


Posted by: Henry J on April 07 2008,22:40



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
They were descended from Adam, don't ya know?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Wasn't everybody? ;)



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So of course, it's ridiculous to say that if there is a scientific consensus that 2+2=4, we should immediately hold such an equation suspect. That's because this is an empirical statement. No interpretation required. Worldview doesn't play a role.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Empirical statement? No, 2+2=4 is a logical deduction from the axioms and definitions of the integer number system (or from axiomatic set theory if one starts at the beginning). The next two statements are actually correct - no interpretation of evidence is involved, and no role for worldview.

Henry
Posted by: godsilove on April 07 2008,22:49

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,13:48)
JohnW: I understand your skepticism re: Weikart. I was skeptical when I picked up the book as well. And Weikart, himself, was skeptical when he started down the road to researching the topic. And in no way does he draw a direct line from Darwin to Hitler or say that Darwinian science was the defining influence on Hitler's ethics. Hitler's influences are complicated and difficult to trace, but there's no doubt that Darwinian science was a significant factor. Just where or how he imbibed these ideas is still not quite clear. The book is well researched and well substantiated by quotes from original sources as well as other scholarly works on the topic. This is not a shrill tome that's bent on proving Wiekart's thesis no matter what. I do believe it is a fair and balanced treatment of the evidence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin, I think the key issue is why you decided to put the Reductio ad Hitlerum in Expelled, to begin with.  It's clear that a variety of different influences, including Nietzsche and Luther, contributed to Nazism.  Does the film mention them?  Remember, you're marketing this film to schoolchildren as well.  Don't you think the way the film handles the issue gives the false impression that Darwin was responsible for Hitler?  

What is it meant to accomplish?  Even IF Darwin was responsible for Hitler, an appeal to consequences is a fallacious way to try to disprove something.  If good science is the ultimate goal of the film (and I really doubt that it is), then the film is giving viewers a terrible science lesson.
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 07 2008,23:24

Once again our Kevin expounds on that about which he knows nothing: paleontology!

Not empirical, eh?  So, I guess paleontologists don't measure bone lengths and widths.  Yeah, someone else must do that.  I guess paleontologists don't make any measurements at all.  Nope, someone else must do that like chemists and physicists.  I guess paleontologists spend their time walking around the Badlands with their picks and shovels, contemplating their worldview.

Yeah, Kevin, that's what paleontologists do.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 08 2008,00:10

Quote (Thought Provoker @ April 07 2008,16:57)
Hi Mr. Christopher,

You got my attention with banned/burnt Darwin books.

I made the effort to find < Nick's Panda's Thumb post > on this.

It provides evidence Darwin's ideas were banned by Nazis (which is telling enough).

Do you have any further evidence that Darwin's books were actually burnt?

The irony in the ID/Darwin wars never ceases to amaze me, not matter which side you look at it from.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279  

Die Bucherei, the official Nazi journal for lending libraries, published these collection evaluation "guidelines" during the second round of "purifications" (saüberung).
 
6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).

Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279
6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)

"Purified" was by fire, just like the Christian Neo-fascist Christian Reconstruction followers of Rushdoony, and his Chalcedon Institute would do to non-christians today.  Oh, and it just happens that the Discovery Institute's initial funding came from the Chalcedon Institute's "angel," Howard Ahmanson Jr.
Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,00:27

Quote (Dr.GH @ April 08 2008,01:10)
Quote (Thought Provoker @ April 07 2008,16:57)
Hi Mr. Christopher,

You got my attention with banned/burnt Darwin books.

I made the effort to find < Nick's Panda's Thumb post > on this.

It provides evidence Darwin's ideas were banned by Nazis (which is telling enough).

Do you have any further evidence that Darwin's books were actually burnt?

The irony in the ID/Darwin wars never ceases to amaze me, not matter which side you look at it from.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279  

Die Bucherei, the official Nazi journal for lending libraries, published these collection evaluation "guidelines" during the second round of "purifications" (saüberung).
 
6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).

Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279
6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)

"Purified" was by fire, just like the Christian Neo-fascist Christian Reconstruction followers of Rushdoony, and his Chalcedon Institute would do to non-christians today.  Oh, and it just happens that the Discovery Institute's initial funding came from the Chalcedon Institute's "angel," Howard Ahmanson Jr.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Instead of selectively banning people like PZ, Kevin should be selecting for his target audience. He could just have a little question like

"Do you know anything whatsoever about the history of Europe over the last 1,000 years?
_yes
_no"

anybody who checked no has a chance of falling for Kev's BS and they could admit that person.


Posted by: melatonin on April 08 2008,01:38

Quote (Henry J @ April 07 2008,22:40)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
They were descended from Adam, don't ya know?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Wasn't everybody? ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin XI might think so. de Gobineau didn't though. Just the white species. Other races weren't the same species (pesky yellow and black).

Problem for der Fuhrer was that de Gobineau didn't mind the Jews, so Hitler, errm, sort of quote-mined him...
Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,01:57

Quote (melatonin @ April 08 2008,02:38)
Quote (Henry J @ April 07 2008,22:40)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
They were descended from Adam, don't ya know?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Wasn't everybody? ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin XI might think so. de Gobineau didn't though. Just the white species. Other races weren't the same species (pesky yellow and black).

Problem for der Fuhrer was that de Gobineau didn't mind the Jews, so Hitler, errm, sort of quote-mined him...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


de Gobineau's book also predated On the Origin of Species by a few years.

I know, I know, big shocker.


Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,02:01

whoever photoshopped Jenna into doing The Shocker did a pretty bad job, but it's still funny.
Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,02:14



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (July 14, 1816 — October 13, 1882) was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855). De Gobineau is credited as being the father of modern racial demography.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (published 1859)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Though I risk running afoul of the mean and ugly moderators of this site, here you go Kevin:


Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,02:20

Kevin's contributions remind me of Clyde from South Park



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mr. Garrison: Let's start the day with a few new math problems -- what is five times two? Yes. Clyde?
Clyde: Twelve.
Mr. Garrison: Okay. Now let's try and get an answer from somebody who is not a complete retard.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on April 08 2008,02:21

I think the issue is more honesty than intellect, Sternberger.
Posted by: didymos on April 08 2008,02:24

Quote (godsilove @ April 07 2008,20:49)
It's clear that a variety of different influences, including Nietzsche and Luther, contributed to Nazism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A bit unfair to Nietzsche.  The Nazis certainly used  Nietzsche, but they never really followed his actual philosophy, just borrowed the bits that sounded good to them.  A lot of his association with Nazism is due to his sister Elisabeth, who married a fanatical anti-semite and ran off with him to Paraguay to found a a pure, Aryan German colony.  It didn't work out too well for them. Nietzsche himself was not at all fond of anti-semitism or the  brand of belligerent nationalism Hitler subscribed to, and he loathed his brother-in-law.  After Nietzsche died, Elisabeth basically quote-mined her brother's fragments and notes, including altering and reordering the texts as "editor" and published it as The Will To Power.  She eventually became an enthusiastic supporter of the NSDAP and both used and allowed to be used her brother's reputation to promote the Nazi cause.

Nietzsche's real views on the Jewish people were very un-Nazi indeed.  For example, in Beyond Good and Evil, one finds this:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest and purest race at present living in Europe; they know how to prevail even under the worst conditions (better even than under favourable ones), by means of virtues which one would like to stamp as vices - thanks above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before `modem ideas.'; they change, when they change, only in the way in which the Russian Empire makes its conquests - an empire that has time and is not of yesterday -: namely, according to the principle `as slowly as possible'! A thinker who has the future of Europe on his conscience will, in all the designs he makes for this future, take the Jews into account as he will take the Russians, as the immediately surest and most probable factors in the great game and struggle of forces. That which is called a `nation' in Europe today and is actually more of a res facto than nata (indeed sometimes positively resembles a res ficta et picta -) is in any case something growing, young, easily disruptable, not yet a race, let alone such an aere perennius as the Jewish type is: these `nations' should certainly avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility very carefully! That the Jews could, if they wanted - or if they were compelled, as the anti-Semites seem to want - even now predominate, indeed quite literally rule over Europe, is certain; that they are not planning and working towards that is equally certain.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Certainly an idiosyncratic viewpoint, but one of little use to someone like Hitler.
Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,02:30

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 08 2008,03:21)
I think the issue is more honesty than intellect, Sternberger.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm still agnostic on that. Kevin just strikes me as the kind of person who has never had a single class in philosophy of science, or european history, and yet imagines that he knows what he's talking about. Even though it's clear he doesn't.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 08 2008,02:36

Quote (stevestory @ April 08 2008,02:30)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 08 2008,03:21)
I think the issue is more honesty than intellect, Sternberger.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm still agnostic on that. Kevin just strikes me as the kind of person who has never had a single class in philosophy of science, or european history, and yet imagines that he knows what he's talking about. Even though it's clear he doesn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Initially, I thought the same. But he's had it spelled out to him lots of different ways now. Perhaps he now knows, but with film release coming, is keeping schtum.
The tragedy is he's peddling lies about one of the greatest human atrocities ever. Odious.
Posted by: Louis on April 08 2008,03:48

Quote (Occam's Aftershave @ April 07 2008,20:54)
[SNIP]

Hitler used high explosives and poison gas too.  Why isn't Expelled going after those nasty chemists and their atomic theory of chemistry?

[SNIP]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well it IS our fault. Ask the homeopaths.

Louis
Posted by: Louis on April 08 2008,03:49

Quote (Cheezits @ April 07 2008,21:44)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:43)
Louis said, "I wonder if Kevin knows how much Hitler was influenced by christianity, and just how irrelevant to the factual accuracy of either evolutionary biology or christianity such "arguments" are."

I'm fully aware of how Hitler was influenced by christianity, enough to know that he fully rejected Christian ethics as weak and unnatural. His overriding ethic was that only the strongest should be allowed to survive. That was the rule of nature, so we should do everything possible to help evolution along. How does this bear on the factual accuracy of evolutionary biology? Not at all. But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it? All scientific theories and philosophies have consequences, intended or otherwise. So you can't just pretend like the connection doesn't exist. Hitler isn't the only one to pick up on the ethical implications of Darwinism. They were evident to Darwin himself and everyone else who initially heard his theory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:43)
But evolutionary biology has never been just about the science. Why else would there be such a heated debate over it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Because scientifically illiterate fundies can't understand it and can't cope with the truth.  They've had it drummed into them by their pastors that if evolution is true then God can't exist and their lives have no meaning.  Don't blame biologists for making fundies believe they can't live without their fairy tale version of God!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I just want to say WELCOME TO ATBC CHEEZITS!

I remember you from TO (if it is you!) even if you don't remember me.

Enjoy, we have less nutters, but usually a better standard.

Louis
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 08 2008,03:56

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 08 2008,00:36)
Quote (stevestory @ April 08 2008,02:30)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 08 2008,03:21)
I think the issue is more honesty than intellect, Sternberger.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm still agnostic on that. Kevin just strikes me as the kind of person who has never had a single class in philosophy of science, or european history, and yet imagines that he knows what he's talking about. Even though it's clear he doesn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Initially, I thought the same. But he's had it spelled out to him lots of different ways now. Perhaps he now knows, but with film release coming, is keeping schtum.
The tragedy is he's peddling lies about one of the greatest human atrocities ever. Odious.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good point.  Kevin and his co-whore Stein are cashing in on the deaths of millions.  And, if they are really successful and do turn civilization back a few hundred years, they might cause more deaths than even the Nazis.  Just think how IDiots wil kill people by denying antibiotics, biochemistry, global warming, species loss an all the rest of science.

On the other hand, Panda's Thumb promotes assholes that oppose public education, endangerd species protection, habitat protection, and really are not that different from Kevin.
Posted by: Stephen Elliott on April 08 2008,04:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,12:49)
... " I am listening, and pondering. And I am open to revising my views in light of new and better information...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Snipped by me.

I do not believe you.

Every argument/point you have made so far are ones that I made a few years ago. I was also spoonfed those arguments by liars and charlatans and foolishly believed them. It was a shocking surprise to me to find all those claims had been answered years before I regurgitated them.

"Intelligent Design" is not and never has been a scientific argument. It is a socio/political/religious movement with an agenda. That has been proven and if you did a tad of research you would already know that is the case.

You are either dishonest or ignorant. You could alter being the latter if you choose.
Posted by: godsilove on April 08 2008,04:52

Quote (didymos @ April 08 2008,02:24)
Quote (godsilove @ April 07 2008,20:49)
It's clear that a variety of different influences, including Nietzsche and Luther, contributed to Nazism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A bit unfair to Nietzsche.  The Nazis certainly used  Nietzsche, but they never really followed his actual philosophy, just borrowed the bits that sounded good to them.  A lot of his association with Nazism is due to his sister Elisabeth, who married a fanatical anti-semite and ran off with him to Paraguay to found a a pure, Aryan German colony.  It didn't work out too well for them. Nietzsche himself was not at all fond of anti-semitism or the  brand of belligerent nationalism Hitler subscribed to, and he loathed his brother-in-law.  After Nietzsche died, Elisabeth basically quote-mined her brother's fragments and notes, including altering and reordering the texts as "editor" and published it as The Will To Power.  She eventually became an enthusiastic supporter of the NSDAP and both used and allowed to be used her brother's reputation to promote the Nazi cause.

Nietzsche's real views on the Jewish people were very un-Nazi indeed.  For example, in Beyond Good and Evil, one finds this:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest and purest race at present living in Europe; they know how to prevail even under the worst conditions (better even than under favourable ones), by means of virtues which one would like to stamp as vices - thanks above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before `modem ideas.'; they change, when they change, only in the way in which the Russian Empire makes its conquests - an empire that has time and is not of yesterday -: namely, according to the principle `as slowly as possible'! A thinker who has the future of Europe on his conscience will, in all the designs he makes for this future, take the Jews into account as he will take the Russians, as the immediately surest and most probable factors in the great game and struggle of forces. That which is called a `nation' in Europe today and is actually more of a res facto than nata (indeed sometimes positively resembles a res ficta et picta -) is in any case something growing, young, easily disruptable, not yet a race, let alone such an aere perennius as the Jewish type is: these `nations' should certainly avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility very carefully! That the Jews could, if they wanted - or if they were compelled, as the anti-Semites seem to want - even now predominate, indeed quite literally rule over Europe, is certain; that they are not planning and working towards that is equally certain.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Certainly an idiosyncratic viewpoint, but one of little use to someone like Hitler.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Agreed...Nietzsche is still to this day a very misunderstood philosopher, and his ideas were misappropriated by Hitler.  Hitler was simply wrong about a lot of things.
Posted by: Louis on April 08 2008,04:55

Quote (didymos @ April 08 2008,08:24)
[SNIP]

The Nazis certainly used  Nietzsche, but they never really followed his actual philosophy, just borrowed the bits that sounded good to them.

[SNIP]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gosh, wasn't that kind of all of our points re: evolutionary biology and christianity and all the assorted quasi-providencial/spiritual mumbo jumbo that the Nazis used?

I wonder when Kevin is going to work this out. After all a humber of people have pointed it out to him nicely, nastily, succincly and wordily. He can take his pick.

I still reckon (and since Herr OberGruppenFuhrer Steve "I loves the Sternbergerisation, me" Story supported it, I reckon I am free to repeat it) that dear, sweet Kevin needs to delicately take himself off somewhere quiet and look up the Is/Ought fallacy.

For starters.

Louis
Posted by: Louis on April 08 2008,04:57

Quote (Stephen Elliott @ April 08 2008,10:13)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,12:49)
... " I am listening, and pondering. And I am open to revising my views in light of new and better information...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Snipped by me.

I do not believe you.

Every argument/point you have made so far are ones that I made a few years ago. I was also spoonfed those arguments by liars and charlatans and foolishly believed them. It was a shocking surprise to me to find all those claims had been answered years before I regurgitated them.

"Intelligent Design" is not and never has been a scientific argument. It is a socio/political/religious movement with an agenda. That has been proven and if you did a tad of research you would already know that is the case.

You are either dishonest or ignorant. You could alter being the latter if you choose.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Welcome back! Where have you been old boy? PM me and we'll do beer. I promise no Tequila Suicides....well I don't actually promise but I'm trying very hard to be a good boy.

Louis
Posted by: Cheezits on April 08 2008,07:43

Quote (Louis @ April 08 2008,04:49)
I just want to say WELCOME TO ATBC CHEEZITS!

I remember you from TO (if it is you!) even if you don't remember me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now I feel bad that I don't remember you.  You need a cheesy nickname. :D
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Enjoy, we have less nutters, but usually a better standard.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That must be why I hadn't read this group much before.
Posted by: Louis on April 08 2008,08:48

Quote (Cheezits @ April 08 2008,13:43)
 
Quote (Louis @ April 08 2008,04:49)
I just want to say WELCOME TO ATBC CHEEZITS!

I remember you from TO (if it is you!) even if you don't remember me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now I feel bad that I don't remember you.  You need a cheesy nickname. :D
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Enjoy, we have less nutters, but usually a better standard.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That must be why I hadn't read this group much before.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are of course forgiven dear lady, forgiven in fact before any need for forgiveness was even contemplated. Such is the power of the FSM. May His Noodles Always Be Al Dente.

AtBC is good. An amusing level of banter, occasional Mornington Crescent, infrequent morons (although this varies with season), and generally good humoured mockery of creationists. Occasionally it gets nasty, and this is mostly my fault as resident UberMeanie. We are an outpost of an outpost of the University of Ediacara. More and adjunct annex of sorts, with occasional knob jokes.

The pun cascades could do with some work however. I expect that an Old Fashioned TOer like yourself will engage in rampant punnery.

Louis

Editted to Add: Whilst we are bereft of luminaries such an McNameless, Ray Martinez, Sean Pitman and Jabriol, we did play host to AFDave for a while. His escapeds are the stuff of legend...mainly in Portugal. See the Richard Dawkins Forums, IIDB, Rants and Raves, and the "Creator God Hypothesis" threads here for fun, frolics and all-round flabbergasted-at-creationist-inanity goodness. Welsey's presence seems to attract the "great and the good" of the IDC world occasionally. To the immense amusement of many.
Posted by: Henry J on April 08 2008,10:28

Quote (Doc Bill @ April 07 2008,22:24)
Once again our Kevin expounds on that about which he knows nothing: paleontology!

Not empirical, eh?  So, I guess paleontologists don't measure bone lengths and widths.  Yeah, someone else must do that.  I guess paleontologists don't make any measurements at all.  Nope, someone else must do that like chemists and physicists.  I guess paleontologists spend their time walking around the Badlands with their picks and shovels, contemplating their worldview.

Yeah, Kevin, that's what paleontologists do.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And they make no bones about it, too! :p
Posted by: Louis on April 08 2008,10:57

Quote (Henry J @ April 08 2008,16:28)
Quote (Doc Bill @ April 07 2008,22:24)
Once again our Kevin expounds on that about which he knows nothing: paleontology!

Not empirical, eh?  So, I guess paleontologists don't measure bone lengths and widths.  Yeah, someone else must do that.  I guess paleontologists don't make any measurements at all.  Nope, someone else must do that like chemists and physicists.  I guess paleontologists spend their time walking around the Badlands with their picks and shovels, contemplating their worldview.

Yeah, Kevin, that's what paleontologists do.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And they make no bones about it, too! :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Referring back to Doc Bill's point briefly, I would like to say that as a chemist I have never taken a ruler and measured a molecule or an atom. Therefore chemistry cannot be empirical. It's all my atomist worldview dontcherknow.

As for your comments Henry, well you know I dig a lot of what you say. For an old fossil, you're a good chap. I wonder about Kevin's sincerity in all this, his statements rarely match. Of particular note is his comment about having a beer with any of us. Brushing away the surface detritus for a second, I wonder if he saurus he'd be so keen. Frankly I prefer the Inuit method of dealing with people like Kevin: feed 'em to the Kilelr whales. I'd love to see the expression on Kevin's face when he sauropod of Orca swimming towards him.

Enough? Thought so.

Louis

P.S. I was trying to get "lithification" in there but was having no luck.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 08 2008,11:04

Quote (Henry J @ April 08 2008,10:28)
 
Quote (Doc Bill @ April 07 2008,22:24)
Once again our Kevin expounds on that about which he knows nothing: paleontology!

Not empirical, eh?  So, I guess paleontologists don't measure bone lengths and widths.  Yeah, someone else must do that.  I guess paleontologists don't make any measurements at all.  Nope, someone else must do that like chemists and physicists.  I guess paleontologists spend their time walking around the Badlands with their picks and shovels, contemplating their worldview.

Yeah, Kevin, that's what paleontologists do.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And they make no bones about it, too! :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ba-dum-bump!


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 08 2008,12:47

Some amazing scientific claims from our very own kevin 11:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What a lot of people misunderstand is that I.D. is not a religious program; it is actually a scientific program—but it does have strong religious implications
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Kevin, you made that claim < here > can you please take time out from signing all those autographs and please show us the science of ID?  So far no one on planet earth has been able to do so.  In fact no one has yet to even offer a theory of intelligent design.  Of course someone as scientifically astute as you knows full well that



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



is not a scientific theory, it's a value statement.  An opinion, a claim.  So could you share with us the scientific theory of intelligent design.

So far no one, not dembski, not Behe, not Wells, not anyone has been able to provide a scientific theory of ID.  But it would seem you have some knowledge no one else has.  In the name of open scientific inquiry, would you share it with us?

Chris
Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,13:23

Here's the Intelligent Design journal:

< http://www.iscid.org/pcid.php >

It went defunct years ago. Kevin, real scientific programs look different.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 08 2008,13:27

Quote (stevestory @ April 08 2008,13:23)
Here's the Intelligent Design journal:

< http://www.iscid.org/pcid.php >

It went defunct years ago. Kevin, real scientific programs look different.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey, FTK said it's pointless for IDers to publish scientific articles, and frankly I agree with her.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 08 2008,13:27

O'Leary apparently knows something too


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That’s what the Expelled film is doing in the ID vs. unguided evolution (Darwinism) controversy. It shows both the evidence for intelligent design of life and the unconscionable lengths to which the Darwin fans are willing to go, to keep both students and the broad public from knowing why their ideas about the nature of life are probably  wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does it? Does it really? Not from the reviews I've read. My bold.

Has O'Leary seen a special version maybe? Kevin?
< denormalizing-the-darwin-thugs-2-pz-myers-and-friends/ >
Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,13:34

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 08 2008,14:27)
Quote (stevestory @ April 08 2008,13:23)
Here's the Intelligent Design journal:

< http://www.iscid.org/pcid.php >

It went defunct years ago. Kevin, real scientific programs look different.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey, FTK said it's pointless for IDers to publish scientific articles, and frankly I agree with her.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, have you read any of the 'papers' PCID did manage to publish? Complete gibberish.
Posted by: stevestory on April 08 2008,13:35

They realized at some point that they don't even have to pretend to do research to fool people like Kevin, and so they stopped wasting the effort.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 08 2008,13:54

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 08 2008,13:27)
O'Leary apparently knows something too
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That’s what the Expelled film is doing in the ID vs. unguided evolution (Darwinism) controversy. It shows both the evidence for intelligent design of life and the unconscionable lengths to which the Darwin fans are willing to go, to keep both students and the broad public from knowing why their ideas about the nature of life are probably  wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does it? Does it really? Not from the reviews I've read. My bold.

Has O'Leary seen a special version maybe? Kevin?
< denormalizing-the-darwin-thugs-2-pz-myers-and-friends/ >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have an idea about how to denormalize evilutionists. Make a movie that calls them crypto-Nazis. That'll learn 'em.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 08 2008,14:08

Quote (midwifetoad @ April 08 2008,13:54)
Has O'Leary seen a special version maybe? Kevin?
< denormalizing-the-darwin-thugs-2-pz-myers-and-friends/ >[/quote]
I have an idea about how to denormalize evilutionists. Make a movie that calls them crypto-Nazis. That'll learn 'em.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Denyse -

You can try to "denormalize us evilutionists", (whatever that means), but at least we'll wake up in the morning and still be able to write complete sentences in English.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 08 2008,14:17

sfunny that all the creationists do is make claims of "we got science too!" but when we demand they prove it (the same demand we make of ourselves) they claim they're being persecuted and go make a propaganda film that protrays them as persecuted victims while portraying science as the basis for Nazism.  Even the movie fails to show where ID is even remotely scientific.  To compound matters when we ask for a scientific theory, something that can be tested/verified all they do is offer us a value statement.  They don't even have a theory and they bitch non-stop about how mean and dogmatic science is.  WTF?  

Why should anyone who claims they have a scientific theory, one that challenged natural selction,  but they cannot tell us what that theory is be treated special by the scientific community?  WTF?  Even Philip Johnson admits they have no theory.

Sometimes I can't decide whether I think these people are insane creationists or just profoundly stupid, demanding, childish whiners who think they should not be held to the same standards everyone has to abide by who just happen to be creationists.

I guess I'll know when I see this Hitler "documentary".
Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 08 2008,14:47

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 08 2008,12:47)
Some amazing scientific claims from our very own kevin 11:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What a lot of people misunderstand is that I.D. is not a religious program; it is actually a scientific program—but it does have strong religious implications
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Kevin, you made that claim < here > can you please take time out from signing all those autographs and please show us the science of ID?  So far no one on planet earth has been able to do so.  In fact no one has yet to even offer a theory of intelligent design.  Of course someone as scientifically astute as you knows full well that



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



is not a scientific theory, it's a value statement.  An opinion, a claim.  So could you share with us the scientific theory of intelligent design.

So far no one, not dembski, not Behe, not Wells, not anyone has been able to provide a scientific theory of ID.  But it would seem you have some knowledge no one else has.  In the name of open scientific inquiry, would you share it with us?

Chris
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd like this answered also... in fact, I think it's the most important question you have to answer, Kevin. If you can't, then can you please tell us if you're annoyed at being deceived by the ID people?

I mean, you've made a film about this wonderful scientific theory called ID, and now you find out you've been hoaxed. You were lied to. It doesn't exist. Me, I'd be a little unhappy with this.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 08 2008,15:04

Here is the irony, Kevin11 falls for ALL the creationist bullshit hook line and sinker and never once does he have a shred of skepticism about their claims of ID being science.  "Hey I just say let science follow the evidence" says Kevin11, yet neither he nor they can show us any evidence for ID.  WTF?  Neither he nor they can even provide a scientific theory for ID. WTF?

Where is the evidence you speak so highly of, Kevin11?  Do you show that evidence in your Nazi cartoon?  No doubt the producers of the Explelled cartoon went to great lengths to show the science behind iD in this cartoon, yes?

As I showed above Kevin11 is out being interviewed by his fellow christians and claiming ID is a "scientific program" when he knows good and well ID doesn't even have a scientific theory.  I know ALL christians are not liars, but man oh man the ones associated with ID sure seem to be.

In fact ALL Kevin11 and co can do is portray "darwinism" as a neccessary component of Nazism.

Maybe that is the "science" of ID.  Lying to the faithful for profit (and jesus of course).

I'm curious to know if Kevin11 thinks about all the people he lies to on a daily basis when he hits his knees at night. Is this what jesus would do?  Lie to people and claim ID is a scientific theory?  

Good god the stupid burns!
Posted by: PTET on April 08 2008,15:43

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:01)
...If God does influence this world, is this influence measureable in any scientific way? If not, how can it be detected? I'm really interested to hear from anyone who approaches this from a theistic position.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How about these guys...

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove... No product is ready for competition in the educational world." - < Philip Johnson >, father of the ID movement, 2006

"Intelligent Design is a really, really bad idea --scientifically, politically, and theologically. I say this as a dedicated conservative, who has on many occasions defended and espoused religion and religious conservatism. I also say it as a professional molecular biologist, who has worked daily (or at least week-daily) for years with biological problems to which the theory of evolution has contributed significant understanding -- and to which Intelligent Design is incapable of contributing any understanding at all." - < Mac Johnson >, Intelligent Design, and Other Dumb Ideas, 15 Nov 2007

"I don’t believe in intelligent design mainly because there’s no scientific evidence for it, but also because it’s problematic theologically as well. A belief in evolution doesn’t immediately lead one to become an atheist—no matter what the atheists say. It does mean that you can’t take the Bible literally, but with all deference to my Fundamentalist readers (and I use the term “Fundamentalist” in its exact sense, not as a slur), the Bible is not a work designed to be taken literally." - < Jay Redding >, 18 February 2008
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Where has KevinMiller gone? Maybe all those facts everyone keeps posting have scared him off?

Maybe he's been taken up?
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 08 2008,16:16

Quote (Henry J @ April 08 2008,10:28)
Quote (Doc Bill @ April 07 2008,22:24)
Once again our Kevin expounds on that about which he knows nothing: paleontology!

Not empirical, eh?  So, I guess paleontologists don't measure bone lengths and widths.  Yeah, someone else must do that.  I guess paleontologists don't make any measurements at all.  Nope, someone else must do that like chemists and physicists.  I guess paleontologists spend their time walking around the Badlands with their picks and shovels, contemplating their worldview.

Yeah, Kevin, that's what paleontologists do.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And they make no bones about it, too! :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So I set up the line and Henry got the laugh.

It's not fair!  I am feeling so persecuted.  Downright EXPELLED!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 08 2008,16:34

Quote (PTET @ April 08 2008,15:43)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 07 2008,14:01)
...If God does influence this world, is this influence measureable in any scientific way? If not, how can it be detected? I'm really interested to hear from anyone who approaches this from a theistic position.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How about these guys...    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove... No product is ready for competition in the educational world." - < Philip Johnson >, father of the ID movement, 2006

"Intelligent Design is a really, really bad idea --scientifically, politically, and theologically. I say this as a dedicated conservative, who has on many occasions defended and espoused religion and religious conservatism. I also say it as a professional molecular biologist, who has worked daily (or at least week-daily) for years with biological problems to which the theory of evolution has contributed significant understanding -- and to which Intelligent Design is incapable of contributing any understanding at all." - < Mac Johnson >, Intelligent Design, and Other Dumb Ideas, 15 Nov 2007

"I don’t believe in intelligent design mainly because there’s no scientific evidence for it, but also because it’s problematic theologically as well. A belief in evolution doesn’t immediately lead one to become an atheist—no matter what the atheists say. It does mean that you can’t take the Bible literally, but with all deference to my Fundamentalist readers (and I use the term “Fundamentalist” in its exact sense, not as a slur), the Bible is not a work designed to be taken literally." - < Jay Redding >, 18 February 2008
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Where has KevinMiller gone? Maybe all those facts everyone keeps posting have scared him off?

Maybe he's been taken up?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, probably the Rapture happened last night. I mean, it's not like any of us would notice the difference.  :p

(PS, note that VMartin and Dembski are still here. Hmmm.)
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 08 2008,18:35

< http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home....st.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Chris in Middlebury, Connecticut, welcome to the EIB Network, sir, thank you for waiting.

CALLER:  Thank you so much.  Before I make proper greetings, I just want to be sure to get this name out.  Stuart Kauffman, autocatalytic set is the theory.  Now for the proper greetings, O great one.  I've been a big fan of yours for a long time.  My late father was, too, and I just love what you do.

RUSH:  Thank you, sir.

CALLER:  Thank you for everything.  I just hope I can convince you that the big tent of conservatism and the Republican Party is big enough for Darwinists, too.  I'm a deacon at a church but I'm also a Darwinist.  I think that a lot of elements of Darwinian theory would find approval among conservatives.  Among them, the idea that evolution requires a conservative mechanism, which announces our genes.  It does require innovations, too, but those are mutations, and they usually fail.  It requires a selective mechanism as well.  Those are the trials of life itself.  And unfortunately socialism often leaves those out.  And generally when a government program isn't working, it isn't selected out, it's just given more money which is sort of the reverse of evolution.  

RUSH:  No, it's a perfect liberal evolution.  Liberal evolution rewards failure.

CALLER:  But it's not progress, though, it's not progressive.  I think it goes backwards.  In fact, I don't like to call them liberals, Rush, I think that liberals are supposed to be tolerant of other ideas --

RUSH:  They're not.  You know what you ought to do?  Ben Stein's movie is called Expelled and it comes out either the 12th or the 16th of this month, I'm having a mental block on which.  But it's all about Darwinists on campus all over the country and all over the world who are summarily getting rid of and firing people who don't subscribe to it and who even just question, investigate scientifically the whole concept of intelligent design.

CALLER:  And that's wrong.  Dialogue is necessary for progress to be made.  I don't think Darwinists who are doing that are really abiding by their own philosophy.

RUSH:  Here's the problem.  The Darwinists that are featured in this movie are a bunch of arrogant superiorists who have no more proof of their belief than anybody else has.  Everything they believe requires faith --

CALLER:  Well, I think where it comes from is this idea, if you're looking at a phenomena, tends to be scientists I think when they look at a phenomenon, if you simply say God did it, it doesn't explain very much about how it works.  What they want to do is say, well, let's go past that, maybe God or didn't do it, but let's forget about that because it's really -- they use Occam's razor, which is this principle of eliminating anything that isn't helpful to solving the problem.

RUSH:  No, no, the Darwinists that we're discussing here will not allow God to be mentioned.  There's no possibility whatsoever of God to these Darwinists.  Ben Stein speculates and theorizes that it was Darwinism that led to Hitler and his Holocaust of the Jews.  




END TRANSCRIPT

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ben Stein speculates and theorizes that it was Darwinism that led to Hitler and his Holocaust of the Jews.  


Shameful.
Posted by: JonF on April 08 2008,18:39

Quote (Louis @ April 08 2008,09:48)
Quote (Cheezits @ April 08 2008,13:43)
   
Quote (Louis @ April 08 2008,04:49)
I just want to say WELCOME TO ATBC CHEEZITS!

I remember you from TO (if it is you!) even if you don't remember me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now I feel bad that I don't remember you.  You need a cheesy nickname. :D
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Enjoy, we have less nutters, but usually a better standard.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That must be why I hadn't read this group much before.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are of course forgiven dear lady, forgiven in fact before any need for forgiveness was even contemplated. Such is the power of the FSM. May His Noodles Always Be Al Dente.

AtBC is good. An amusing level of banter, occasional Mornington Crescent, infrequent morons (although this varies with season), and generally good humoured mockery of creationists. Occasionally it gets nasty, and this is mostly my fault as resident UberMeanie. We are an outpost of an outpost of the University of Ediacara. More and adjunct annex of sorts, with occasional knob jokes.

The pun cascades could do with some work however. I expect that an Old Fashioned TOer like yourself will engage in rampant punnery.

Louis

Editted to Add: Whilst we are bereft of luminaries such an McNameless, Ray Martinez, Sean Pitman and Jabriol, we did play host to AFDave for a while. His escapeds are the stuff of legend...mainly in Portugal. See the Richard Dawkins Forums, IIDB, Rants and Raves, and the "Creator God Hypothesis" threads here for fun, frolics and all-round flabbergasted-at-creationist-inanity goodness. Welsey's presence seems to attract the "great and the good" of the IDC world occasionally. To the immense amusement of many.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You're a few weeks behind the times; nowadays Dave is doing most of his tarding at talkrational.org. Next week ... who knows.
Posted by: caerbannog on April 08 2008,19:15

Just a few words of encouragement for Kevin Miller and Co.

Hang in there -- the calvary is riding to the rescue!

< http://news.google.com/news....5PzRYqg >

< http://news.google.com/news....EOzXtew >

Who cares about Elsberry and his minions when you have a drug-addled science expert like Rush Limbaugh on your side??
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 08 2008,20:06

How does a movie open on a thousand screens and not get a mention on < Rottentomatoes >.
Posted by: Quidam on April 08 2008,20:34

Ooooh I know, I know


It doesn't :)

Last count it was 487, but some may have decided to show a money maker instead.  It's too close to the release date to get any more now. You'd have to either find an empty theatre or persuade them to drop a real film and show theirs.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 08 2008,20:46

wow caerbannog

If you ever needed any proof that Rush LImbaugh is indeed a big fat idiot this is the good dope.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
At any rate, "Scientists at the centre hope the process will produce clear signs of the boson, dubbed the 'God particle' by some, to the displeasure of Higgs, an atheist," naturally.  Naturally it would be an atheist doing this research.  

At any rate, what interests me about this -- (interruption) Well, now, wait.  No, no, no, no, no, no.  Mr. Snerdley just said to me there are a lot of physicists that believe in God.  Be very careful.  Ben Stein has a movie coming out that I have screened at my house, it's called Expelled, and it is about people, scientists who are being fired and shunned for their belief in intelligent design.  These are Darwinists.  Just for questioning Darwinism and just for being open to the possibility of intelligent design.  These people fear God.  These scientists, they fear God because God has the answers, God's smarter than they are.  God's judgmental.  That's one of the things that liberals and atheists hate about religion anyway is that it's judgmental.  But regardless, I think you'll find some scientists, physicists particularly.  I can't remember his name, there was one old coot who is close to death, and this goes back a year or two ago, but he'd been a lifelong opponent of the whole notion that anything here was created, that it was just random and miraculous but there was nothing intelligent behind any of this, and he's finally concluded, near his death bed that an accident can't explain this.  He wouldn't go so far as to say that there's a God.  In fact, one of these guys in Ben Stein's movie, guy named Hawkins who's over at Oxford I think, Oxford or Cambridge, Ben Stein goes over and interviews him in this movie, Expelled.  The movie hits April 12th or the 16th.  And he said, "Can you explain the origins of life with Darwinism?"  "No, we can't.  Well, actually we can, but we don't."  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Just sit back and enjoy.  There is nothing to say.  Except that it gets better.

These are not big tent people.
Sayeth Rush, who gets his britches from Omar the Tent Maker.  That is Arden's sister by the way.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 08 2008,22:44

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 08 2008,20:46)
wow caerbannog

If you ever needed any proof that Rush LImbaugh is indeed a big fat idiot this is the good dope.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
At any rate, "Scientists at the centre hope the process will produce clear signs of the boson, dubbed the 'God particle' by some, to the displeasure of Higgs, an atheist," naturally.  Naturally it would be an atheist doing this research.  

At any rate, what interests me about this -- (interruption) Well, now, wait.  No, no, no, no, no, no.  Mr. Snerdley just said to me there are a lot of physicists that believe in God.  Be very careful.  Ben Stein has a movie coming out that I have screened at my house, it's called Expelled, and it is about people, scientists who are being fired and shunned for their belief in intelligent design.  These are Darwinists.  Just for questioning Darwinism and just for being open to the possibility of intelligent design.  These people fear God.  These scientists, they fear God because God has the answers, God's smarter than they are.  God's judgmental.  That's one of the things that liberals and atheists hate about religion anyway is that it's judgmental.  But regardless, I think you'll find some scientists, physicists particularly.  I can't remember his name, there was one old coot who is close to death, and this goes back a year or two ago, but he'd been a lifelong opponent of the whole notion that anything here was created, that it was just random and miraculous but there was nothing intelligent behind any of this, and he's finally concluded, near his death bed that an accident can't explain this.  He wouldn't go so far as to say that there's a God.  In fact, one of these guys in Ben Stein's movie, guy named Hawkins who's over at Oxford I think, Oxford or Cambridge, Ben Stein goes over and interviews him in this movie, Expelled.  The movie hits April 12th or the 16th.  And he said, "Can you explain the origins of life with Darwinism?"  "No, we can't.  Well, actually we can, but we don't."  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Just sit back and enjoy.  There is nothing to say.  Except that it gets better.

These are not big tent people.
Sayeth Rush, who gets his britches from Omar the Tent Maker.  That is Arden's sister by the way.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Could be. But he's also your aunt, which makes me your daddy.   :angry:
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 08 2008,22:56

speakin of you bastard when can we expect that check?  I know you work hard wearin a blister on your lips so that me and maw and the littluns git our Vi-eeners and crackers this month.  god dammit the baby needs somma that thar herpes ointment too.  hit's done got into the hog lot and picked up the leprosy from the armydillers.
Posted by: Kristine on April 08 2008,23:11

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 08 2008,17:35)
< http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home....st.html >
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Chris in Middlebury, Connecticut, welcome to the EIB Network, sir, thank you for waiting.

CALLER:  Thank you so much.  Before I make proper greetings, I just want to be sure to get this name out.  Stuart Kauffman, autocatalytic set is the theory.  Now for the proper greetings, O great one.  I've been a big fan of yours for a long time.  My late father was, too, and I just love what you do.

RUSH:  Thank you, sir.

CALLER:  Thank you for everything.  I just hope I can convince you that the big tent of conservatism and the Republican Party is big enough for Darwinists, too.  I'm a deacon at a church but I'm also a Darwinist.  I think that a lot of elements of Darwinian theory would find approval among conservatives.  Among them, the idea that evolution requires a conservative mechanism, which announces our genes.  It does require innovations, too, but those are mutations, and they usually fail.  It requires a selective mechanism as well.  Those are the trials of life itself.  And unfortunately socialism often leaves those out.  And generally when a government program isn't working, it isn't selected out, it's just given more money which is sort of the reverse of evolution.  

RUSH:  No, it's a perfect liberal evolution.  Liberal evolution rewards failure.

CALLER:  But it's not progress, though, it's not progressive.  I think it goes backwards.  In fact, I don't like to call them liberals, Rush, I think that liberals are supposed to be tolerant of other ideas --

RUSH:  They're not.  You know what you ought to do?  Ben Stein's movie is called Expelled and it comes out either the 12th or the 16th of this month, I'm having a mental block on which.  But it's all about Darwinists on campus all over the country and all over the world who are summarily getting rid of and firing people who don't subscribe to it and who even just question, investigate scientifically the whole concept of intelligent design.

CALLER:  And that's wrong.  Dialogue is necessary for progress to be made.  I don't think Darwinists who are doing that are really abiding by their own philosophy.

RUSH:  Here's the problem.  The Darwinists that are featured in this movie are a bunch of arrogant superiorists who have no more proof of their belief than anybody else has.  Everything they believe requires faith --

CALLER:  Well, I think where it comes from is this idea, if you're looking at a phenomena, tends to be scientists I think when they look at a phenomenon, if you simply say God did it, it doesn't explain very much about how it works.  What they want to do is say, well, let's go past that, maybe God or didn't do it, but let's forget about that because it's really -- they use Occam's razor, which is this principle of eliminating anything that isn't helpful to solving the problem.

RUSH:  No, no, the Darwinists that we're discussing here will not allow God to be mentioned.  There's no possibility whatsoever of God to these Darwinists.  Ben Stein speculates and theorizes that it was Darwinism that led to Hitler and his Holocaust of the Jews.  




END TRANSCRIPT

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ben Stein speculates and theorizes that it was Darwinism that led to Hitler and his Holocaust of the Jews.  


Shameful.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


On the contrary, < I'm celebrating >:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Limbaugh got it wrong,
says intelligent designer

Radio host wants theory's pushers [emphasis mine]
to 'call it what it is' – creationism

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On his national radio program yesterday, talk-show host Rush Limbaugh called efforts by intelligent design proponents "disingenuous," saying they should "call it what it is" – belief "in the biblical version of creation," but a spokesman for the leading intelligent design think tank says Rush got it wrong.

Answering a caller who asked his opinion of the recent high-profile federal court decision against intelligent design in the Dover, Pa., school district, Rush answered he wasn't surprised, given the context of judicial activism.

"I think it's another great example of how we need different kinds of judges," he said.

"You got to understand who we're dealing with here, and they have now structured things such as this: When 95 percent of the people of the country agree with something, 5 percent of the country disagrees, the liberal will say the 5 percent must win because we can't hurt their feelings, we mustn't offend them."

Limbaugh continued, "On the other hand, I do think this: I think that the people – and I know why they're doing it, but I still think that it's a little bit disingenuous. Let's make no mistake. The people pushing intelligent design believe in the biblical version of creation. Intelligent design is a way, I think, to sneak it into the curriculum and make it less offensive to the liberals because it ostensibly does not involve religious overtones, that there is just some intelligent being far greater than anything any of us can even imagine that's responsible for all this, and of course I don't have any doubt of that. But I think that they're sort of pussyfooting around when they call it intelligent design. [emphais mine]

"Call it what it is. You believe God created the world, and you think that it's warranted that this kind of theory for the explanation for all that is be taught."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin Miller, why can't your people get your story straight? :)

Gee, "an intelligent designer." Guess there must be more than one. So, the various "intelligent designers" disagree about design/creation?

Teach the controversy! :D Right, Kevin?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 08 2008,23:20

kristine you rock!


Let's see, that is Ben Stein, Bill O'Reilly and now Rush Limbaugh that have all claimed that ID is creationism.  

Kevin, are you ever going to admit that you have been duped?  It's not too late to admit it.  Are these people really going to protect you when the jig is up?  I can see some Frankenstein like scene (not Jerry Coyne) when the townspeople/barbarians are at the gates wanting blood.  Do you really think Ben Stein is going to quell the throngs of disgruntled movie viewers that want their 8 bucks out of your ass?  I hope they get every dime.  Unless you admit you are wrong and ID is a crock of shit and that you are sorry you threw in your lot with a discovery of douchebags.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 08 2008,23:26



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
On the other hand, I do think this: I think that the people – and I know why they're doing it, but I still think that it's a little bit disingenuous. Let's make no mistake. The people pushing intelligent design believe in the biblical version of creation. Intelligent design is a way, I think, to sneak it into the curriculum and make it less offensive to the liberals because it ostensibly does not involve religious overtones, that there is just some intelligent being far greater than anything any of us can even imagine that's responsible for all this, and of course I don't have any doubt of that. But I think that they're sort of pussyfooting around when they call it intelligent design
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This too pleases me.

Dave Scot worships Rush Limbaugh and wants to be him.

And here Rush goes off and says something that Dave bans people for saying.

Bless his obese, oxycontin-addled soul.

I love it so!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 08 2008,23:28

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 08 2008,22:56)
speakin of you bastard when can we expect that check?  I know you work hard wearin a blister on your lips so that me and maw and the littluns git our Vi-eeners and crackers this month.  god dammit the baby needs somma that thar herpes ointment too.  hit's done got into the hog lot and picked up the leprosy from the armydillers.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not sending you bastards a cent. I don't care how many a them lawyers your mom gets from the mall out by the Walmart. :angry:
Posted by: caerbannog on April 08 2008,23:33

The Expelled producers are now running ads on AM radio -- I just heard one this afternoon.

The ad touted Expelled as "the movie that Big Science doesn't want you to see".  

(If I were hired to promote "Expelled", I'd suggest that a free tinfoil hat be given away with every paid admission.)
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 08 2008,23:36

That's Wal-marts to you, you uppity old goat.  That one lawyer from down there in Nebo said that once any judge got a hold of them pictures of you a-doin them things with your lips and eyebrows to that clown troop while you was a wearin that Parkay Margarine tub costume that there warn't no jury in Big Cove that wouldn't convict you for crimes against nature and a nature of crime.  And they would find you legally gay, again, he said.

Send them'ar god dam checks cause we are getting tired of making marks behind the door a waitin.  and sis done had another litter



Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 09 2008,08:45

< Flunked, Not Expelled: Not Even Fox Likes It >
Posted by: slpage on April 09 2008,09:19

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 08 2008,23:26)
Dave Scot worships Rush Limbaugh and wants to be him.

And here Rush goes off and says something that Dave bans people for saying.

Bless his obese, oxycontin-addled soul.

I love it so!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And I would like to know why Limbaugh took a bottle of Viagra to the Dominican Republic - a place known for its underage male prostitutes....

Another great spokeman for the Christian Right!
Posted by: J-Dog on April 09 2008,09:47

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 09 2008,08:45)
< Flunked, Not Expelled: Not Even Fox Likes It >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If even FOX doesn't like it, it's got to be worse that we even dreamed.

I wonder how UD is gonna spin this one?  This should be really fun!  Did Dave predict this as a Big Win / Death To Darwinism, just like Dover?
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 09 2008,09:50

Quote (slpage @ April 09 2008,09:19)
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 08 2008,23:26)
Dave Scot worships Rush Limbaugh and wants to be him.

And here Rush goes off and says something that Dave bans people for saying.

Bless his obese, oxycontin-addled soul.

I love it so!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And I would like to know why Limbaugh took a bottle of Viagra to the Dominican Republic - a place known for its underage male prostitutes....

Another great spokeman for the Christian Right!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< The Smoking Gun! >

Is it legal for a doctor to write a presciption to himself and then hand the meds over to someone else?


Posted by: Kristine on April 09 2008,10:17

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 09 2008,07:45)
< Flunked, Not Expelled: Not Even Fox Likes It >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What the producers of this film would love, love, love is a controversy. That’s because it’s being marketed by the same people who brought us "The Passion of the Christ." They’re hoping someone will latch onto an anti-Semitism theme here since there’s a visit to a concentration camp and the raised idea — apparently typical of the intelligent design community — that somehow the theory of evolution is so evil that it caused the Holocaust. Alas, this is such a warped premise that no one’s biting.

The whole idea of Stein, a Jew, jumping on the intelligent design bandwagon of the theory of evolution begetting the Nazis is so distasteful you wonder what in — sorry — God’s name — he was thinking when he got into this. Who cares, really, if "Expelled" is anti-Semitic? It will come and go without much fanfare.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My very thoughts.

If this film had been made to promote evolutionary thinking, I would have been very, very insulted and angry. It's that bad. Thankfully, it's a creationist film. The more I think about it, the more I believe that this could be creationism's high water mark in America.

I've seen a lot of "creation science/theories" come and go.
Posted by: JohnW on April 09 2008,11:28

Quote (caerbannog @ April 08 2008,21:33)
"the movie that Big Scienceyour brain doesn't want you to see".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I fixed that for you.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 09 2008,11:41

Quote (caerbannog @ April 08 2008,23:33)
The ad touted Expelled as "the movie that Big Science doesn't want you to see".  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm confused. Do they mean this woman?



Hmmm. Probably not.

But I doubt they mean < this, > either.
Posted by: Louis on April 09 2008,11:46

"Big Science"? Every time I hear or read this phrase I have to try not to laugh. The creationists are playing up the little guy versus the system meme for all they are worth.

Pathetic.

Louis
Posted by: Henry J on April 09 2008,11:56

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 08 2008,21:44)
Could be. But he's also your aunt, which makes me your daddy.   :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


One should use a Darth Vader accent when saying that... :p
Posted by: Cheezits on April 09 2008,12:08

"Big Science", it's like "Big Business" and "Big Medicine" and all those other Big Meanies.  :D
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 09 2008,12:11

Quote (Cheezits @ April 09 2008,12:08)
"Big Science", it's like "Big Business" and "Big Medicine" and all those other Big Meanies.  :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And it implies that Creationism is 'Little Science'.
Posted by: JohnW on April 09 2008,12:17

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 09 2008,10:11)
Quote (Cheezits @ April 09 2008,12:08)
"Big Science", it's like "Big Business" and "Big Medicine" and all those other Big Meanies.  :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And it implies that Creationism is 'Little Science'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Or "Big Religion".
Posted by: Kristine on April 09 2008,12:29

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 09 2008,10:41)
   
Quote (caerbannog @ April 08 2008,23:33)
The ad touted Expelled as "the movie that Big Science doesn't want you to see".  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm confused. Do they mean this woman?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe they mean pharmaceuticals - you know, those pills that people are loathe to pop. ;) Yeah, let's destroy Big Sinus. Yeah.

@ Louis

Of course creationism will always be with us in some form - fundamentalist/reactionary movements always have their "Transform the world!" phase and their "We tried to transform the world and we became corrupted by it - must return to our roots and withdraw" phase. But just as the sightings of Bigfoot have been dropping off since the 1970s (Bigfoot hunters are big on NVGs too), so I think we'll see a decline in these outspoken "dissenter-scientists" from now on (for global climate change, too).

The religious anti-gay movement is dying, after all. A new generation of evangelicals is coming up who are less concerned with that crap.

I must say, at least the Bigfoot hunters < made a better crockumentary > - campy, hokey, and with music that still gives me a shiver. :) (I had a Bigfoot phase when I was around ten-eleven and I can still rattle off way too much Bigfoot trivia!;)
Posted by: J-Dog on April 09 2008,12:35

Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,12:29)
(I had a Bigfoot phase when I was around ten-eleven and I can still rattle off way too much Bigfoot trivia!)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Like, they live in TX on houseboats?
Posted by: Bing on April 09 2008,12:45

Quote (J-Dog @ April 09 2008,12:35)
Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,12:29)
(I had a Bigfoot phase when I was around ten-eleven and I can still rattle off way too much Bigfoot trivia!)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Like, they live in TX on houseboats?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I doubt it!  

I knew a girl early in college who said she picked guys based on the size of their feet.  In her (anecdotal) experience large feet were positively correlated with other large anatomical developments.

I never did ask her if she had exceeded sample size at least n=10 and if her results approached the .05 level of confidence.

Given this evidence however, I doubt very much if the Texas Houseboat Tard has big feet, as he writes and behaves very much like he is afflicted with Penis Minimus.
Posted by: BopDiddy on April 09 2008,12:56

Quote (Bing @ April 09 2008,12:45)
 
Quote (J-Dog @ April 09 2008,12:35)
   
Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,12:29)
(I had a Bigfoot phase when I was around ten-eleven and I can still rattle off way too much Bigfoot trivia!)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Like, they live in TX on houseboats?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I doubt it!  

I knew a girl early in college who said she picked guys based on the size of their feet.  In her (anecdotal) experience large feet were positively correlated with other large anatomical developments.

I never did ask her if she had exceeded sample size at least n=10 and if her results approached the .05 level of confidence.

Given this evidence however, I doubt very much if the Texas Houseboat Tard has big feet, as he writes and behaves very much like he is afflicted with Penis Minimus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Want disturbing?  My mother believes a man's size is related to the size of his nose, not his feet.  She also says you can tell the way a man makes love by the way he eats.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 09 2008,13:09

Depends a bit on what he's eating, doesn't it?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 09 2008,13:13

I like chopsticks.  Oh yeah and jello.
Posted by: Kristine on April 09 2008,13:13

Well, I hope his idea of a date isn't crashing his hands through window glass reaching for girls - I got creeped out enough by that watching Legend of Boggy Creek last year. :) (Boggy Creek 2 is only worth watching if you have the MST3000 version.)
Quote (J-Dog @ April 09 2008,11:35)
   
Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,12:29)
(I had a Bigfoot phase when I was around ten-eleven and I can still rattle off way too much Bigfoot trivia!;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Like, they live in TX on houseboats?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


J-Dog - that would be < Bigfoot's cousin >. ;)
Posted by: slpage on April 09 2008,14:02

Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,13:13)
Well, I hope his idea of a date isn't crashing his hands through window glass reaching for girls - I got creeped out enough by that watching Legend of Boggy Creek last year. :) (Boggy Creek 2 is only worth watching if you have the MST3000 version.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Come on now, I still remember the Travis Crabtree song...
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 09 2008,14:11


Posted by: dogdidit on April 09 2008,14:19

Sorry, RB - Arden beat you to it. < link >
(I may have to spool up some Laurie Anderson tonight. Haven't listened to Mister Heartbreak in years...)
Posted by: stevestory on April 09 2008,14:54

Expelled is so lame FoxNews doesn't like it. But it looks like the Expelled folks know their target audience is the less-educated.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
PS: Following "The Passion" release pattern, "Expelled" will open wide on the 18th, but mostly in rural and poor neighborhoods. It’s got just one theater in all of New York City, in Times Square, none in places like Beverly Hills or wealthier, better-educated urban neighborhoods where more "evolved" people might live.

According to the film’s Web site, the producers are in a whopping 45 theaters in North Carolina, and a mere seven in Massachusetts, 35 in Georgia, 11 in New Jersey, four in Connecticut and one in Vermont. And so on. There are huge numbers of screens in Florida and Texas taking the film, particularly seven in San Antonio. If I lived in the Deep South, I’d boycott the filmmakers for thinking of me as this gullible and unsophisticated.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Assassinator on April 09 2008,14:55

Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,12:29)
The religious anti-gay movement is dying, after all. A new generation of evangelicals is coming up who are less concerned with that crap.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Really? I thought those anti-gay Bible camps (for gay boys and girls to "transform" them into straight people, I can just wonder about the problems those kids will have in the future, my society-teacher in high-school commited suicide from supressing it) were relatively new, or would just be the last twitches?
Posted by: stevestory on April 09 2008,14:57

We know it's bad, it was written by morons, etc, but there's still the hope that it's so bad that it becomes a cult classic.


Posted by: Assassinator on April 09 2008,15:01

Although Showgirls sucked (o ha   ha   ha), it still had lots of hot naked girls. Wich is what matters with a porn-flick. Now this is a proper cult-classic:


PS: midwifetoad, suprise us with some good Photoshops from both of those filmposters. It's excellent material.
Posted by: stevestory on April 09 2008,15:05

Quote (Assassinator @ April 09 2008,15:55)
Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,12:29)
The religious anti-gay movement is dying, after all. A new generation of evangelicals is coming up who are less concerned with that crap.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Really? I thought those anti-gay Bible camps (for gay boys and girls to "transform" them into straight people, I can just wonder about the problems those kids will have in the future, my society-teacher in high-school commited suicide from supressing it) were relatively new, or would just be the last twitches?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, there's still that, but the new generation is so less anti-gay it's remarkable, because a critical number of openly gay people was reached. While the older generation thinks of gays as abstract sodomites, the new generation thinks of gays as their friend Bob or whoever. I've lived in 3 college towns in the last decade, and it's just amazing the difference. Even lots of conservative republican kids simply don't give a crap if someone's gay. It's not 100%, but there's been a sea-change. The war against gays is over, but news hasn't reached some of the troops yet.
Posted by: stevestory on April 09 2008,15:07

Quote (Assassinator @ April 09 2008,16:01)
Although Showgirls sucked (o ha   ha   ha), it still had lots of hot naked girls.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That wasn't enough. It's one of only two movies that I've walked out on in my life.

The other is Schindler's List. Make of those facts what you will.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 09 2008,15:14

Quote (dogdidit @ April 09 2008,15:19)
Sorry, RB - Arden beat you to it. < link >
(I may have to spool up some Laurie Anderson tonight. Haven't listened to Mister Heartbreak in years...)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I particularly enjoy Mr. Heartbreak, and saw Laurie Anderson live during her tour for that album. Kokoku is essentially about evolution and deep time ("We could all...be...wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.")
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 09 2008,15:17

Quote (stevestory @ April 09 2008,16:07)
Quote (Assassinator @ April 09 2008,16:01)
Although Showgirls sucked (o ha   ha   ha), it still had lots of hot naked girls.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That wasn't enough. It's one of only two movies that I've walked out on in my life.

The other is Schindler's List. Make of those facts what you will.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Schindler's List - you walked out as Darwin laughed maniacally above it all.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,15:23

Although expelled wont go straight to DVD (it may take a month), when it gets there, it will have some pretty stiff competition!

< http://www.google.com/products?q=expelled+movie&hl=en&show=dd >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Black Carnal Coeds 8 - Expelled (DVD)
Thick Sistas!!! Juicy Butts!!!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All for $6.90!
Posted by: JohnW on April 09 2008,15:28

Quote (stevestory @ April 09 2008,13:05)
Quote (Assassinator @ April 09 2008,15:55)
Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,12:29)
The religious anti-gay movement is dying, after all. A new generation of evangelicals is coming up who are less concerned with that crap.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Really? I thought those anti-gay Bible camps (for gay boys and girls to "transform" them into straight people, I can just wonder about the problems those kids will have in the future, my society-teacher in high-school commited suicide from supressing it) were relatively new, or would just be the last twitches?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, there's still that, but the new generation is so less anti-gay it's remarkable, because a critical number of openly gay people was reached. While the older generation thinks of gays as abstract sodomites, the new generation thinks of gays as their friend Bob or whoever. I've lived in 3 college towns in the last decade, and it's just amazing the difference. Even lots of conservative republican kids simply don't give a crap if someone's gay. It's not 100%, but there's been a sea-change. The war against gays is over, but news hasn't reached some of the troops yet.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think you're right, Steve.  That's why there's been such an intense push to get states, and the US as a whole, to constitutionally amend against gay marriage.  They know that their strongest supporters on this issue are dropping dead, and the longer they wait, the more trouble they're going to have.

In a generation, finding people who openly oppose gay marriage is going to be as rare as finding open pro-segregationists now.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,15:30

Quote (JohnW @ April 09 2008,15:28)
In a generation, finding people who openly oppose gay marriage is going to be as rare as finding open pro-segregationists now.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But will they still hate the atheists?
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 09 2008,15:34

It's really about time to have a betting pool.

Will the box office for Expelled be closest to
A. Mel Gibson's Passion.
B. Gods and Generals.

Will the number of theaters
A. Increase the second weekend.
B. Drop the second weekend.

Will Rottentomatoes link to any reviews at all?
A. Yes.
B. No.

If yes, what will be the Tomatometer score?
A. 0
B. 10
C. 20
D. 30
E. 98

Will Ben ever work in Hollywood again?
A. Yes.
B. No.

If no, will he be able to find a position at Bob Jones teaching Science and Economics?
A. Yes.
B. Yes.
Posted by: dheddle on April 09 2008,15:40

Kristine
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Boggy Creek 2 is only worth watching if you have the MST3000 version
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Another reason why I like you, Kristine. Mystery Science Theater represents the apex of Western Civilization. (MST = 1/Wedge-Strategy)

There was one where a character in the 50's B scifi movie said "it's destiny" and one of the MST crew--I think  it was the bubble gum machine robot said: "He's a Calvinist!"

Gotta love such specialized jokes.
Posted by: stevestory on April 09 2008,15:43

I've got to start watching that. I've had friends who thought it was the greatest thing ever, but I've only seen bits and pieces.
Posted by: bfish on April 09 2008,15:54

One that I remember....

A beach scene from a '50s movie. This guy kisses a girl and then leans back against a rocky cliff. "There he is, stuck between a rock and a hard place," the robot quipped.
Posted by: BopDiddy on April 09 2008,15:56

Quote (stevestory @ April 09 2008,15:43)
I've got to start watching that. I've had friends who thought it was the greatest thing ever, but I've only seen bits and pieces.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


FYI, the two main guys from MST3K have active projects ongoing.  Joel Hodgson has < Cinematic Titanic > and Mike Nelson has < RiffTrax >.
Posted by: dheddle on April 09 2008,16:12

Once they were watching a scene in a movie or a short subject (those were so good: Personal Hygiene is Your Friend!) where there was a 50s nuclear white middle class family at dinner. Dad in a suit, mom in a dress. Roast beef, potatoes, glasses of milk. Jr in a crew cut. The teenage daughter sitting prim and proper. Then one of the crew did a ad-lib, for the daughter: "Daddy, I've started dating a Negro."

I tell you Jonathan Swift couldn't have done it any better.

OK, that's all from me--I could fill pages with "Oh, oh, oh, remember the one..."
Posted by: BopDiddy on April 09 2008,16:26

Caption contest?



"Look, I can still see a small brown bit from Nixon on his nose."

"A face and voice for speech writing!"

"His 'bat in the cave'?  God did it."
Posted by: improvius on April 09 2008,16:32

"Hitler... Hitler... Hitler..."
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 09 2008,16:33

The only problem being that I've heard that Mike Nelson is pretty firmly an antievolutionist. It was gossip when I heard it, so I'd appreciate being corrected on that.
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 09 2008,16:48

OK, what did dheddle to with the Real Heddle?

You're cracking me up and it's MY job to crack me up!  Or maybe it's just that the creationists have gone so far to the edge they make DH look positively Che.

Welcome to the revolution, amigo!
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 09 2008,16:56

I can't wait to her what kevin11 has to say about Michael Shermer's Scientific American article, < Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin >

Here's the intro



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory—not because I knew anything about it (I didn't) but because I thought that in order to believe in God and accept the Bible as true, you had to be a creationist. What I knew about evolution came primarily from creationist literature, so when I finally took a course in evolutionary theory in graduate school I realized that I had been hoodwinked. What I discovered is a massive amount of evidence from multiple sciences—geology, paleontology, biogeography, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, genetics and embryology—demonstrating that evolution happened.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And poor davetard is going to dirty his shorts.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,16:57

I like Dheddle, not surprising as I also like dum*









*Dum Dheddle Dum Dheddle Dum-Dum-Dum.

Great if you don't know the words to songs.
Posted by: Kristine on April 09 2008,17:25

Quote (BopDiddy @ April 09 2008,15:26)
Caption contest?



"Look, I can still see a small brown bit from Nixon on his nose."

"A face and voice for speech writing!"

"His 'bat in the cave'?  God did it."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"The dude just snorted a line of Coulter...uh, should we tell someone?" :p
Posted by: J-Dog on April 09 2008,17:37

Quote (Kristine @ April 09 2008,17:25)
Quote (BopDiddy @ April 09 2008,15:26)
Caption contest?



"Look, I can still see a small brown bit from Nixon on his nose."

"A face and voice for speech writing!"

"His 'bat in the cave'?  God did it."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"The dude just snorted a line of Coulter...uh, should we tell someone?" :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And this years winner of the
"Prestigious Person Who Has Done For To Movies What Denyse O'Leary Has Done For To Writing" Award....  Ben Stein!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 09 2008,17:51

Quote (stevestory @ April 09 2008,14:54)
Expelled is so lame FoxNews doesn't like it. But it looks like the Expelled folks know their target audience is the less-educated.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
PS: Following "The Passion" release pattern, "Expelled" will open wide on the 18th, but mostly in rural and poor neighborhoods. It’s got just one theater in all of New York City, in Times Square, none in places like Beverly Hills or wealthier, better-educated urban neighborhoods where more "evolved" people might live.

According to the film’s Web site, the producers are in a whopping 45 theaters in North Carolina, and a mere seven in Massachusetts, 35 in Georgia, 11 in New Jersey, four in Connecticut and one in Vermont. And so on. There are huge numbers of screens in Florida and Texas taking the film, particularly seven in San Antonio. If I lived in the Deep South, I’d boycott the filmmakers for thinking of me as this gullible and unsophisticated.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's ironic. They presumably picked Stein since he's Jewish and they can say "see! It's not just bornagains!" (and I assume he's cheap). And yet 99% of the showings are in places where no Jews are likely to see it, and where antisemitism is highest.

I think they've completely given up converting any new people to the cause, and now they're simply desperate to recoup their investment.
Posted by: Bing on April 09 2008,18:04

Quote (stevestory @ April 09 2008,15:07)
Quote (Assassinator @ April 09 2008,16:01)
Although Showgirls sucked (o ha   ha   ha), it still had lots of hot naked girls.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That wasn't enough. It's one of only two movies that I've walked out on in my life.

The other is Schindler's List. Make of those facts what you will.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You didn't want to perform a < Pee Wee Herman > in the theatre where Showgirls was playing and left in a state of partial tumescence?
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 09 2008,18:11



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I can't wait to her what kevin11 has to say about Michael Shermer's Scientific American article, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Furthermore, the opening scene is all fake.  Fake students.  Extras.

Hey, Kevin, did you write that? Enter fake students, stage left.

Sort of like the rest of the film, right Kevin?

Kevin?  Anybody?

By the way, Kev, you never did answer my question.  From what was Sternberg expelled?  It's not explained in the film, although you lied and said it was.  Perhaps you could direct us to the real person who wrote the screenplay and we could ask that person.
Posted by: ERV on April 09 2008,18:25

< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,18:53

Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,18:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd hug you, but you'd probably kill me.
Posted by: debeuk on April 09 2008,19:00

Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,18:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


</lurk>

*bows to ERV*

That just made my day :)

<lurk>
Posted by: ERV on April 09 2008,19:03

I am but only the messenger.

Thank arrogant Creationists for the lulz.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,19:09


Posted by: stevestory on April 09 2008,19:14

Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,19:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I hope it's a big headache to have to edit their plagiarized stuff out at the last minute.

If they like to commit plagiarism it's no wonder they were expelled!

:p
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,19:22

Quote (stevestory @ April 09 2008,19:14)
Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,19:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I hope it's a big headache to have to edit their plagiarized stuff out at the last minute.

If they like to commit plagiarism it's no wonder they were expelled!

:p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They should call in these cats:

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHrP_Njvpko >
Posted by: tyciol on April 09 2008,19:22

The preview and the reviews I've seen make it sound pretty bad, and apparently now that we are open to a negative opinion of Paul Stein for this, his other critics ahaving a field day bringing up they think he sucked at economics too.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 09 2008,19:31

Quote (stevestory @ April 09 2008,20:14)
 
Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,19:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I hope it's a big headache to have to edit their plagiarized stuff out at the last minute.

If they like to commit plagiarism it's no wonder they were expelled!

:p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Last night I counted 909 theaters listed as carrying expelled. I have no idea how this stuff is done - but this late in the distribution game there must be approximately a thousand individual 35mm prints of this film in some phase or other of being shipped or prepared for shipping. No way they are edited at this late date, or new prints created from an edited digital original in time for distribution. So either they go forward in the face of this legal demand or they postpone the film's opening, I would think months rather than weeks. Either could be disastrous/expensive for the producer.

(Sow, reap, and all that.)
Posted by: Quidam on April 09 2008,19:49

They have no time to remove the offending clips. If they postpone the release then they have lost their market.   if they release it with the challenged clips then they will have an expensive lawsuit and lose their revenues.    

My bet is that they will release it anyway and then pose as martyrs oppressed by Big Science (as opposed to ID's Little Science)


Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 09 2008,19:55

of course they want to be Expelled.  It's all about the big bad EAC.  

ERV you are way gabbro.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 09 2008,20:14

Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,18:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


EXPELLED == EPIC FREAKING FAIL

Oh, and I know, I know, I'm justa n00b, but once again I have to ask the moderators: POTW? POTM? POTY??????

ERV you need to live up to your handle and make copies of yer terrific bad self.
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 09 2008,20:14

ERV, Mistress of the Universe.

Give me a jet pack, oh, Ruler, and I will do your bidding.

(The jet pack in Houston traffic would be way cool.)
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 09 2008,20:17

< OK, Expelled… But Plagiarism Will Do That For You >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Abbie Smith at ERV has the scoop on this: XVIVO has made the opening legal salvo with a cease-and-desist letter to Premise Media accusing them of copyright infringement concerning the animation showing the interior of a cell used in the film. They request that the disputed animation be removed from the “Expelled” film *before* it makes its commercial debut on April 18th.

Now, that’s a short schedule. Somebody’s going to be out a packet of change over this. It may not even be feasible for Premise Media to alter the film on that timetable and have their big opening, too. There’s speculation that Premise Media may say, ‘damn the lawyers, full steam ahead!’ and simply figure on writing off the financial end of this as a big loss, hoping that they’ll gain martyr cred by doing so. The thing about martyrs, though, is that they not only need to be oppressed, but they are supposed to somehow convey at least a dollop of righteousness along the way. Funny, though, how righteousness just doesn’t seem to be any part of the operating mindset behind the writing, production. or promotion of this film. Getting caught cheating doesn’t make you look like a martyr, it makes you look like a crook.

Hey, maybe Ben Stein will finally get to use Nixon’s most famous line that Ben Stein claims he, Ben Stein, didn’t write.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Doc Bill on April 09 2008,20:22

All is lost.

Apparently, Ben Stein has found out about the cease and desist order and has moved his bunker.

All is revealed < HERE >.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 09 2008,21:21

Quote (Doc Bill @ April 09 2008,20:22)
All is lost.

Apparently, Ben Stein has found out about the cease and desist order and has moved his bunker.

All is revealed < HERE >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ach!  Zer Goot, Herr Doctor Wilhelm!  I zink zey are well und truly fukked, nein?

Well, they DID want to bring the Nazis into this didn't they?

Is this Godwin's Law writ large?

Jawohl!
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 09 2008,21:32

Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,18:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Allen MacNeill < pokes > the UDiots


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don’t know if anyone is still watching this thread, but Premise Media has just been slapped with a “cease and desist” letter from XVIVO, the group at Harvard that produced the video clips from which the still images at the top of this thread were taken. They are alleging copyright infringement (not to mention blatant plagiarism). The full text of the letter from XVIVO’s lawyers can be read at:

< http://endogenousretrovirus.bl.....arism.html >

The letter makes it clear that if the offending video clips are not removed from the film and all promotional materials by the opening date, immediate legal action will be taken to stop the release of the film.

I’m curious; isn’t there a commandment about stealing in there somewhere? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?

P.S. It might be a good idea to remove the still pictures at the top of this thread, too. You never know…

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,21:38

Was it copied or made independently?

Can we use the EF for this?

*bites lip*
Posted by: ERV on April 09 2008,21:44

I RESURRECTED FTK!!! WHOOOOOOO!

<--ERV, biggest bitch in the biosphere, 1st runner up biggest bitch in the solar system
Posted by: J-Dog on April 09 2008,21:46

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 09 2008,21:32)
Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,18:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Allen MacNeill < pokes > the UDiots
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don’t know if anyone is still watching this thread, but Premise Media has just been slapped with a “cease and desist” letter from XVIVO, the group at Harvard that produced the video clips from which the still images at the top of this thread were taken. They are alleging copyright infringement (not to mention blatant plagiarism). The full text of the letter from XVIVO’s lawyers can be read at:

< http://endogenousretrovirus.bl.....arism.html >

The letter makes it clear that if the offending video clips are not removed from the film and all promotional materials by the opening date, immediate legal action will be taken to stop the release of the film.

I’m curious; isn’t there a commandment about stealing in there somewhere? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?

P.S. It might be a good idea to remove the still pictures at the top of this thread, too. You never know… emphasis mine - JD


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


BWa Ha Ha!  I guess "Mister" MacNeill will have the last laugh, right Davie?

BTW - In the first response to Allen's notice, UD poster jstanley first tries to obfuscate by confusing this with the Dembski  illegal copyright infringement that ERV caught,  then provides a link to the letter on Ann Coulter's blog!

All Science So Far.

added in edit:  They DID take down the picture of the cell at the top of the thread!!!!
Posted by: J-Dog on April 09 2008,21:48

Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,21:44)
I RESURRECTED FTK!!! WHOOOOOOO!

<--ERV, biggest bitch in the biosphere, 1st runner up biggest bitch in the solar system
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yay!  Abbie For President Empress Of The World!

If FTK hates you, you KNOW you're doing something right.
Posted by: Gunthernacus on April 09 2008,21:52

I can see them now...complaining to anyone who will listen about how XVIVO is being soooo petty and overzealous; their night vision goggles bobbing animatedly as they gesture with their clipboard lists of who is the right sort and who got the fake cancellations.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 09 2008,21:53

If the fools at UD took down the image, the shit must have hit the fan.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,22:03

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 09 2008,21:53)
If the fools at UD took down the image, the shit must have hit the fan.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's still there.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 09 2008,22:10

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 09 2008,22:03)
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 09 2008,21:53)
If the fools at UD took down the image, the shit must have hit the fan.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's still there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Rich - I will take your word for it - the pic was not loading, and it still didn't load after I read your post - but I can see that the page doesn't load 100 % also, so  I'm willing to think my pc is loading slow tonight.

Crap - Now I have to go back and re-post at ERV's too.

Oh well, corrections are part of science, right?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 09 2008,22:40

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 09 2008,21:38)
Was it copied or made independently?

Can we use the EF for this?

*bites lip*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Ask and You shall Re Sieve >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It seems that all of the hype about who supposedly copied what from whom could be more easily settled if we had some sort of way of discriminating between copies and originals. You know you can’t trust the darwinists and I’m sure that Ben STein and his supporters have to be very careful now that they don’t get sued by the ACLU. It just seems to me that there must be some sort of method that can sort this out. Doesn’t science help us out here?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



hmmmm rich you must have fans.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 09 2008,22:49

Quick, to the Biologic Labs. Gil Dogems will kick teh 'puter until it stimulates properly!
Posted by: stevestory on April 09 2008,23:05

Quote (dogdidit @ April 09 2008,21:14)
Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,18:25)
< EXPELLED: EXPELLED for plagiarism >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


EXPELLED == EPIC FREAKING FAIL
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, I like this comment on ERV's site from Bill:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Bill said...

   The original release date for Expelled was Feb 8, but it was unexpectedly pulled shortly after the copyright problem regarding "the cell as a city" was revealed.

   Apparently, Expelled scrambled to produce a "like copy" of the material hoping to get around copyright.

   I'm speculating, here.

   Obviously, it wasn't enough. Since the "intelligent design" cult doesn't have any real scientists all they could hope for was to produce a knock-off in different color and hope it passed muster.

   It didn't.

   We're talking about Epic Fail Losers here. Loserville, population Discovery Institute. Mayor Behe of Loserville presiding.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Doc Bill on April 09 2008,23:21

"Bill" is your very own Doc Bill, joke writer for dheddle.

(Who doesn't pay very much, I might add.)
Posted by: BathTub on April 09 2008,23:30

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 09 2008,16:33)
The only problem being that I've heard that Mike Nelson is pretty firmly an antievolutionist. It was gossip when I heard it, so I'd appreciate being corrected on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well sure he's a known right of center christian type, but I've never heard that before. I will follow it up and see if I can some more direct info either way.
Posted by: Annyday on April 09 2008,23:31

Quote (J-Dog @ April 09 2008,21:48)
Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,21:44)
I RESURRECTED FTK!!! WHOOOOOOO!

<--ERV, biggest bitch in the biosphere, 1st runner up biggest bitch in the solar system
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yay!  Abbie For President Empress Of The World!

If FTK hates you, you KNOW you're doing something right.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Other things resurrecting FtK proves:

1) There is no God.
2) This is not the best of all possible worlds.
3) Abbie is trying to kill us all.
4) Oil and water don't mix.
5) Time+chance DOES NOT (re)CREATE INFORMATION!1!!! ERV clearly had to use intelligence to bait out the tard, which is irreducibly complex.
Posted by: tacitus on April 09 2008,23:43

I honestly don't see how they postpone the premier.  Unless they were so dumb as to not get any legal advice about making their own version of the animation (admittedly, they could be that dumb) then they will probably already have been told by a lawyer that they've done enough to squeak past any lawsuit over copyright.

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 09 2008,23:55

Two things.

First, I think Expelled was held back pending the Gonzalez decision.  They couldn't very well portray him as a martyr if the Regents reversed the tenure decision.  That pushed the release date past Feb 8.  Now that Gonzalez is a full-fledged martyr and ex-astronomer they are good to go.

Second, obviously they felt they had a problem stealing the Harvard video, especially after Dembski stepped into dung in Oklahoma.  It took time to put yellow pants on Mickey Mouse and rename him Rickey Mouse, but there you have it.  Personally, I would have put in some John Wayne clips instead of the "cell as a  city." Hell Fighters would have been good.

You might say, "That makes no sense at all!"  And I would reply, "Your point?"
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 10 2008,00:04

Quote (Doc Bill @ April 09 2008,23:55)
Two things.

First, I think Expelled was held back pending the Gonzalez decision.  They couldn't very well portray him as a martyr if the Regents reversed the tenure decision.  That pushed the release date past Feb 8.  Now that Gonzalez is a full-fledged martyr and ex-astronomer they are good to go.

Second, obviously they felt they had a problem stealing the Harvard video, especially after Dembski stepped into dung in Oklahoma.  It took time to put yellow pants on Mickey Mouse and rename him Rickey Mouse, but there you have it.  Personally, I would have put in some John Wayne clips instead of the "cell as a  city." Hell Fighters would have been good.

You might say, "That makes no sense at all!"  And I would reply, "Your point?"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I offered kevin some top advice:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....0120990 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
imagine that all the film has already been printed by now? Must be expensive to re-edit and re-print it. Still, you can fill the empty bit where the cell animation was with more goose-stepping nazis. It'll probably sync up to the voice-over okay.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 10 2008,00:16



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That will be fun. More subpoenas, discovery, deposition, and cross-examination. I don't think they'll think it is much fun on the other side, though.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 10 2008,00:20

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 10 2008,00:16)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That will be fun. More subpoenas, discovery, deposition, and cross-examination. I don't think they'll think it is much fun on the other side, though.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The DI will be advising them to settle...
Posted by: snoeman on April 10 2008,00:30

Quote (ERV @ April 09 2008,21:44)
I RESURRECTED FTK!!! WHOOOOOOO!

<--ERV, biggest bitch in the biosphere, 1st runner up biggest bitch in the solar system
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's post of the week.

Sadly, FtK will be wondering, "Huh, I wonder who the biggest bitch in the solar system is?"
Posted by: godsilove on April 10 2008,01:08

How did ERV get a hold of XVIVO's cease-and-desist letter?
Posted by: bfish on April 10 2008,01:26

Hmmm.

Is it just me, or has the DT post with the Youtube videos from Expelled been expelled? I no see it on the web page. Was it before or after Gil's Ode to Berlinksi? 'Cause that's what's at the top of the page right now.

Edited to add: It was just me and my durned computer. The post is still there, and I think never left. There are 20 more comments than were there last night. My bad.
Posted by: stevestory on April 10 2008,01:47



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
OK, the spelling errors were mine, and didn't get caught at the XVIVO office when they copied the letter from my draft onto their stationery. So who's perfect? From what I know of the movie business, and what the XVIVO people told me, it would cost the Expelled producers a mint (at least $100K) to recall and remaster all copies before they go to theaters. So they have to choose a) between that cost, b) delaying the film's release, and c) keeping the segment in and risking a lawsuit. XVIVO does have a really good copyright lawyer from a big firm in Boston, so it's not just an idle threat.

Posted by: peter irons | April 9, 2008 9:23 PM | kill
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....-828190 >
Posted by: stevestory on April 10 2008,01:52



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Seed science blogger John M. Lynch (of "Stranger Fruit") has reported receiving an email (to himself and several others) stating that the screening he was to attend had been moved one hour earlier.[124] He later received an email (to himself and five others)[125] stating that the RSVP screening he was set to attend had been canceled. One of the other individuals to receive this email phoned the theater, which revealed that the screening was set to go ahead anyway.[125] He attended, and found that his name was no longer on the guest list, but after some negotiation (presenting his confirmation email and stating he was not representing any organization) he was allowed to view the movie. Lynch proposes a guest pre-screening process was set up in response to the Myers and Dawkins incident, and uses this as evidence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed >

Kevin, producing a misleading movie, lying to your interviewees, stealing XVIVO's work, and then lying to John Lynch about it...Kevin, when you do these things, it makes the baby Jesus cry.

(But it makes us laugh, so please keep it up!)


Posted by: stevestory on April 10 2008,02:21

You've gotta wonder about the dimwits who paid for this turkey.

"Hi, I'm here to get some funding from you. I wanna make a documentary about the revolutionary science of Intelligent Design."
"Ooo, scientific revolution, huh? Sounds neat. What kind of experiments do ID scientists do?"
"Experiments? They don't do any."
"So they're all theorists I guess. What's their theory?"
"Their guy Phil Johnson says they don't really have one yet."
"No theory...no experiments...Well then what do they publish in their journal?"
"Nothing. It went defunct three years ago."
"Sounds great! Here's $3.5 million!"
Posted by: godsilove on April 10 2008,02:22

Quote (stevestory @ April 10 2008,01:52)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Seed science blogger John M. Lynch (of "Stranger Fruit") has reported receiving an email (to himself and several others) stating that the screening he was to attend had been moved one hour earlier.[124] He later received an email (to himself and five others)[125] stating that the RSVP screening he was set to attend had been canceled. One of the other individuals to receive this email phoned the theater, which revealed that the screening was set to go ahead anyway.[125] He attended, and found that his name was no longer on the guest list, but after some negotiation (presenting his confirmation email and stating he was not representing any organization) he was allowed to view the movie. Lynch proposes a guest pre-screening process was set up in response to the Myers and Dawkins incident, and uses this as evidence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed >

Kevin, producing a misleading movie, lying to your interviewees, stealing XVIVO's work, and then lying to John Lynch about it...Kevin, when you do these things, it makes the baby Jesus cry.

(But it makes us laugh, so please keep it up!)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


To be fair, Kevin isn't responsible for all those things.  He's just the screenwriter.
Posted by: bystander on April 10 2008,02:33

I'm reading all of the reviews in the Sciam site. Some choice quotes:

"The movie's one-sided version is either the result of shoddy investigation or deliberate propagandizing—neither of which reflects well on the other information in the film."

This is discussing the section on Sternberg. Well Kevin which one is it?

< Sciam Article Link >
Posted by: uriel on April 10 2008,02:34

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 09 2008,16:33)
The only problem being that I've heard that Mike Nelson is pretty firmly an antievolutionist. It was gossip when I heard it, so I'd appreciate being corrected on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, no. As far as Mike Nelson goes, that's one problem.

The other is that Mike is to Joel, as BJ was to Trapper John: on the one hand less funny and original, and on the other more stilted and uninteresting.

In both cases, the replacement serves little more purpose than to inspire a sense of nostalgia in the viewer for either show's halcyon days, when it was incapacitatingly hilarious- rather than merely amusing from time to time. Often times, seemingly, by accident.

And all of this is totally verifiable to the power of one in 10^ one quadrizilloin bajillionth- which means that  "Joel is better than Mike" is so obviously designed it makes cascading clots and flagilial bactrilliums seem completely random. This is EF filter^2 kind of obvious.

Which is to say, yes, I have inordinately strong views on this particular issue. And- again- yes,I'll admit its more than a bit pathetic.

C'est la vie, as the Quebecois are wont to say.

And as far as this goes:    
Quote (dheddle @ April 09 2008,15:40)
There was one where a character in the 50's B scifi movie said "it's destiny" and one of the MST crew--I think  it was the bubble gum machine robot said: "He's a Calvinist!"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's just the best thing I've read all day.

Bet it was Joel, wasn't it? 'Course it was. Stupid f-ing Mike.

By the way, did I mention I have strong views on the Joel vs. Mike issue?
Posted by: dogdidit on April 10 2008,08:14

Quote (Doc Bill @ April 09 2008,23:21)
"Bill" is your very own Doc Bill, joke writer for dheddle.

(Who doesn't pay very much, I might add.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Erm- doesn't pay his Bills?

*ba-dum-BUMP*

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week folks. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
Posted by: ToSeek on April 10 2008,08:36

Quote (stevestory @ April 10 2008,02:21)
You've gotta wonder about the dimwits who paid for this turkey.

"Hi, I'm here to get some funding from you. I wanna make a documentary about the revolutionary science of Intelligent Design."
"Ooo, scientific revolution, huh? Sounds neat. What kind of experiments do ID scientists do?"
"Experiments? They don't do any."
"So they're all theorists I guess. What's their theory?"
"Their guy Phil Johnson says they don't really have one yet."
"No theory...no experiments...Well then what do they publish in their journal?"
"Nothing. It went defunct three years ago."
"Sounds great! Here's $3.5 million!"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How much of the film actually talks about Intelligent Design? I think it's more like "We want to make a film that depicts evolutionists as crypto-Nazis."
"Awesome!"
Posted by: Amadan on April 10 2008,08:42

Though I am a bit out of practice at that lawyer stuff, I  enjoy excellent digestion, and therefore have expert insight into the biological issues covered in Excreted – No Feculence Allowed.  I am moved by my sense of public service to suggest the following scientifically supported arguments in support of the film’s producers:

1.  XVIVO’s claim rests  - and fails  - on the assumption that the similarity of the clips could not have arisen by chance – in other words, that a so-called “Indelible Refiner” must have adapted the XVIVO clip in a way that left his inky fingerprints all over the place. In rebuttal, the producers maintain that the Excreted clip is by no means “refined”, and could have arisen by combination of (a) chance arrangement of pixels and (b) selection for fitness to include in their film. Given the standard of fitness required, this is perfectly possible.

2. XVIVO’s claim is premised on the pseudo-legalistic notion of “Irrefutable Complicity”. This is a post hoc argument to the effect that, because the two video clips are so clearly similar, taking away even one element of that similarity would destroy the frame-for-frame symmetry, and so undermine the derivative nature of the one in Excreted.  This is clearly false, as the Excreted clip retains its derivative nature even when (poorly) edited.

3. XVIVO seeks to make use of an “Exclamatory Guilter”, in other words, asserting that the producers must be in the wrong just because XVIVO says so. Basic justice, however, demands that the producers receive a fair hearing in a debate before a jury of their fellow believers.

4. The theory of Copyright is incomplete. Though it is supported unquestioningly by courts and followed slavishly in “peer-reviewed” articles by ivory-tower academics, it has never been observed in the laboratory, and has no identifiable source or agency in nature. What part of a cell does XVIVO suggest controls  ‘fair use’? Are giraffes supposed to register the pattern of spots on their necks in order to assert their identities? Copyrightism is at best a hypothesis, certainly not a “theory”, let alone a “law”.

5. Copyrightism fails to account for a huge variety of widely observed legal phenomena, such as food-labeling regulations, < Section 21 of the Miscellaneous Provisions of the Florida Constitution >,  pygmies, dwarves, or stuff like that.

6. Legal scholars and lawyers who present alternatives to “orthodox” Copyrightism are excluded from prestigious publications and are subjected to the humiliating experience of being “laughed out of court”. Further, those supporting Copyrightism openly base their arguments on textbooks and journals that all display the © Copyright symbol – a plain case of circular logic.

7. XVIVO claims that the producers are “bound” by the provisions of so-called “laws” (see # 4 above) of Copyright, and should be “punished”. However, the practices of “binding” and “punishing” are notoriously part of deviant sexual behavior that are not and should not be countenanced by the courts of a Christian nation. For the avoidance of any doubt, the producers unreservedly condemn such practices and have never, ever, ever been caught practising them.

Further advice available at reasonably competitive rates.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 10 2008,08:58

What color is a copyright?  How much does it weigh?  Do they ever die?  Do they shit?

I didn't think so.  We effetely deny your crude copyrightism.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 10 2008,09:32

Amadan, Esq:

I do have a question for you sir.

How do you Copyrightists explain William Dembski's semen-all work involving NFC?  (No Free Copyrights.)

Thanks,

Yours In Copyright,

J-Dog
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 10 2008,10:17

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 10 2008,00:16)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That will be fun. More subpoenas, discovery, deposition, and cross-examination. I don't think they'll think it is much fun on the other side, though.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm wondering if the theater owners don't face equal liability, having been put on notice.

By the way, there's at least one surviving typo in the pdf version of  the letter. Millennium spelled millenium.

< Letter >
Posted by: Amadan on April 10 2008,10:29

It seems you are mistaken. NFC stands for Nature Favours Christianity. The argument is related to those that support the view that gravity is at precisely the right strength to prevent missionaries in less fortunate lands from falling off.

NFC relies on the non-materialist doctrine of copywrong. This permits gene duplications to occur without increase of information. Legally, it is quite interesting. Simply put, the fee-simple copyholder can claim in rem that a non-repudiatory rescission is moot, given that the locus standi of notice parties at the interlocutory stage of interrogatories vitiates quasi-judicial application of the equitable doctrine of estoppel. Of course, this leaves open the availability of a plea in laches (subject to novation by the interceding party). But I'm sure you knew that.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 10 2008,10:54

Quote (Amadan @ April 10 2008,10:29)
It seems you are mistaken. NFC stands for Nature Favours Christianity. The argument is related to those that support the view that gravity is at precisely the right strength to prevent missionaries in less fortunate lands from falling off.

NFC relies on the non-materialist doctrine of copywrong. This permits gene duplications to occur without increase of information. Legally, it is quite interesting. Simply put, the fee-simple copyholder can claim in rem that a non-repudiatory rescission is moot, given that the locus standi of notice parties at the interlocutory stage of interrogatories vitiates quasi-judicial application of the equitable doctrine of estoppel. Of course, this leaves open the availability of a plea in laches (subject to novation by the interceding party). But I'm sure you knew that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So in other words:

But we still totally pwn that flix. Exjunked is mega ph4t lewt and we even found some sploitz that let us non-release them and make em tap ther MAD BANK!

Oh yes, now I see.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 10 2008,11:36

So, what is the Discovery Institute's first press release after the Expelled -XVIVO fiasco?  I am glad you asked.

They have announced their upcoming < Vacation Bible School >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Discovery Institute is pleased to announce two intensive summer seminars on intelligent design, science, and culture from July 11-20, 2008 in Seattle. The first seminar is for students in the natural sciences and philosophy of science; the second seminar is for students in the social sciences and humanities (including politics, law, journalism, and theology).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Grayman on April 10 2008,11:52

I apologize if someone has posted this notion but imagine if you will a guy in a ball cap in his local multiplex on April 18 with his buddies.  Nothing big and exciting is opening ‘cause it’s too early for the summer blockbusters. He’s staring at the posters trying to decide what to see and notices Ben Stein in short pants spray painting something.  He recalls ‘Win Ben Stein’s Money’ and a couple of sitcoms and thinks “That dude’s kinda funny!”  He suggests ‘Expelled’ to his friends and they shrug and lay out their cash.  Half an hour later, his friends are sitting in the dark and staring at him in laugh-free, ten dollars-poorer gloom.  They exit the theater.  Exactly what do you think his friends do to him next?  Anyone?  Anyone?  

For bonus credit, what proportion of 'Expelled' week one ticket sales will be generated by some variant of this scenario?  Will there be ANY week two ticket sales?
Posted by: Kristine on April 10 2008,11:57

Wow.

I decide to get a life and spend an evening in the hot tub with my honey, and all hell breaks loose (again, but increasing in absurdity)!

What can I say? I’m speechless at these latest developments. But then I was left speechless by the film. If PZ hadn’t been thrown out, if Mathis hadn’t been a snot to Dawkins, and if Mathis hadn’t flat-out lied to me, I wouldn’t have had that much to talk about. (What can one say about a clumsily-made flick that preaches “freedom of speech!” while exhorting people that if they don’t stop evolving, they’ll go blind?) ;)

The record-breaking ineptitude of the people involved in this boondoggle just blows my mind. The only thing to say at this point is: ID is a drug. It’s a rush. At no other time in my life have I laughed my ass off while my chin was on the floor.

And I think Kevin’s bailed for good. (I don’t blame him, frankly.)
Posted by: BopDiddy on April 10 2008,11:58

Quote (uriel @ April 10 2008,02:34)
 
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 09 2008,16:33)
The only problem being that I've heard that Mike Nelson is pretty firmly an antievolutionist. It was gossip when I heard it, so I'd appreciate being corrected on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, no. As far as Mike Nelson goes, that's one problem.

The other is that Mike is to Joel, as BJ was to Trapper John: on the one hand less funny and original, and on the other more stilted and uninteresting.

...

C'est la vie, as the Quebecois are wont to say.

And as far as this goes:      
Quote (dheddle @ April 09 2008,15:40)
There was one where a character in the 50's B scifi movie said "it's destiny" and one of the MST crew--I think  it was the bubble gum machine robot said: "He's a Calvinist!"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's just the best thing I've read all day.

Bet it was Joel, wasn't it? 'Course it was. Stupid f-ing Mike.

By the way, did I mention I have strong views on the Joel vs. Mike issue?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Man, oh man, *now* here comes a flame war...

Mike was the head-writer, even for much of the Joel stuff, I hope ya know.  And most of the awards the show received were during Mike's involvement.

So there.  Neener neener.

"Esti de câlisse de tabarnac!" (As the Québécois I know say to me all the time)
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 10 2008,12:07

UD:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/legal....re-3203 >

Interesting bit:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...We’re currently investigating this claim and hopefully we’ll have more information in the next couple hours. But when asked about this, Jonathan Wells had this to say:

Expelled does NOT use the Harvard animation. The producers paid a professional to create a new animation that is more accurate than the Harvard one (based on current knowledge of cellular processes). Any similarities between the Expelled animation and the Harvard one are due to the fact that both animations depict many of the same processes.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: ERV on April 10 2008,12:08

DI is fucked.  Tub-Tub-TARD has jumped to Premise's defense:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled does NOT use the Harvard animation. The producers paid a professional to create a new animation that is more accurate than the Harvard one (based on current knowledge of cellular processes). Any similarities between the Expelled animation and the Harvard one are due to the fact that both animations depict many of the same processes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So *thats* where Kevin got that line!

Thank you, Mr. Wells.  I shall be feasting on roast Creationist pig tonight (must work, will blag later).
Posted by: J-Dog on April 10 2008,12:15

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 10 2008,11:36)
So, what is the Discovery Institute's first press release after the Expelled -XVIVO fiasco?  I am glad you asked.

They have announced their upcoming < Vacation Bible School >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Discovery Institute is pleased to announce two intensive summer seminars on intelligent design, science, and culture from July 11-20, 2008 in Seattle. The first seminar is for students in the natural sciences and philosophy of science; the second seminar is for students in the social sciences and humanities (including politics, law, journalism, and theology).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dear DI,

I would like to attend your intensive summer seminars on intelligent design, science, and culture from July 11-20, 2008 in Seattle.

However, I would like your advice as to which of the 2 courses would be the best for me to take, since I would like to major in the exciting new Intelligent Design Sciencey Field.

In other words, which of your two courses offers the best instruction in how, when, and how often to lie for Jesus.

Thank you in advance for your help.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 10 2008,12:17

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 10 2008,12:07)
UD:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/legal....re-3203 >

Interesting bit:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...We’re currently investigating this claim and hopefully we’ll have more information in the next couple hours. But when asked about this, Jonathan Wells had this to say:

Expelled does NOT use the Harvard animation. The producers paid a professional to create a new animation that is more accurate than the Harvard one (based on current knowledge of cellular processes). Any similarities between the Expelled animation and the Harvard one are due to the fact that both animations depict many of the same processes.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


According to < Afarensis >, the Expelled video managed to duplicate errors that were in the XVIVO video.

I am sure that is it.  It isn't like that had < happened before >.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 10 2008,12:22

Quote (ERV @ April 10 2008,12:08)
DI is fucked.  Tub-Tub-TARD has jumped to Premise's defense:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled does NOT use the Harvard animation. The producers paid a professional to create a new animation that is more accurate than the Harvard one (based on current knowledge of cellular processes). Any similarities between the Expelled animation and the Harvard one are due to the fact that both animations depict many of the same processes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So *thats* where Kevin got that line!

Thank you, Mr. Wells.  I shall be feasting on roast Creationist pig tonight (must work, will blag later).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Uh oh, God's I-pod didn't get the memo:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Gods iPod
04/10/2008
12:03 pm
Um, having watched the new video on the site, they either ARE using the Harvard animation OR they have created an exact replica. When I saw it, it was immediately recognizable as the Harvard animation.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



AND YOU ARE IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZABLE AS SOMEONE WHO'S BANNED. YOU'RE OUTTA HERE. -DT
Posted by: BCtheEra on April 10 2008,12:34

Jonathan < "Ignignokt" > Wells said:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled does NOT use the Harvard animation. The producers paid a professional to create a new animation that is more accurate than the Harvard one (based on current knowledge of cellular processes). Any similarities between the Expelled animation and the Harvard one are due to the fact that both animations depict many of the same processes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(Emphasis mine)
That's funny, considering how PZ pointed out that the "Expelled" animation contains the same error which he noted in the original XVIVO animation.
< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....pel.php >
Posted by: J-Dog on April 10 2008,12:38

Quote (BCtheEra @ April 10 2008,12:34)
Jonathan < "Ignignokt" > Wells said:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled does NOT use the Harvard animation. The producers paid a professional to create a new animation that is more accurate than the Harvard one (based on current knowledge of cellular processes). Any similarities between the Expelled animation and the Harvard one are due to the fact that both animations depict many of the same processes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(Emphasis mine)
That's funny, considering how PZ pointed out that the "Expelled" animation contains the same error which he noted in the original XVIVO animation.
< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....pel.php >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What?  

You don't think that a Seattle-based Faith Tank can out-science Harvard?

Oh.  Me neither.

THIS IS GOING TO BE THE MOST FUN YOU CAN HAVE WITH YOUR CLOTHES ON!
Posted by: BCtheEra on April 10 2008,12:53

Quote (J-Dog @ April 10 2008,12:38)
Quote (BCtheEra @ April 10 2008,12:34)
Jonathan < "Ignignokt" > Wells said:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled does NOT use the Harvard animation. The producers paid a professional to create a new animation that is more accurate than the Harvard one (based on current knowledge of cellular processes). Any similarities between the Expelled animation and the Harvard one are due to the fact that both animations depict many of the same processes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(Emphasis mine)
That's funny, considering how PZ pointed out that the "Expelled" animation contains the same error which he noted in the original XVIVO animation.
< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....pel.php >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What?  

You don't think that a Seattle-based Faith Tank can out-science Harvard?

Oh.  Me neither.

THIS IS GOING TO BE THE MOST FUN YOU CAN HAVE WITH YOUR CLOTHES ON!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now that I think about it, we may be misunderestimating Dr. Dr. Wells.  I'm sure that his doctorates in theology and developmental biology (that one is going to real good use) pretty much make him an expert with regards to architecture, 19th century Russian literature, Keynesian economics, cellular biology, and whatever other topics of which he chooses to talk out of his ass discuss.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 10 2008,13:02

FtK's telling them what's what on that thread..

wait for it...

wait for it..



*Rolls eyes*
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 10 2008,13:29

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 10 2008,13:02)
FtK's telling them what's what on that thread..

wait for it...

wait for it..



*Rolls eyes*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And she gets all sciencey too!
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But, come on people, a cell’s a cell
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


and
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Truth is, that when people really contemplate the inner life of a cell, you cannot miss the design….*that’s what worries them*.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But TroutMac wins the award for most nauseatingly arrogant numbnut on that thread (so far)    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
For those of you reading this thread who are sympathetic to the threatened legal action, you ought to be ashamed. You are fascists, plain and simple. You want to SHUT UP an idea that (switch on sarcastic, nasally tone here) you just don’t personally take a liking to. What arrogance. Incredible.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


All posted on a blog that has shut up ten times more people than are actively posting there today
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 10 2008,13:40



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
According to Afarensis, the Expelled video managed to duplicate errors that were in the XVIVO video.

I am sure that is it.  It isn't like that had happened before.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yeah, but this is ID, so copied errors don't count as evidence for inheritance from earlier identical information.

Until you can show that God didn't take these errors from the Harvard video, put them in the head of a designer working for him, and thus produced these similarites by design, you don't have a case.

OK, you don't have a case using ID standards ("standards").

Oh damn, the IDiots forgot that courts haven't shifted over to believing that magic accounts for the evidence that the materialists insist are due to causal mechanisms.  There's always a flaw.  Now it's even more important that science be freed from the shackles of materialistic thought, for the courts are likely to side with the atheist materialists who claim that "evidence" actually points to identifiable events.


That's how despotic atheists are, though.

Glen D
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 10 2008,13:48

< >
Posted by: factician on April 10 2008,14:23

< FtK, PhD Cell Biology >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But, come on people, a cell’s a cell…I mean if you’re making a computer generated animation, I’d assume that you’re going to see some similarities between them.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 10 2008,14:36

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ April 10 2008,13:29)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 10 2008,13:02)
FtK's telling them what's what on that thread..

wait for it...

wait for it..



*Rolls eyes*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And she gets all sciencey too!
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But, come on people, a cell’s a cell
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


and
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Truth is, that when people really contemplate the inner life of a cell, you cannot miss the design….*that’s what worries them*.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But TroutMac wins the award for most nauseatingly arrogant numbnut on that thread (so far)    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
For those of you reading this thread who are sympathetic to the threatened legal action, you ought to be ashamed. You are fascists, plain and simple. You want to SHUT UP an idea that (switch on sarcastic, nasally tone here) you just don’t personally take a liking to. What arrogance. Incredible.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


All posted on a blog that has shut up ten times more people than are actively posting there today
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Albie to be fair I know for a fact that most of us have been removed multiple times.  But in general yeah isn't that ironic.



Posted by: J-Dog on April 10 2008,14:52

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 10 2008,14:36)
But in general yeah isn't that ironic.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Erasamus -

What's ironic is that this guy (It's you, isn't it?) is doing more
scientific experimentation and observation than all those boobs at the DI have done in their entire sordid history.
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on April 10 2008,14:59

Quote (tacitus @ April 09 2008,23:43)
I honestly don't see how they postpone the premier.  Unless they were so dumb as to not get any legal advice about making their own version of the animation (admittedly, they could be that dumb) then they will probably already have been told by a lawyer that they've done enough to squeak past any lawsuit over copyright.

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, but was the lawyer ---- Casey Luskin?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 10 2008,15:04

Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ April 10 2008,14:59)
Quote (tacitus @ April 09 2008,23:43)
I honestly don't see how they postpone the premier.  Unless they were so dumb as to not get any legal advice about making their own version of the animation (admittedly, they could be that dumb) then they will probably already have been told by a lawyer that they've done enough to squeak past any lawsuit over copyright.

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, but was the lawyer ---- Casey Luskin?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm hoping for BarryA. Or that More Law Center that did so well in Dover.
Posted by: BCtheEra on April 10 2008,15:05

< Some grade-A tard: >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

46

wnelson

04/10/2008

2:46 pm

Andrea:

No — “friendly” as in friendly to the idea that we have souls.

Dembski already has (sic) this pulled on him.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'm guessing that last bit of this cream or tard-tar is supposed to be "Dembski already had this pulled on him.  What was pulled on Dembski?  This sweater?

I wouldn't willingly wear that sweater either.
Posted by: Stephen Elliott on April 10 2008,15:12

Apologies in advance for a rant style post.

When I first entered these discussions I considered myself as a Christian and was pretty much an anti-evolutionist. The reason for that was that I had been lied to (and guess which group did that).

I am still stunned when (some of) the religious folks tell blatant lies and use deception to further their cause. Personally I can't justify/understand claiming to believe the teachings of what Jesus is supposed to have preached and being a bare faced liar (other than the obvious "con-man" angle).


A few caveats here. If about 80-95% of the population of the USA identify as Christians and damned near 50% of the USA think evolution happened then the majority of evolution supporters in the USA must self identify as Christians.*

Kinda beggars the claim that evolution/theism is exclusive.

Oh well.

Must add that FTK just about sums up everything I dislike about religionists. The double standards/hypocrisy is amazing.


*Hat tip to Lenny Flank there.

PS. to Louis. Tried to PM you several times (I think). Never managed to get it to work. However, beer and stuff sounds good. Windsor/Maidenhead or London would suit me.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 10 2008,15:13

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 10 2008,15:04)
Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ April 10 2008,14:59)
Quote (tacitus @ April 09 2008,23:43)
I honestly don't see how they postpone the premier.  Unless they were so dumb as to not get any legal advice about making their own version of the animation (admittedly, they could be that dumb) then they will probably already have been told by a lawyer that they've done enough to squeak past any lawsuit over copyright.

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, but was the lawyer ---- Casey Luskin?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm hoping for BarryA. Or that More Law Center that did so well in Dover.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Larry Fafarman seems to have plenty of free time on his hands.
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on April 10 2008,15:17

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 10 2008,15:04)
Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ April 10 2008,14:59)
Quote (tacitus @ April 09 2008,23:43)
I honestly don't see how they postpone the premier.  Unless they were so dumb as to not get any legal advice about making their own version of the animation (admittedly, they could be that dumb) then they will probably already have been told by a lawyer that they've done enough to squeak past any lawsuit over copyright.

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, but was the lawyer ---- Casey Luskin?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm hoping for BarryA. Or that More Law Center that did so well in Dover.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A couple more possibilities:  Larry Farfromsane, or more seriously, the fear-inspiring Wendell Bird.  :p

McLean vs. Arkansas - drafted the bill that became Act 590, and EPIC FAIL

Defended state in Edwards vs. Aguillard, EPIC FAIL.

Association of Christian Schools International vs Stearns, EPIC FAIL
Posted by: caerbannog on April 10 2008,15:17

And the wingnuts' take on PZ Myers' expulsion from that Minnesota "Expelled" screening just keeps getting better and better.

From today's Wingnutdaily (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61134):


On March 20, two Darwinian defenders, who accepted payment to talk like buffoons on the film, tried to bust into a private screening in Minnesota.

"PZ" Myers, a University of Minnesota biology professor and proprietor of the popular atheist blog Pharyngula, was quickly expelled, much as he condones expelling professors who deviate from the monkey line...

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford who wrote the book "The God Delusion," gained entry only by foregoing his evolved surname for the formal, Clinton.

Myers then disrupted an "Expelled" conference call with reporters the next day.

These uncivilized spectacles caused a liberal mass meltdown. According to an "Expelled" press release, the "Expelled" controversy held the No. 1 slot in the blogosphere all day March 24, as registered by Nielson's BlogPulse, and garnered over 800 Technorati results.

.............

"This is not a scientific battle; this is a worldview battle," "Expelled" producer Mark Mathis told me. Mathis has encountered unbridled hostility from the scientific establishment, i.e., avowed Darwinists, at previews.

...............
"What's driving it is Darwinism is a foundational principle – scientific validation of secularism, atheism, liberalism – and that it strikes at the core of who they are," said Mathis.

"Secondarily, these scientists are the high priests of the biggest question ever asked. They have all the authority, knowledge, power, funding," continued Mathis. "This is ground they own exclusively. They look down their elitist noses at the unwashed ignorant religious masses and scoff. That's why they respond with such extreme hostility. They are very concerned that if this monolith cracks, then the whole thing could crash."


(I knew that PZ Myers' heart was hardened by his hatred of America and all that it stands for, but I didn't realize just how much of an uncivilized troglodyte he is.)  ;)
Posted by: Kristine on April 10 2008,15:32

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ April 10 2008,12:29)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 10 2008,13:02)
FtK's telling them what's what on that thread..

wait for it...

wait for it..



*Rolls eyes*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And she gets all sciencey too!
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But, come on people, a cell’s a cell
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


and
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Truth is, that when people really contemplate the inner life of a cell, you cannot miss the design….*that’s what worries them*.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But TroutMac wins the award for most nauseatingly arrogant numbnut on that thread (so far)      

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
For those of you reading this thread who are sympathetic to the threatened legal action, you ought to be ashamed. You are fascists, plain and simple. You want to SHUT UP an idea that (switch on sarcastic, nasally tone here) you just don’t personally take a liking to. What arrogance. Incredible.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


All posted on a blog that has shut up ten times more people than are actively posting there today
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And who cares if the producers of Expelled stacked the audience with actors to deceptively portray an audience of "Pepperdine University students" to whom Ben Stein "speaks" in the film, when in fact the university reports that < there were only two or three actual students > in that audience? :O


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It was with some irony for me, then, that I saw Ben Stein's antievolution documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with the actor, game show host and speechwriter for Richard Nixon addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University, apparently falling for the same trap I did.

Actually they didn't. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein's screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, "the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus" but that "the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein's lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university." And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on April 10 2008,15:40

Kristine - I am shocked, shocked to see that dishonesty is going on at the Discovery Institute!

Perhaps the producer and writers could pray a Novena to St. Goebbels for forgiveness, although since they broke St. Goebbels First Rule - Don't Get Caught - I am not sure how forgiving he will be.
Posted by: steve_h on April 10 2008,15:55

I'm looking forward to some scenes reminiscent of those taking place in or around  lifts/elevators/vertical-people-carriers at the end of the 1988 movie  < "Working Girl" > - only with the emphasis more on cell animation that on advertising.
Posted by: BCtheEra on April 10 2008,16:09

So, given 22 days this is the best that Mathis could come up with?  He really should have had Kevin write this... then again... maybe not.

< Producer Mathis’s Eyewitness Report: Dawkins’ Brazen Minnesota ‘Sneak-In!’ >

Mathis refers to Dawkins as "Herr Professor Dawkins".  Real classy.

Also, if you haven't yet, do yourself a favor and listen to the roundtable discussion with Mathis and the Scientific American staffers.  It's very entertaining.  Mathis comes across as a ignorant, vile rube.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 10 2008,16:17

Cross-posting:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Time has reported on Expelled, and PZ gets a mention, if not a very favorable one:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein Dukes it Out with Darwin Thursday, Apr. 10, 2008 By JEFFREY KLUGER

There is nothing so tiresome as an argument that no one will ever concede--particularly if the participants don't seem to know it. And there's no place the fighting is growing more pointless than in the ongoing smackdown between evolutionists and advocates of intelligent design--the theory that the emergence of life must have been guided by a sentient planner.

The latest shot is being fired by economist, actor and game-show host Ben Stein, with his documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, due out April 18. Stein nominally set out to make the case that academics who write about evolution are being muzzled or denied tenure if they so much as nod in the direction of intelligent design. It's impossible to know from the handful of examples he cites how widespread the problem is, but if there's anything to it at all, it's a matter well worth exposing.

The man made famous by Ferris Bueller, however, quickly wades into waters far too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth's primordial soup. The answer is it couldn't--and it didn't. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing. More dishonestly, Stein employs the common dodge of enumerating all the admittedly unanswered questions in evolutionary theory and using this to refute the whole idea. But all scientific knowledge is built this way. A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can't therefore argue that the net doesn't exist. Just ask the fish.

It's in the film's final third that it runs entirely off the rails as Stein argues that there is a clear line from Darwinism to euthanasia, abortion, eugenics and--wait for it--Nazism. Theories of natural selection, it's claimed, were a necessary if not sufficient condition for Hitler's killing machine to get started. The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human. We've always been a lustily fratricidal species, one that needed no Charles Darwin to goad us into millenniums of self-slaughter.

In fairness to Stein, his opponents have hardly covered themselves in glory. Evolutionary biologists and social commentators have lately taken to answering the claims of intelligent-design boosters not with clear-eyed scientific empiricism but with sneering, finger-in-the-eye atheism. Biologist P.Z. Myers, for example, tells Stein that religion ought to be seen as little more than a soothing pastime, a bit like knitting. Books such as Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion often read like pure taunting, as when Hitchens pettily and pointedly types God as lowercase god. Tautology as typography is not the stuff of deep thought. Neither, alas, is Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Linky >

It gives too much credit to ID claims, no question. And the author seems not to understand why the sneering at IDists and their unrelenting lies has to happen. The science side would look like fools (and find the situation intolerable) if they were to treat every repetition of every cheap shot by the creos/IDists as if it were some grand and telling objection to a theory that long ago answered most such objections (while those not answered are the usual sorts known in ongoing scientific programs).

It's not an ideal article at all, then, but at least the bizarre claims by Stein & co. are highlighted.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: BCtheEra on April 10 2008,16:27

Quote (BCtheEra @ April 10 2008,16:09)
So, given 22 days this is the best that Mathis could come up with?  He really should have had Kevin write this... then again... maybe not.

< Producer Mathis’s Eyewitness Report: Dawkins’ Brazen Minnesota ‘Sneak-In!’ >

Mathis refers to Dawkins as "Herr Professor Dawkins".  Real classy.

Also, if you haven't yet, do yourself a favor and listen to the roundtable discussion with Mathis and the Scientific American staffers.  It's very entertaining.  Mathis comes across as a ignorant, vile rube.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here are some choice nuggets from < Mr. Mathis' latest attempt at spin >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Under normal conditions I believe Mr. Dawkins would have mounted a much more vigorous and competitive argument. But he had just watched EXPELLED, a well-crafted film that exposes how he and others have unethically used science to advance their personal philosophy. He was a wounded opponent when I faced him, which put him at a considerable disadvantage. By the time I explained to him that his devotion to Atheism created a blind spot in his thinking he must have been in shock at all that had transpired in the previous two hours.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(Emphasis Mine)
This reminds me of < this > clip from The Simpsons (skip to 8:55).


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Poor PZ missed all the excitement in Minnesota, standing in the Mall of America, alternately peeping through the glass windows at the theater, then racing back to the Apple Store to blog to his followers, all the while excitedly anticipating hearing all the wonderful details. In the end, PZ’s dignity may be bruised (don’t let all the fire-breathing bluster fool you) but he still has his job. Unfortunately, victims of scientific witch-hunts can’t say the same.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(Emphasis Mine)
Wow, now that's what I call revisionist history.  This guy could give < David Barton > a run for his money.
Posted by: dheddle on April 10 2008,16:29

Glen D,



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Time has reported on Expelled, and PZ gets a mention, if not a very favorable one:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I’ve been withholding this comment, but that seems like the proper segue.

Just personal opinion here, but I do think, of all the interviews from Expelled that I have seen, PZ comes off the worst. It's strange--as always there is the evidence that his bulldog demeanor is an internet persona. However his soft-spoken, reasoned answers came off as ice-water-in-the-veins chilling. With that and some poor word choices he came across to me, intentionally or not, as the quintessentially dry, humorless and soulless scientist.
Posted by: steve_h on April 10 2008,16:36

< WorldNutDaily 2007-04-10 >    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford who wrote the book "The God Delusion," gained entry only by foregoing his evolved surname for the formal, Clinton.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I would have thought by now, after it's been pointed out several times by several people, that  everyone would have figured that Clinton is not his surname.

Expelled" controversy held the No. 1 slot:check
Look down their elitist noses at the unwashed ignorant religious masses and scoff: check
Darwin->atheism->eugenics->Hitler:  check
Planned Parenthood: check
"Much Butt Kicking": check
"break out the knuckerdusters": no check.(ed: you're fired)
Posted by: ERV on April 10 2008,16:46

< William Dembski: Not a Lawyer >
Posted by: Kristine on April 10 2008,17:03

The article is in Newsweek, so what do you expect? ;) I think its summation is fine. Sure, it takes shots at PZ, et al. As its author states, “Truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to [vebally] murder one another is the simple fact of being human.” That’s going to happen (and in the article it strikes me as a rhetorical gesture), but the article still dismisses intelligent design, and its criticisms of Stein are amusing.

People are going to have, and are entitled to, their opinions about personalities, as Heddle does. It’s an opinion. What I really care about is the science (and lack of it), and this bathroom-visit-length blurb in Newsweek isn’t flattering to Expelled. That’s all I can ask for. Newsweek is not the stuff of deep thought, either. :)

*edit - duh, Time Magazine, not Newsweek. I do confuse the two a lot. Erf-derr, Kristine*
Posted by: JohnW on April 10 2008,17:04

Quote (steve_h @ April 10 2008,14:36)
< WorldNutDaily 2007-04-10 >    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford who wrote the book "The God Delusion," gained entry only by foregoing his evolved surname for the formal, Clinton.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I would have thought by now, after it's been pointed out several times by several people, that  everyone would have figured that Clinton is not his surname.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And once they'd figured that out, everyone would go on to ask "what's a formal surname?"
Posted by: Henry J on April 10 2008,17:16

Quote (Amadan @ April 10 2008,09:29)
It seems you are mistaken. NFC stands for Nature Favours Christianity. The argument is related to those that support the view that gravity is at precisely the right strength to prevent missionaries in less fortunate lands from falling off.

NFC relies on the non-materialist doctrine of copywrong. This permits gene duplications to occur without increase of information. Legally, it is quite interesting. Simply put, the fee-simple copyholder can claim in rem that a non-repudiatory rescission is moot, given that the locus standi of notice parties at the interlocutory stage of interrogatories vitiates quasi-judicial application of the equitable doctrine of estoppel. Of course, this leaves open the availability of a plea in laches (subject to novation by the interceding party). But I'm sure you knew that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The who whatting how with huh?
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 10 2008,17:19

I picked up a rumor on Kevins blog that when you play the Expelled video backwards it says "Paul is a nazi"

Weird.
Posted by: JAM on April 10 2008,17:24

Quote (dheddle @ April 10 2008,16:29)
However his soft-spoken, reasoned answers came off as ice-water-in-the-veins chilling. With that and some poor word choices he came across to me, intentionally or not, as the quintessentially dry, humorless and soulless scientist.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Except that he hasn't been an active scientist for ten years.
Posted by: Maya on April 10 2008,17:35



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

82
poachy
04/10/2008
4:19 pm
Were you this offended when Judge Jones was caught plagiarizing some 90% of his science “opinion” straight from an ACLU brief?

Well, if this goes to court, maybe this time we’ll get a solidly conservative judge appointed by President Bush, rather than some ACLU loving liberal.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
90
poachy
04/10/2008
5:02 pm
I wrote before that I thought this was an example of people with marketing degrees baiting people with science degrees into making big PR blunders.

Is it a unpardonable sin to play tricks on the less intelligent and then laugh at them? I sure hope not!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Poachy, sweetie, you've gone OTT.
Posted by: Maya on April 10 2008,17:39

Quote (Maya @ April 10 2008,17:35)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

82
poachy
04/10/2008
4:19 pm
Were you this offended when Judge Jones was caught plagiarizing some 90% of his science “opinion” straight from an ACLU brief?

Well, if this goes to court, maybe this time we’ll get a solidly conservative judge appointed by President Bush, rather than some ACLU loving liberal.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
90
poachy
04/10/2008
5:02 pm
I wrote before that I thought this was an example of people with marketing degrees baiting people with science degrees into making big PR blunders.

Is it a unpardonable sin to play tricks on the less intelligent and then laugh at them? I sure hope not!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Poachy, sweetie, you've gone OTT.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darn it, these two were already pointed out on the UD thread.

I'll take the short bus home.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 10 2008,18:08

Quote (stevestory @ April 08 2008,03:14)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (July 14, 1816 — October 13, 1882) was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855). De Gobineau is credited as being the father of modern racial demography.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (published 1859)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Though I risk running afoul of the mean and ugly moderators of this site, here you go Kevin:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not even seeing the image.
Posted by: PennyBright on April 10 2008,18:16



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Biologist P.Z. Myers, for example, tells Stein that religion ought to be seen as little more than a soothing pastime, a bit like knitting.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I object to the comparison of knitting and religion.

Knitting is useful.  

On topic,  I'm really torn about this film.   It's planned to open at three theatres in my area (including our superduperultramegaplexmultiscreen),   and I know it will probably get a big first Sunday rush of churchgoers,   so I feel like I should check it out,   just for the sake of knowing my enemy.

On the other hand,  I don't care for Ben Stein,  or Nazis,   or feeling like I've wasted bucks on a bad movie.  

And now they've dragged knitting into it..... I'm not sure I'll be able to maintain my status as 'official local fiber whacko who knits in public'  if I don't go see it after that.

I'm not sure if I should blame PZ or Stein for this one.

edited: for spelling.  Not to flash my editiorial power, really.
Posted by: JohnW on April 10 2008,18:23

Quote (PennyBright @ April 10 2008,16:16)
On topic,  I'm really torn about this film.   It's planned to open at three theatres in my area (including our superduperultramegaplexmultiscreen),   and I know it will probably get a big first Sunday rush of churchgoers,   so I feel like I should check it out,   just for the sake of knowing my enemy.

On the other hand,  I don't care for Ben Stein,  or Nazis,   or feeling like I've wasted bucks on a bad movie.  

And now they've dragged knitting into it..... I'm not sure I'll be able to maintain my status as 'official local fiber whacko who knits in public'  if I don't go see it after that.

I'm not sure if I should blame PZ or Stein for this one.

edited: for spelling.  Not to flash my editiorial power, really.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Don't forget that the proceeds will, in all likelihood, be going to XVIVO, and hence you'll be helping finance more cell-biology films for the next generation of cretards to steal copy be inspired by.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 10 2008,18:28

Quote (PennyBright @ April 10 2008,18:16)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Biologist P.Z. Myers, for example, tells Stein that religion ought to be seen as little more than a soothing pastime, a bit like knitting.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I object to the comparison of knitting and religion.

Knitting is useful.  

On topic,  I'm really torn about this film.   It's planned to open at three theatres in my area
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What is your area? Sounds like it's hardly showing anywhere outside the Old Confederacy.
Posted by: PennyBright on April 10 2008,18:30

I suppose I could always pull out the FSM pattern,  or maybe a knit a random
< cephalopod >,  to go see it in proxy for PZ.

I still think I may bend my ethics though,   and figure out a way to not have to pay to see the thing.   Bother a buddy who works up there, maybe.
Posted by: PennyBright on April 10 2008,18:31

I live in Ohio, Arden.   The Expelled website lists a theatre in Canton, and two in Akron -- all within an easy drive of me.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 10 2008,18:33

Quote (PennyBright @ April 10 2008,16:30)
I suppose I could always pull out the FSM pattern,  or maybe a knit a random
< cephalopod >,  to go see it in proxy for PZ.

I still think I may bend my ethics though,   and figure out a way to not have to pay to see the thing.   Bother a buddy who works up there, maybe.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If it is in a megaplex, buy a ticket for some other movie.  Or, you could send a guilt donation of the ticket price to the NCSE.
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 10 2008,19:00

Quote (ERV @ April 10 2008,16:46)
< William Dembski: Not a Lawyer >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Everyone needs to read this post - Dembski is admitting to malicious forethought - maybe on the advice of the dumbest lawyer in the history of the Universe?

It's post 63  on the UD comments
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 10 2008,19:13

Quote (Reginald Beasley @ April 10 2008,19:00)
Quote (ERV @ April 10 2008,16:46)
< William Dembski: Not a Lawyer >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Everyone needs to read this post - Dembski is admitting to malicious forethought - maybe on the advice of the dumbest lawyer in the history of the Universe?

It's post 63  on the UD comments
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Generally it takes weeks or months, and lots of subpoenas to unearth evidence of a conspiracy.


Posted by: Richardthughes on April 10 2008,19:25

Look at me, I'm Billy-D
pointing out con-spir-a-cy,
IDiots crying,
I'm not testifying!
I can't, I'm Billy D!


Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 10 2008,19:36

Actually, quick question - isn't there supposedly a version of Excreted that used the entire Harvard animation with no alterations at all?

And don't they show these movies just on DVD through a laptop?

Does it then follow that there is a DVD of the movie with the completely unaltered animation?  Hell, XVIVO may just be suing on that version.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 10 2008,19:43

Quote (Reginald Beasley @ April 10 2008,19:36)
Actually, quick question - isn't there supposedly a version of Excreted that used the entire Harvard animation with no alterations at all?

And don't they show these movies just on DVD through a laptop?

Does it then follow that there is a DVD of the movie with the completely unaltered animation?  Hell, XVIVO may just be suing on that version.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Discovery will be fun. People, under oath, will have to explain "how they got there".
Posted by: charlie d on April 10 2008,20:19

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 10 2008,19:43)
Discovery will be fun. People, under oath, will have to explain "how they got there".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, sounds like. By the way, I always wondered why the chose to be called Discovery Institute, since they don't actually try to discover anything.  I now realize they were always planning to get all their internal documents subpoenaed on a regular basis.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 10 2008,20:21

Quote (charlie d @ April 10 2008,20:19)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 10 2008,19:43)
Discovery will be fun. People, under oath, will have to explain "how they got there".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, sounds like. By the way, I always wondered why the chose to be called Discovery Institute, since they don't actually try to discover anything.  I now realize they were always planning to get all their internal documents subpoenaed on a regular basis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin Miller is actually a Church Burning Elboa Boy Mole.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 10 2008,21:32

Quote (Maya @ April 10 2008,17:39)

I'll take the short bus home.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Man that is soooo sig block material.  :D

Meh, later. Don't know each other, really. First date kinda thing. Save it for later maybe.
Posted by: dochocson on April 10 2008,21:53

I think we're underestimating ID brain trust. After several arduous hours of perusing posts on the issue, it struck me.

Ben Stein wasn't chosen just for his scintillating screen presence, he's a comedian.

This will all perk along for a while, then Casey Luskin will hold a press conference annoucing thatExpelled is just a parody, and therefore not subject to copyright law!

Then he'll pull off his mask, revealing that he is actually Wes Elsberry. Furthermore, it will be revealed that Dembski is actually PZ Myers, DaveScot is Richard Dawkins, and FtK is ERV.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 10 2008,22:03

Quote (dochocson @ April 10 2008,21:53)
I think we're underestimating ID brain trust. After several arduous hours of perusing posts on the issue, it struck me.

Ben Stein wasn't chosen just for his scintillating screen presence, he's a comedian.

This will all perk along for a while, then Casey Luskin will hold a press conference annoucing thatExpelled is just a parody, and therefore not subject to copyright law!

Then he'll pull off his mask, revealing that he is actually Wes Elsberry. Furthermore, it will be revealed that Dembski is actually PZ Myers, DaveScot is Richard Dawkins, and FtK is ERV.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought Angelina Jolie was ERV???
Deeply disappointed...o wait, am I on the wrong thread again??
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 10 2008,22:06

THIS is all TOO fucking much.

Comment ridiculing the geniuses behind "Expelled!" is gilding the lily. Sometimes you gotta just stand back and watch them slip-slide into absurdity. Sometimes you got to look away.
Posted by: Kristine on April 10 2008,22:59

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ April 10 2008,21:06)
THIS is all TOO fucking much.

Comment ridiculing the geniuses behind "Expelled!" is gilding the lily. Sometimes you gotta just stand back and watch them slip-slide into absurdity. Sometimes you got to look away.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sometimes for sheer obsessive fun you gotta pack your friends into your car and return to the carnage to drive them past the tornado* debris! :)

*not in a junkyard
Posted by: stevestory on April 10 2008,23:20

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 10 2008,19:08)
I'm not even seeing the image.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I haz special switches, bitches.


Posted by: Cheezits on April 10 2008,23:28

Quote (PennyBright @ April 10 2008,19:30)
I still think I may bend my ethics though,  and figure out a way to not have to pay to see the thing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wait until you find the DVD at a library or yard sale.

As for me, they'd have to pay *me* to watch it.  :D
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 11 2008,00:28

< Flunked, Not Expelled: What’s the Difference Between Peppered Moths and Pepperdine Students? >
Posted by: BathTub on April 11 2008,00:40

Quote (BathTub @ April 09 2008,23:30)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 09 2008,16:33)
The only problem being that I've heard that Mike Nelson is pretty firmly an antievolutionist. It was gossip when I heard it, so I'd appreciate being corrected on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well sure he's a known right of center christian type, but I've never heard that before. I will follow it up and see if I can some more direct info either way.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well Wesley my inquiries confirm you are correct.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 11 2008,01:03

Quote (BathTub @ April 11 2008,00:40)
Quote (BathTub @ April 09 2008,23:30)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 09 2008,16:33)
The only problem being that I've heard that Mike Nelson is pretty firmly an antievolutionist. It was gossip when I heard it, so I'd appreciate being corrected on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well sure he's a known right of center christian type, but I've never heard that before. I will follow it up and see if I can some more direct info either way.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well Wesley my inquiries confirm you are correct.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's typical, I guess, that I should be right about something I'd rather be wrong on.
Posted by: uriel on April 11 2008,03:03

Quote (BopDiddy @ April 10 2008,11:58)
Man, oh man, *now* here comes a flame war...

Mike was the head-writer, even for much of the Joel stuff, I hope ya know.  And most of the awards the show received were during Mike's involvement.

So there.  Neener neener.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



OK- that leads to a better analogy.

Marti Noxon was a head writer for Buffy on and off. Doesn't mean the whole thing didn't take a nose dive in season 5, when Josh Whedon decided Firefly and Angel were his main priorities.

Creators matter. Just ask Denise O'Leary.

So nayh, as peloponnesian merchants were given to opine, from time to time.
Posted by: uriel on April 11 2008,03:29

And now to serious stuff (or minor quibbling that vaguely funny, your call)-

On the < Expelled blog, > the most stable Beatle schools us on how classic fail our arguments are:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ringo@858:

I have noticed that there are 3 basic techniques that are used by most (not all) of the proponents of molecules to man evolution to attack their enemies (ID):

1. Start off by using the word “Ummm”.

2. Disarm your enemy by calling him a liar or insisting that you are the keeper of the “truth”.

3. Get emotional real quick and call your enemy stupid, ignorant, lazy and a liar.

4. Cut and paste or copy your arguments from the propaganda machine (posing as a credible scientific website)known as TALKORIGINS.ORG!! Just like Marcus Williams likes to do.

5. After you claimed yourself the victor and “totally debunked” your enemy - attack your enemies “level of education” and give the reader the impression that you are more qualified to answer questions dealing with a whole range of scientific fields (like Marcus likes to do).

6. And finally the most important. After you have spent the whole day reading each of these comments make sure that you get in the last word. And if you do not get a counter argument to your well thought out intellectual response then claim yourself the victor.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Because science is easy. But counting?!! That crap's nuts hard.

I'm sure there's an lol-kitty in there, but I'm far too lazy- something like "Umm... Oh noes!!! Darwins haz loosed teh intertubes." Or something.

The main issue for me is, who are the other three guys in the trinity, and what the hell have they been doing for the past 2000 years?
Posted by: uriel on April 11 2008,03:38

Damn it- that should read "minor quibbling that is vaguely funny"

Can I haz editz, HOMOS? 'Kthanxbai.
Posted by: Louis on April 11 2008,03:59

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 11 2008,07:03)
Quote (BathTub @ April 11 2008,00:40)
Quote (BathTub @ April 09 2008,23:30)
 
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 09 2008,16:33)
The only problem being that I've heard that Mike Nelson is pretty firmly an antievolutionist. It was gossip when I heard it, so I'd appreciate being corrected on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well sure he's a known right of center christian type, but I've never heard that before. I will follow it up and see if I can some more direct info either way.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well Wesley my inquiries confirm you are correct.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's typical, I guess, that I should be right about something I'd rather be wrong on.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now ain't THAT the truth! I continually hope that IDCists, creationists and fools (but I repeat myself) will disappoint me. They never do. They always deliver the goods. I'd go to a bookies and make a bet, but I'm afraid the odds would be sufficiently unprofitable that the calories burnt walking to the bookies would cost me more in food.

Louis
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 11 2008,05:37

Quote (uriel @ April 11 2008,04:29)
The main issue for me is, who are the other three guys in the trinity, and what the hell have they been doing for the past 2000 years?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's a mereological trinity. There are seven guys.

(And they call this monotheism.)
Posted by: Maya on April 11 2008,06:23

Quote (dogdidit @ April 10 2008,21:32)
Quote (Maya @ April 10 2008,17:39)

I'll take the short bus home.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Man that is soooo sig block material.  :D

Meh, later. Don't know each other, really. First date kinda thing. Save it for later maybe.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's cool.  I don't want to be your rebound sig.  I can see you're still not over your last one.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 11 2008,06:35

Quote (Maya @ April 11 2008,06:23)
     
Quote (dogdidit @ April 10 2008,21:32)
       
Quote (Maya @ April 10 2008,17:39)

I'll take the short bus home.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Man that is soooo sig block material.  :D

Meh, later. Don't know each other, really. First date kinda thing. Save it for later maybe.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's cool.  I don't want to be your rebound sig.  I can see you're still not over your last one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well played.
My first reply didn't quite hit the tone I wanted. Your "short bus" comment almost got the better part of a mouthful of good wine to come out my nose. VERY hilarious.
Just so we're cool, amigo.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 11 2008,09:20

Quote (Cheezits @ April 10 2008,23:28)
Quote (PennyBright @ April 10 2008,19:30)
I still think I may bend my ethics though,  and figure out a way to not have to pay to see the thing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wait until you find the DVD at a library or yard sale.

As for me, they'd have to pay *me* to watch it.  :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Likewise. Those 6 months I had FSTDT bookmarked completely trashed my resistance to this kind of thing.
Posted by: Maya on April 11 2008,10:19



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
59
Frost122585
04/11/2008
12:27 am
Someone needs to explain to me how they get video of Meyers, Dawkins and all the Darwinian materialists saying all this stuff. I mean did Ben just go right up to them and say “hi were doing a movie called Expelled (no intelligence allowed) and its about exposing your side for the psychopaths that you are. Just for the movie’s sake can you please give us your side of the argument as blatantly and as vile as you can possibly say it?

And then they set up the HD cameras?

From what I have seen that they have captured on tape, this movie is gold.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmm.  Maybe they lied?
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on April 11 2008,11:02

Quote (Maya @ April 11 2008,10:19)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
59
Frost122585
04/11/2008
12:27 am
Someone needs to explain to me how they get video of Meyers, Dawkins and all the Darwinian materialists saying all this stuff. I mean did Ben just go right up to them and say “hi were doing a movie called Expelled (no intelligence allowed) and its about exposing your side for the psychopaths that you are. Just for the movie’s sake can you please give us your side of the argument as blatantly and as vile as you can possibly say it?

And then they set up the HD cameras?

From what I have seen that they have captured on tape, this movie is gold.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmm.  Maybe they lied?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It is called video-mining.  :D
Posted by: caerbannog on April 11 2008,11:39

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 10 2008,00:16)

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That will be fun. More subpoenas, discovery, deposition, and cross-examination. I don't think they'll think it is much fun on the other side, though.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It looks like they might indeed run with the plagiarized video....
(From the "Expelled" blog: < http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/ >)

Editor’s Note: Questions have been raised about the origination of some of the animation used in our movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.  Claims that we have used any animation in an unauthorized manner are simply false.  Premise Media created the animation that illustrates cellular activity used in our film.

Here's hoping that the Expelled producers end up getting a Dover-style courtroom spanking.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 11 2008,11:41

Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ April 11 2008,11:02)
           
Quote (Maya @ April 11 2008,10:19)
           

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
59
Frost122585
04/11/2008
12:27 am
Someone needs to explain to me how they get video of Meyers, Dawkins and all the Darwinian materialists saying all this stuff. I mean did Ben just go right up to them and say “hi were doing a movie called Expelled (no intelligence allowed) and its about exposing your side for the psychopaths that you are. Just for the movie’s sake can you please give us your side of the argument as blatantly and as vile as you can possibly say it?

And then they set up the HD cameras?

From what I have seen that they have captured on tape, this movie is gold.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmm.  Maybe they lied?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It is called video-mining.  :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you sit down in front of the cameras with a Michael Moore or a Mike Wallace, you ought to have a reasonable expectation of what can happen next. Of course, people still get caught unawares; they never realize how completely misleading the process can be until they find themselves or their issues "framed" through the magic of video editing into a narrative they can barely recognize. But at least the interviewees were given forewarning.

In the case of Crossroads Expelled there was no forewarning whatsoever. The filmmakers video-mined, yes. But first, they lied.

Frosty has no friggin idea. Even if he did, where's the harm in a little Lyin Fer Jesus?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 11 2008,11:45

Once it is released, there will be no doubt about what the animation content is, and the detailed comparisons to the Harvard/XVIVO product should become broadly available. I would hope that becomes a talking point that the media never lets Stein walk away from... "Why does your animation look so much like theirs, right down to the errors they made?"
Posted by: olegt on April 11 2008,12:22

From Ben Stein's interview with Coral Ridge Ministries, < courtesy > of Bill Dembski:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Jerry: What’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a nice Christian film like this?

Ben: What’s a nice Jewish boy like me doing in a “Christian” film like this? It’s a film for people who believe in freedom of speech. It’s a film for people who believe that worship of God and the worship of God as the author and creator of the universe is a legitimate belief and legitimately able to be spoken about. It’s a film for Muslims who believe in that. It’s a film for Hindus who believe in that. It’s a film for people who believe in God or believe in freedom of speech or believe in the idea that academic discourse in America’s colleges and universities should not be shut down. It’s a film for people who believe in what Thomas Jefferson thought of as his vision of America. It’s not a proselytizing film for Christians or Muslims or Jews or Hindus. It’s a film for people who want to believe and who do believe that there is a God, an Intelligent Designer, and you know something, it’s even a film for people who don’t believe in that, but they believe in freedom of speech for everyone anyway.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


All science so far!
Posted by: J-Dog on April 11 2008,12:23

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 11 2008,11:45)
Once it is released, there will be no doubt about what the animation content is, and the detailed comparisons to the Harvard/XVIVO product should become broadly available. I would hope that becomes a talking point that the media never lets Stein walk away from... "Why does your animation look so much like theirs, right down to the errors they made?"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wes - Any talk about getting an injunction to prevent release until the "expropriated" footage is removed?
Posted by: ERV on April 11 2008,12:36

Quote (J-Dog @ April 11 2008,12:23)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 11 2008,11:45)
Once it is released, there will be no doubt about what the animation content is, and the detailed comparisons to the Harvard/XVIVO product should become broadly available. I would hope that becomes a talking point that the media never lets Stein walk away from... "Why does your animation look so much like theirs, right down to the errors they made?"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wes - Any talk about getting an injunction to prevent release until the "expropriated" footage is removed?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They are exploring their options.

:P
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 11 2008,12:40

WingNutDaily product promotion tie in:

< http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61205 >
Posted by: improvius on April 11 2008,13:15

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 11 2008,13:40)
WingNutDaily product promotion tie in:

< http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61205 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sweet.  I'll take one copy of How to Hump Your Floor and 2 free tickets to Expelled, please!
Posted by: caerbannog on April 11 2008,13:20

I thought that the fervent Christians in the Philippines who allow themselves to be whipped and nailed to crosses every Good Friday were willing to torture themselves...


Now comes this:

(from < http://www.earthtimes.org/article.....shtml) >


Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:07:54 GMT
Author : American Right To Life
Category : Press Release
News Alerts by Email click here )
Create your own RSS
News | Home


DENVER, April 11  /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- American RTL members are holding a movie marathon viewing all fifteen showings on opening weekend of Ben Stein's new movie, Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed (http://www.expelledthemovie.com/), Friday through Sunday, April 18-20.

.....................

AmericanRTL.org says, "American Right To Life's movie marathon, Expelled? Go to the movies! will be from Friday April 18 at 11:30 a.m. through the last showing Sunday evening!"



Getting nailed to a cross... or sitting through 15 showings of "Expelled"... I'd have to think about that one.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 11 2008,13:28

< Expelled To XVIVO: Up Yours! >
Posted by: J-Dog on April 11 2008,13:46

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 11 2008,12:40)
WingNutDaily product promotion tie in:

< http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61205 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


First Prize - A Ticket to Expelled.

Second Prize = 2 Tickets to expelled.

But the real downside is the WingNut Daily Product.

Nothing like letting everybody know that you can bring the crazy with the best of 'em.

Ya got to admire the marketing tie-in though - it's a perfect match for their target market of the credulous and the cretin.
Posted by: charlie d on April 11 2008,13:49

Quote (caerbannog @ April 11 2008,13:20)
I thought that the fervent Christians in the Philippines who allow themselves to be whipped and nailed to crosses every Good Friday were willing to torture themselves...


Now comes this:

(from < http://www.earthtimes.org/article.....shtml) >


Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:07:54 GMT
Author : American Right To Life
Category : Press Release
News Alerts by Email click here )
Create your own RSS
News | Home


DENVER, April 11  /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- American RTL members are holding a movie marathon viewing all fifteen showings on opening weekend of Ben Stein's new movie, Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed (http://www.expelledthemovie.com/), Friday through Sunday, April 18-20.

.....................

AmericanRTL.org says, "American Right To Life's movie marathon, Expelled? Go to the movies! will be from Friday April 18 at 11:30 a.m. through the last showing Sunday evening!"



Getting nailed to a cross... or sitting through 15 showings of "Expelled"... I'd have to think about that one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That sounds good, actually.  The higher the gross that first night, the higher the damages requested should be if they are sued the next day, after it is confirmed that they used the plagiarized XVIVO animation for commercial purposes.
Posted by: stevestory on April 11 2008,17:46

< http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/04/david-bolinsky.html >

pvm wrote (with a minor correction of his english):

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
David Bolinsky also has a message to William Dembski who has admitted in his own blog that the goal of the animator was to mimic as closely as possible the XVIVO animation without ‘crossing the line’.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
   William Dembski Wrote:

   I expect that the producers made their video close enough to the Harvard video to get tongues awagging (Headline: “Harvard University Seeks Injunction Against Ben Stein and EXPELLED” — you think that might generate interest in the movie?), but different enough so that they are unexposed.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Given William Dembski’s uncanny ability to predict the opposite of the future, these words give comfort to those interested in science and the protection of the legal rights of the copyright owners.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



LOL I love that line. And as for this:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
   David Bolinsky Wrote:

   To Mr. Dembski: The only reason I am involved in this discussion is because I do not want the reputation of my company, hard-earned as it is, to be sullied by even oblique affiliation to your sort of smarmy ethics, if only through works of ours, purloined to fit your agenda. Last year you were charging colleges thousands of dollars to give lectures showing a copy of The Inner Life of the Cell, you claimed you “found somewhere”, with Harvard’s and XVIVO’s credits stripped out and the copyright notice removed (which is in itself a felony) and a creationist voice-over pasted on over our music (yes, I have a recording of your lecture). Harvard slapped you down for that, and yes there is a paper trail. One can only assume that had we not taken notice then, we would be debating The Inner Life of the Cell being used in EXPELLED, instead of a copy. You have enough of a colorful history that Harvard, in its wisdom, decided to ‘swat the gnat’ with as little fuss as possible. Imagine our surprise earlier this month, to see our work copied in a movie trailer for EXPELLED! And you are in the movie too! Not quite a star, but brown dwarfs are cool. XVIVO has no intention of engaging alone, in asymmetrical fighting against an ideological entity with orders of magnitude more resources than we have. That might make great theater, but would resemble a hugely expensive game of whack-a-ID. Boring!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



all I can say is ouch.


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 11 2008,18:01

Great new category for "Expelled" -- the < manufactroversy >.

You know, like the manufactroversy over health effects of smoking.

Go and vote for your favorite tell-it-like-it-is articles about "Expelled".

ETA: One of the greatest hits on the smoking manufactroversy I've seen was in the Australian series, "The Games". In one episode they have the Tobacco Council or similarly named made-up organization offering the cash-strapped organizers a huge amount of money for advertising rights in and around the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. The head logistics character, John, refuses to consider the offer through the episode though his budget chief keeps bringing it up. At the end, a personal representative comes to meet John to make the pitch for the tobacco interests. He enters, is introduced, and delivers a line -- at which point we realize that he is speaking with the assistance of a device to aid those who have lost their larynx to something like cancer. End of episode.


Posted by: Richardthughes on April 11 2008,19:16

I've just seen a TV ad for "expelled" on Fox news channel. Ben is in class and asks "how did life begin?" during an evolution lecture.

I was hoping for more Nazis.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 11 2008,19:49

DaveTard chimes in:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....respond >
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 11 2008,20:18

BS is also going to be on Hannity and Colmes.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 11 2008,20:30

Does Larry know that DaveTard is trying to steal clients from him?

I'm just wondering whose legal advice would be worse:

Larry "Rainmaker" Fafafafarman

DaveScot "Hisself" Springer

Casey "Strikeout" Luskin

Oh please O Mighty Zeus, let this not be a rhetorical question!
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 11 2008,20:33

Dave's predictions are always the best.
Posted by: charlie d on April 11 2008,20:34

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 11 2008,19:49)
DaveTard chimes in:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....respond >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, it does look like they backed down the threat of an injunction blocking the release of the movie, although they leave open the possibility of suing afterwards.  

Maybe they heard something about the final print version that will go (in fact, is going as we speak) out to the theaters?   Note that, as far as I can tell, all the pre-screenings that have been reported so far were projected from laptop files, no prints.  

If Premise had received the injunction and still came out on time with a non-violating movie, that would have been a coup.  But now, if the movie comes out without the animation it's an obvious admission of guilt, and if it does come out with the animation after being warned, their liability has increased.

Interesting...
Posted by: J-Dog on April 11 2008,20:56

Quote (charlie d @ April 11 2008,20:34)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 11 2008,19:49)
DaveTard chimes in:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....respond >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, it does look like they backed down the threat of an injunction blocking the release of the movie, although they leave open the possibility of suing afterwards.  

Maybe they heard something about the final print version that will go (in fact, is going as we speak) out to the theaters?   Note that, as far as I can tell, all the pre-screenings that have been reported so far were projected from laptop files, no prints.  

If Premise had received the injunction and still came out on time with a non-violating movie, that would have been a coup.  But now, if the movie comes out without the animation it's an obvious admission of guilt, and if it does come out with the animation after being warned, their liability has increased.

Interesting...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I followed Rich's link too, and I don't think anyone is backing down.  I think DaveScot is doing what he does best:  Blustering, bloviating and blowing smoke.

He took a "throw-away line" and blew it up out of proportion.  He's a funny guy.  He's so funny, you forgot to laugh.
Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 11 2008,21:12

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 11 2008,19:49)
DaveTard chimes in:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....respond >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My gosh the tard on that thread, especially from Apollos.

It's really bizarre to watch them talk about it, and somehow manage to totally deny any wrongdoing. Can you even get any logic out of post 7? He seems to want to say that the expelled team 'somehow made a similar animation' without saying 'they copied it'.
Posted by: didymos on April 11 2008,21:43

OK, so UD gots this: < WORLD interviews Ben Stein >

You're basic Dembski cut-and-repost.  Here's the part I found interesting:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

WORLD: How did you get involved with Expelled?

STEIN: I was approached a couple of years ago by the producers, and they described to me the central issue of Expelled, which was about Darwinism and why it has such a lock on the academic establishment when the theory has so many holes. And why freedom of speech has been lost at so many colleges to the point where you can’t question even the slightest bit of Darwinism or your colleagues will spurn you, you’ll lose your job, and you’ll be publicly humiliated. As they sent me books and talked to me about these things I became more enthusiastic about participating.

Plus I was never a big fan of Darwinism because it played such a large part in the Nazis’ Final Solution to their so-called “Jewish problem” and was so clearly instrumental in their rationalizing of the Holocaust. So I was primed to want to do a project on how Darwinism relates to fascism and to outline the flaws in Darwinism generally.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



As per usual, the bold is mine, all mine.
Posted by: didymos on April 11 2008,21:45

Goddamnit, I need an edit button.  Change that "You're" to "Your".
Posted by: J-Dog on April 11 2008,22:02

He seems to want to say that the expelled team 'somehow made a similar animation' without saying 'they copied it'.[/quote]


Posted by: Bob O'H on April 12 2008,02:09



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That sounds good, actually.  The higher the gross that first night, the higher the damages requested should be if they are sued the next day, after it is confirmed that they used the plagiarized XVIVO animation for commercial purposes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sounds like we (well, you) should all go and see the film and pay for our (well, your) tickets.  Do your bit to help XVIVO win Ben Stein's money!

I'm safe in Finland, so I won't be able to see it myself.  But I've checked the exchange rates, so I can send over a couple of glass beads that should pay for about 15 of you to get in.
Posted by: uriel on April 12 2008,02:22

Quote (Maya @ April 11 2008,10:19)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
59
Frost122585
04/11/2008
12:27 am
Someone needs to explain to me how they get video of Meyers, Dawkins and all the Darwinian materialists saying all this stuff. I mean did Ben just go right up to them and say “hi were doing a movie called Expelled (no intelligence allowed) and its about exposing your side for the psychopaths that you are. Just for the movie’s sake can you please give us your side of the argument as blatantly and as vile as you can possibly say it?

And then they set up the HD cameras?

From what I have seen that they have captured on tape, this movie is gold.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmm.  Maybe they lied?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Inconceivable!

And, actually, despite the popular "princess bride" meme, and the obvious sarcasm, I am using that word correctly.
Posted by: Gunthernacus on April 12 2008,02:56

Quote (didymos @ April 11 2008,21:43)
OK, so UD gots this: < WORLD interviews Ben Stein >

Your basic Dembski cut-and-repost.  Here's the part I found interesting:
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

WORLD: How did you get involved with Expelled?

STEIN: I was approached a couple of years ago by the producers, and they described to me the central issue of Expelled, which was about Darwinism and why it has such a lock on the academic establishment when the theory has so many holes. And why freedom of speech has been lost at so many colleges to the point where you can’t question even the slightest bit of Darwinism or your colleagues will spurn you, you’ll lose your job, and you’ll be publicly humiliated. As they sent me books and talked to me about these things I became more enthusiastic about participating.

Plus I was never a big fan of Darwinism because it played such a large part in the Nazis’ Final Solution to their so-called “Jewish problem” and was so clearly instrumental in their rationalizing of the Holocaust. So I was primed to want to do a project on how Darwinism relates to fascism and to outline the flaws in Darwinism generally.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A couple years ago?  They may not have settled on the title, but it seems the premise was understood.    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< From Pharyngula >:

My name is Mark Mathis. I am a Producer for Rampant Films. We are currently in production of the documentary film, "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion."



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on April 12 2008,03:01

Umm, no "Crossroads" was never the title.  They used that to get scientists to participate in a pro-ID film without admitting to it being a pro-ID film.  They'd already registered the expelledthemovie.com domain before requesting the interviews, and never registered any crossroadsthemovie.com or suchlike domain.
Posted by: didymos on April 12 2008,03:03

Ignore the last post please.  I didn't pay attention to where you found that image.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 12 2008,06:30

< Flunked, Not Expelled: Ben Stein Contradicts Mark Mathis >

They should have gotten their stories straight.
Posted by: ERV on April 12 2008,10:57

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 12 2008,06:30)
< Flunked, Not Expelled: Ben Stein Contradicts Mark Mathis >

They should have gotten their stories straight.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Im glad the media (and we) are keeping track of all the stories that the EXPELLED crew has made up to cover their asses about this animation (and all the other crap they are lying about).

Is it ironic to anyone else that the pre-EXPELLED circus is more entertaining than the actual movie?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 12 2008,11:24

FtK on Expelled!

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/expelle....-230033 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...In fact, this may be one of the most fair and balanced flicked ever made
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



She's no seen it though, obviously.
Posted by: didymos on April 12 2008,11:28

Quote (ERV @ April 12 2008,08:57)
Is it ironic to anyone else that the pre-EXPELLED circus is more entertaining than the actual movie?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


At this point?  Nah.  It's now about as ironic as ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.  Not that it's a damn bit less funny for that, though.
Posted by: godsilove on April 12 2008,17:51

Does anybody know more about this Maciej Giertych guy, who was interviewed by Ben Stein for Expelled?

I was reading his profile on Wikipedia, and came across this:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In February 2007, Giertych sparked outrage among European Union officials and Jewish organizations by publishing a brochure called "Civilizations at war in Europe" that claimed that Jews "are bilogically different" and "create their own ghettos" because they supposedly prefer to separate themselves from others.[3]. Many journalists and certain Jewish organizations considered the brochure to be anti-Semitic. During the European Parliament's session on 14 March 2007, Parliament's President [4] Hans-Gert Pöttering reprimanded Maciej Giertych for the content of his pamphlet in accordance with Rule 147 of the EP's Rules of Procedure. He said that the publication was "a serious breach of fundamental rights and, in particular, the dignity of human beings to which our institution so strongly adheres". Mr Pöttering dissociated the Parliament from the work saying that it had made no financial contribution to its publication. Several members of the Parliament have joined with the European Jewish Congress in calling for an investigation of the publishing of the pamphlet and whether Parliament funds were involved.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Now if it's true that a creationist said Jews are biologically different, then doesn't that negate the notion that Darwinism was a necessary condition for the Holocaust?
Posted by: olegt on April 12 2008,20:10

Alright, you've already found it.
Posted by: didymos on April 12 2008,22:33

Quote (godsilove @ April 12 2008,15:51)
Now if it's true that a creationist said Jews are biologically different, then doesn't that negate the notion that Darwinism was a necessary condition for the Holocaust?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course not.  Nothing can negate that for the IDists.  Not even a forensically verified photograph of Hitler smiling fondly while reading a German copy of "The Design Inference" could do that.  It would however suggest that either:

A.  Hitler is still alive, and clearly hasn't gained any intellectual rigour in his hyper-senescence.

B.  The Nazis were masters of time-travel. Possibly due to the actions of a rogue Timelord. Might even be WAD himself.  The Dr. Dr. Dr.?

C.  Dembski is some sort of immortal Wandering IDiot, and can only be killed via decapitation with antique bladed weaponry or upon injection with a human scale Type III secretion system.

D.  Darwinists are still wrong.  And Nazis.  Who eat children.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 13 2008,00:55

Quote (godsilove @ April 12 2008,15:51)
Does anybody know more about this Maciej Giertych guy, who was interviewed by Ben Stein for Expelled?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He is the only reason I was ever published in Nature.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 13 2008,04:14

If Gonzalez now has a new teaching position is this
< http://www.freegonzalez.com/involved.html >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Your donation is fully tax-deductible to the amount allowed by law and will go to the Guillermo Gonzalez Research Fund established by Discovery Institute¹s Center for Science and Culture. This fund will be used to support Dr. Gonzalez¹s research and his efforts to secure a new academic position. Discovery Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan research and education organization, recognized by the IRS under 501©(3) of the federal tax code.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


taking money under false pretences?
Posted by: Bob O'H on April 13 2008,08:49

Oldman - probably not.  But they might be guilty of attempting to do it.
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 13 2008,10:33

Does this mean I can create the Doc Bill Research Foundation, declare it to be not-for-profit and solicit money to enable me to "think" all day.  Great Thoughts, mind you, although I think best in a new BMW.

Somehow, there has to be more to it; some regulation.

Who's our non-profit expert?
Posted by: Maya on April 13 2008,10:47



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot:
This is why Harvard won’t ever take Premise to court over it. For one Premise can fight back and because Premise hired an independent artist to develop a replica there’s little chance of winning a copyright infringement suit. Second, even if Harvard did win a suit they couldn’t show any damages because they don’t sell the video and let many others use it freely without permission or protest.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


DaveScot's poor understanding of copyright law aside, after the spectacular success of his last prediction:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Unless Judge Jones wants to cut his career off at the knees he isn’t going to rule against the wishes of his political allies.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


it seems that we can look forward to seeing Harvard crush Premise in court.

I'll start the popcorn.
Posted by: snoeman on April 13 2008,11:53

Quote (Doc Bill @ April 13 2008,10:33)
Who's our non-profit expert?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That would be the makers of "Expelled", which should become apparent roughly 24 hours after its release.

Edit: style change, such as it was.
Posted by: dhogaza on April 13 2008,13:35



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Does this mean I can create the Doc Bill Research Foundation, declare it to be not-for-profit and solicit money to enable me to "think" all day.  Great Thoughts, mind you, although I think best in a new BMW.

Somehow, there has to be more to it; some regulation.

Who's our non-profit expert?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You can more or less do that.  I know two individuals who, back the 1980s, started not-for-profits here to finance their own personal field research into raptors.  Both have grown to include more people than the founder (and one was such a prick he eventually got fired from his "own" not-for-profit).  But in the beginning, it was just them.  One has spent extensive time traveling the world doing field work, funded by donations from a variety of well-heeled people interested in raptors.

Nice gig, actually.

And in the open source software world, non-profits are common, providing a mechanism to provide support for developers, etc.  I derive a small part of my income in this way.

Not-for-profits are corporations, so you need the baggage - President, Treasurer and a board in my state, need to do your annual reports, tax reports.  You have to get your corporation qualified as being tax-exempt.  I don't know if "sitting around, thinking" would qualify but "research" probably would :)

So, hey, go for it, push those boundaries!
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 13 2008,16:29

Looks like Kerry Emmanuel has come out and said new evidence has made him reverse his position that global warming will cause more hurricanes.

Note how he doesn't say that global warming exists, but just watch.  We'll be getting lambasted for weeks from the usual suspects screeching that global warming isn't real.

Of course, davescot over at UD has picked up on this and has posted about it.

This is why this anti-science crap is so dangerous.

Normal common occurence - scientist  changes his position when confronted with new evidence - gets distorted into a literally deadly talking point to score political points.
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 13 2008,16:31

Oops, *note how he doesn't say that global warming doesn't exist....  I'll start previewing before I post, sorry.
Posted by: dhogaza on April 13 2008,19:25

No, he doesn't say global warming doesn't exist, after all he's modeling the impact of warming on tropical cyclone frequency and intensity over the next 200 years.

However the first three responses to the post read as though the writers BELIEVE that Emmanuel is reversing his position on global warming itself.

Interesting how quickly a denialist like Dave embraces model output when it agrees with his own bias, since we continuously hear that the models can't be trusted ...
Posted by: Timothy McDougald on April 13 2008,19:29

Quote (Dr.GH @ April 13 2008,00:55)
Quote (godsilove @ April 12 2008,15:51)
Does anybody know more about this Maciej Giertych guy, who was interviewed by Ben Stein for Expelled?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He is the only reason I was ever published in Nature.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< I dug up some stuff on him. >

In addition there is a blog < that covers him on a regular basis. > IMHO, Maciej Giertych is a bit of a freak. He is also one of the Polish scientists who raised a fuss in Nature over evolution.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 13 2008,23:38

< http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/04/michael-scherme.html#more >
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 14 2008,10:21

is a link to watch

< This >

Use it to document money generated by Expelled.
Posted by: Kristine on April 14 2008,10:25

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 12 2008,10:24)
FtK on Expelled!

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/expelle....-230033 >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...In fact, this may be one of the most fair and balanced flicked ever made
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

[emphasis mine]

She's no seen it though, obviously.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Flicked"?

I like the sound of that! :)
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 14 2008,15:37

Fundy rap on “Expelled.”

Expelled the movie, opens April 18.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Cindy C.,  “I'll bet satan will be causing lots of flat tires on the way to see that movie.”  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on April 14 2008,15:59

First Kevin Miller says that biblical literalists are hard to find.

< Then Mark Mathis says that only biblical literalists can be Christians >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
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—
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Both atheists and anti-line-in-the-sandists are bad.

I’ve coined a new term: evophobe! Use it often. :)
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 14 2008,16:17

Experiment..



---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------
<a href="http://expelledexposed.com/"><i>Expelled</i></a>
---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------



href="http://expelledexposed.com/"><i>Expelled</i></a>


does this work?

Form here:

< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng...._do.php >
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 14 2008,16:41

< Expelled Exposed >
Posted by: charlie d on April 14 2008,17:13

I think it should be < Expelled >, if we want it to show up when the people google for information on the < Expelled movie >, aka < Expelled: no intelligence allowed >, with < Ben Stein >.  Clear enough?
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 14 2008,17:20

Given the latest rantings on EvoNews are Bruce Chapman and Robert Crother talking about the same Expelled!?

Not about Nazis?  All about teh Expelled!?

Oh, could teh Scheiss be hitting der Fan?

The DI is all about Teh Sci3nc3 and Excremented! is all about Teh Gott und teh Nazis.

So, why NOW is the DI trying to backpedal on Expelled!?  Could it be that Oh Noes, Plan B, she no workz?

Plan B my Aunt Petunia.  Definitely Plan 9.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 14 2008,17:24

Quote (charlie d @ April 14 2008,17:13)
I think it should be < Expelled >, if we want it to show up when the people google for information on the < Expelled movie >, aka < Expelled: no intelligence allowed >, with < Ben Stein >.  Clear enough?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The expelled exposed site is never going to show up in any search for "expelled" unless they make it relevant.  Right now the site has zero search engine relevance (Google).

Google "expelled"  and you'll note it does not show up, at least not on the first page.

You have to play the google game and that site has not made good use of tags, has no content, has no incoming links, in short it is doomed to not show up in a search for "expelled"

They should have someone who is search engine savvy improve the site if they want it to show up in any searches for the term "expelled".
Posted by: improvius on April 14 2008,17:27

Quote (charlie d @ April 14 2008,18:13)
I think it should be < Expelled >, if we want it to show up when the people google for information on the < Expelled movie >, aka < Expelled: no intelligence allowed >, with < Ben Stein >.  Clear enough?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe we should also add that the < Expelled movie >, aka < Expelled: no intelligence allowed >, with < Ben Stein >, deals with evolution, intelligent design (or "ID"), and creationism.
Posted by: charlie d on April 14 2008,17:37

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 14 2008,17:24)
Quote (charlie d @ April 14 2008,17:13)
I think it should be < Expelled >, if we want it to show up when the people google for information on the < Expelled movie >, aka < Expelled: no intelligence allowed >, with < Ben Stein >.  Clear enough?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

You have to play the google game and that site has not made good use of tags, has no content, has no incoming links, in short it is doomed to not show up in a search for "expelled"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The content is on its way.  And the links to < Expelled >, aka < Expelled movie >, aka < Expelled: no intelligence allowed >, with < Ben Stein > from external web sites are meant precisely to add relevance.

If net-heads have any additional suggestion, let us know.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 14 2008,18:13

Quote (charlie d @ April 14 2008,17:37)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 14 2008,17:24)
Quote (charlie d @ April 14 2008,17:13)
I think it should be < Expelled >, if we want it to show up when the people google for information on the < Expelled movie >, aka < Expelled: no intelligence allowed >, with < Ben Stein >.  Clear enough?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

You have to play the google game and that site has not made good use of tags, has no content, has no incoming links, in short it is doomed to not show up in a search for "expelled"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The content is on its way.  And the links to < Expelled >, aka < Expelled movie >, aka < Expelled: no intelligence allowed >, with < Ben Stein > from external web sites are meant precisely to add relevance.

If net-heads have any additional suggestion, let us know.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


MSN is recongizing some incoming links, Google does not register any.  Makes me wonder if google thinks its a link farm or just thinks it has no content.  The site has been indexed by google, if you search on "expelled exposed" it comes up so google is not completely ignoring it.

An informative narrative (with appropriate word density)on the front page would be a good start.  

Anyhow...
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 14 2008,18:33

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 14 2008,16:41)
< Expelled Exposed >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Variety Magazine credits these guys as animators.



< Out of Our Minds >.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 14 2008,18:48

Some stills from the Out ofOur Minds demo:




Posted by: steve_h on April 14 2008,19:58

I've been expelled from Kevin Miller's limerick competition:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Some company, Plagiarmation
Once copied a cell animation
"inner life of the cell"
it's as blatent as hell
so now we await litigation

A comp'ny that really excelled
at lying to rubes was compelled
to exploit deaths of jews
to get in the news
a pile of shite called "expelled"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Sorry, Steve H. Had to delete your contribution for legal reasons. >

Edit: For scanniness. Rats! is there no word that google can't find?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 14 2008,21:25

Quote (steve_h @ April 14 2008,20:58)
I've been expelled from Kevin Miller's limerick competition:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Some company, Plagiarmation
Once copied a cell animation
"inner life of the cell"
it's as blatent as hell
so now we await litigation

A comp'ny that really excelled
at lying to rubes was compelled
to exploit deaths of jews
to get in the news
a pile of shite called "expelled"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Sorry, Steve H. Had to delete your contribution for legal reasons. >

Edit: For scanniness. Rats! is there no word that google can't find?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I choke upon the irony.
Posted by: ERV on April 14 2008,21:29

heh.  Kev aint come back round these parts, has he?

'Legal reasons'?  I thought EXPELLED planned all this?
Posted by: Maya on April 14 2008,21:37

Here's mine, in case it gets censored (not an issue on any non-creationist blogs, oddly enough):



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There was a screenwriter named Miller,
who thought he'd create the next thriller,
with Nazis and theft,
his claims were bereft
of honesty.  He's just a libeler.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on April 14 2008,21:48

There once was a Kev from Nantucket...
Posted by: Maya on April 14 2008,21:51

Quote (Maya @ April 14 2008,21:37)
Here's mine, in case it gets censored (not an issue on any non-creationist blogs, oddly enough):

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There was a screenwriter named Miller,
who thought he'd create the next thriller,
with Nazis and theft,
his claims were bereft
of honesty.  He's just a libeler.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, yes, the last line doesn't scan well.  It beats my original version of "He's just another ignorant, lying creationist."
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 14 2008,22:52

Quote (steve_h @ April 14 2008,17:58)
I've been expelled from Kevin Miller's limerick competition:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Some company, Plagiarmation
Once copied a cell animation
"inner life of the cell"
it's as blatent as hell
so now we await litigation

A comp'ny that really excelled
at lying to rubes was compelled
to exploit deaths of jews
to get in the news
a pile of shite called "expelled"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Sorry, Steve H. Had to delete your contribution for legal reasons. >

Edit: For scanniness. Rats! is there no word that google can't find?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dang that is good.
Posted by: Kristine on April 14 2008,23:15

< Greek myths, geek gifts >...  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There once was a man named Ben Stein
whose narcissism turned water to brine.
His reflection he saw
in a tear-pond of false awe,
and named “God” after his own design.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Dr.GH on April 15 2008,00:33

riff on Maya,

There was a screenwriter named Miller,
who thought he'd create the next thriller,
with Nazis and fraud
he is a lying sod
who traded Darwin for Hitler
Posted by: didymos on April 15 2008,01:58

Fun with screencaps. "Inner Life of A Cell" is on the left, and "Expelled" is on the right.

Zooming through the actin:





Actin Network:




Vesicle being walked along a microtubule:




Golgi Apparati:




Nuclear Envelope pores:




Centrosome in the distance:




Transcription:




Umm, not sure, really....mitochondrion?:

I can't decide if this is what the "Expelled" folk were going for in the next caps:





I kinda think it was, based on the spatial arrangement in these caps, and the implied shape in the "Expelled" one.  Not that sure, though:




Original Work?

This last one appears to be unique to "Expelled", or at least, plagiarized from some other source:



(Edited 11/4/2008:  New Image Host)
Posted by: Assassinator on April 15 2008,03:00

Well, still, even though they look similar, that's not that strange. It's still the same cell, the same processes. There isn't that much room for difference, the Harvard animation kinda set the standard (so to say). No wonder they look alike, although the walking over the microtubule really made me frown. The rest isn't that super-duper plagiarised, tbh.
(I really feel like playing the devil's advocate)
Posted by: CeilingCat on April 15 2008,06:18

< Ben Stein Watch >

Ben's not JUST a creationist crank.  He's also an economist nutjob.

Last paragraph:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Incidentally, does anybody have a clue what Stein might be talking about when he says that "Paulson's proposals divert the nation from such urgently needed measures as real solvency guarantees for the banks"? Is a "real solvency guarantee" the acceptable way of saying "bank bailout" in much the same way as "intelligent design" is simply a confusing way of saying "creationism"?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on April 15 2008,06:38

Quote (CeilingCat @ April 15 2008,04:18)
< Ben Stein Watch >

Ben's not JUST a creationist crank.  He's also an economist nutjob.
<snip>
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

[/quote]
The best quote in that article:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Of course, being attacked by Ben Stein is a bit like being harangued [for] no discernible reason by a demented vagrant: an impartial observer might feel sorry for the attacker, but none of the blows ever land.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on April 15 2008,06:49

I'm sure someone has noticed this before, but what the hell.  The same guy also had an entry on < Expelled >:

< Ben Stein Watch, Expelled Edition >
Posted by: charlie d on April 15 2008,06:53

dydimos:
what you have as "actin network" in your comparison above looks to me like chromatin in the case of Expelled (DNA wrapped around histones). Either that, or they have no idea what actin looks like.
Posted by: didymos on April 15 2008,07:06

Quote (charlie d @ April 15 2008,04:53)
dydimos:
what you have as "actin network" in your comparison above looks to me like chromatin in the case of Expelled (DNA wrapped around histones). Either that, or they have no idea what actin looks like.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, I forgot to add a caveat to that one as well.  I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to represent, I just thought it might be their version of the actin network stuff in "Inner Life".
Posted by: Maya on April 15 2008,07:07

Quote (Dr.GH @ April 15 2008,00:33)
riff on Maya,

There was a screenwriter named Miller,
who thought he'd create the next thriller,
with Nazis and fraud
he is a lying sod
who traded Darwin for Hitler
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Evolve it, baby!   :D
Posted by: didymos on April 15 2008,07:33

Yeah, charlie, I think you're right on that.  I just rewatched the Expelled stuff, and I'd missed a really quick transition through a nuclear pore.
Posted by: JonF on April 15 2008,07:43

Quote (didymos @ April 15 2008,02:58)
Fun with screencaps. "Inner Life of A Cell" is on the left, and "Expelled" is on the right.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Humph. I'd have to say it's not a slam-dunk for plagiarism. Similar, yeah, but plagiarized? It'd take some argument to convince me.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 15 2008,08:02

Quote (Ftk @ April 15 2008,07:44)
< This > is what you guys consider plagerism?

My goodness you're some desperate folks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Look who's escaped from the BW wall.

So, FTK, do you think that Jesus would approve of this?

Could I make a new character called Plicky Mouse, make him look exactly like "Mickey" apart from the colour of his jacket and you'd still approve? You would not consider that "plagerism"? Just copying something, changing the colors and textures a bit is a-ok?

FTK, do you think that there is a body of research that was used to generate the expelled version? If there is no such research (and this will come out if it gets to court) and they end up admitting that it's a wholesale copy and that there was no actual research done beyond viewing the "original" , will you still approve?

If it gets to court and expelled is found guilty will that just be another case of the evilutioninsts conspiracy controlling the court system?

And FTK, it's not "our" opinion about it that matters, It's the creators of the original animation and the Judge whose opinions will "count" in this.

See your lot in court, I very much hope.
Posted by: didymos on April 15 2008,08:03

Quote (Ftk @ April 15 2008,05:44)
< This > is what you guys consider plagerism?

My goodness you're some desperate folks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll be more clear.  I don't think my post makes the case for total plagiarism. It wasn't supposed to.  I just posted images of corresponding processes/structures, at least as best as I could determine.  A couple are quite obviously copied, others not so much, just as obviously.  Yeah, I threw in a snarky remark about plagiarism at the end.  Sue me.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 15 2008,08:04

Quote (didymos @ April 15 2008,08:03)
Quote (Ftk @ April 15 2008,05:44)
< This > is what you guys consider plagerism?

My goodness you're some desperate folks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll be more clear.  I don't think my post makes the case for total plagiarism. It wasn't supposed to.  I just posted images of corresponding processes/structures, at least as best as I could determine.  A couple are quite obviously copied, others not so much, just as obviously.  Yeah, I threw in a snarky remark about plagiarism at the end.  Sue me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There's little point using facts to educate FTK. She is immune.
Posted by: olegt on April 15 2008,08:25

Quote (Ftk @ April 15 2008,07:44)
< This > is what you guys consider plagerism?

My goodness you're some desperate folks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The devil is in detail, FtK.  You need to dig a bit deeper into it to understand the allegations of plagiarism.  ERV plans a series of posts on the subject, < here > is the first one.

In a nutshell, if Inner Life of a Cell were a realistic depiction of intracellular processes, sort of a documentary film, then there would be no case here because any other animation made from scratch would look pretty much the same.  It turns out that the animation is a cartoon and, starting from scratch, different cartoonists would come up with very dissimilar videos.

However, if you actually peered inside a cell, you wouldn't see those pretty pictures.  The processes are rather chaotic.  The walker looks like a drunken sailor stepping back and forth and only slowly drifting in the right direction.  Chemicals don't stick immediately to their intended locations, instead bouncing around multiple times and only occasionally getting into place.  Lots of stuff floats around obstructing the view.  An animator thus must focus on a few objects and processes of cellular life and discard lots of other things.  It seems like the makers of the animation in Expelled have made exactly the same choices as the guys at xvivo.  That's why the analogy is not two documentaries faithfully portraying the same subject but rather two Mickey Mouse cartoons in which Mickey wears different pairs of shorts.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 15 2008,08:32

Now things are perhaps a bit clearer FTK I'll lay it out for you in a way you can understand.

a) Expelled did their own independent research and did not reference the xvivo animation at all. It just looks alot like the Harvard version as the same processes are depicted.

b) Expelled did not do any research at all and simply used the xvivo version as a template and copied substantially from it.

FTK, would you agree that option A is acceptable and option B is unacceptable?

It's important because you might well have the chance to be proved right/wrong in court!

FTK I note you've just posted this message at UD  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is definitely not a case of plagiarism.

Check out AtBC’s comparisons of the two cells.

They don’t have a leg to stand on.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

< Link >

Is this your opinion as a copyright lawyer? Or soccer-mom?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 15 2008,08:35

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 15 2008,09:02)
Quote (Ftk @ April 15 2008,07:44)
< This > is what you guys consider plagerism?

My goodness you're some desperate folks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Look who's escaped from the BW wall.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Minor hiccup.  Corrected shortly.



Miner hiccup?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Tower Colliery >, by trelewis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 15 2008,08:46

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 15 2008,08:32)
FTK I note you've just posted this message at UD      

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is definitely not a case of plagiarism.

Check out AtBC’s comparisons of the two cells.

They don’t have a leg to stand on.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

< Link >

Is this your opinion as a copyright lawyer? Or soccer-mom?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How come she can spell plagiarism correctly for those bozos and can't spell it correctly over < here >?

Or do you think this is evidence that she learns things over here, even though she'd never admit it?

This seems like a task for the Nixplanatory Filter. Tell Sal to dust it off and get busy.
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 15 2008,10:18

Quote (didymos @ April 15 2008,07:06)
Quote (charlie d @ April 15 2008,04:53)
dydimos:
what you have as "actin network" in your comparison above looks to me like chromatin in the case of Expelled (DNA wrapped around histones). Either that, or they have no idea what actin looks like.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, I forgot to add a caveat to that one as well.  I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to represent, I just thought it might be their version of the actin network stuff in "Inner Life".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That vesicle bit is huuuuuuuuuuuuge.   It's such a tiny specialised part of the cell and the copy is so incredibly blatant that any copyright lawyer worth his weight will harp on it over and over.

Hell, infringement cases have been won on much less.

And if Motive attempts to say "Well, cells are all pretty much the same, that's just the way that it would have happened no matter what,"  they will have to present their original research to the judge.   If they tell him they don't have any, as I suspect they would have to, they're in wayyyy deep.

Also, a little advice to the UD folks, you're associated with people that are being sued (even if you think no one can tell you're associated, don't worry, courts have a funny way of finding out where money comes from) so try shutting the hell up.  A lawyer who got his degree from a matchbook should be able to tell you that much.
Posted by: charlie d on April 15 2008,10:21

I think it's quite obvious that there is sufficiently close resemblance between the Expelled and XVIVO animations for a copyright infringement case to proceed, if XVIVO and/or Harvard decide to sue after the movie comes out.   That of course assumes that the Expelled producers will not argue some exception like "fair use" or minor use, etc, or the judge will reject such arguments.  I am not sure the Expelled producers would do that though, since those arguments would belie their current claim that the animations are original, and while their actions would be legal, it would be pretty much an admission of plagiarism - copying someone else's work without attribution.  Thus they may end up in the clear financially, but with rather rotten eggs on their faces ethically.

If the case goes to court, the process of discovery will easily do the rest: if the Expelled animations were worked out from scientific scratch, there will be, necessarily, tons of evidence for it.  There will be notes and e-mails of discussions between animators and actual biologists, the biologists' own notes, the evidence of 3D modeling from existing protein structures and cell microscopy (e.g. confocal, SEM and TE) data in the literature and databases, and so on.  If not, not.

At this stage, any firm conclusion from any of us is premature.  All we know is that the Expelled people say their animators' work is original, while the XVIVO people have reason to believe it can't be, and the Expelled animators must have copied "Inner life" (whether or not under specific instructions from the producers also remains to be seen, if and when responsibility and damages are assessed).  

That's it, so we can all just chill out.  I suspect we will know soon enough.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 15 2008,10:35

Maybe they could claim it was a

P-A-R-O-D-Y

or not.
Posted by: Assassinator on April 15 2008,10:36

Quote (charlie d @ Posted on April 15 2008,10:21 )
There will be notes and e-mails of discussions between animators and actual biologists, the biologists' own notes, the evidence of 3D modeling from existing protein structures and cell microscopy (e.g. confocal, SEM and TE) data in the literature and databases, and so on.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did biologists in general even worked on Expelled?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 15 2008,10:40

< http://www.comingsoon.net/news/weekendwarriornews.php?id=44099 >




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Lack of awareness might be the killer for the Ben Stein documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Rocky Mountain Pictures) which takes a controversial look at the thought of Intelligent Design and how the scientific community has accused those who bring it up as being religious creationists. Fortunately, fundamentalist religious groups will get fully behind the movie, possibly for the wrong reasons, with heavy promotions through churches, although a documentary will probably be a harder sell than some of the other movies those groups have flocked to. Expect it to end up outside the top 10 with roughly $1.5 million, more or less.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: charlie d on April 15 2008,10:42

Quote (Assassinator @ April 15 2008,10:36)
Did biologists in general even worked on Expelled?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not sure what you mean.  Sternberg and Crocker are biologists of course, although I don't know if they had any role in the movie other than being interviewed while looking soulful and aggrieved.  But IIRC Kevin Miller claimed at one point that they had a "team of cell biologists" hard at work on the animations, so there must be at least 2.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 15 2008,10:46

The new expelled exposed site is a fantastic improvement.  Bravo to whomever is working on it.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 15 2008,10:52

From the makers of "Where's Wally?"

< http://www.thebricktestament.com/king_da....1a.html >

"Where's Darwin?"
Posted by: ERV on April 15 2008,11:42

Quote (charlie d @ April 15 2008,10:42)
Quote (Assassinator @ April 15 2008,10:36)
Did biologists in general even worked on Expelled?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not sure what you mean.  Sternberg and Crocker are biologists of course, although I don't know if they had any role in the movie other than being interviewed while looking soulful and aggrieved.  But IIRC Kevin Miller claimed at one point that they had a "team of cell biologists" hard at work on the animations, so there must be at least 2.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He also made that statement before Billy D screamed 'LEEEEEROOOOOY JENKINS!' and admitted they just stole the fucking thing.

Any references to 'cell biologist(s)' were a lie.  OOOH LOOK!  A LYING FUNDIE CHRISTIAN!  Ooooh put that man in a museum-- hes rare, that Kevin.

Piece of shit.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 15 2008,11:58

ERV, I LOVE it when you talk dirty :-)
Posted by: improvius on April 15 2008,12:34

Quote (ERV @ April 15 2008,12:42)
Any references to 'cell biologist(s)' were a lie.  OOOH LOOK!  A LYING FUNDIE CHRISTIAN!  Ooooh put that man in a museum-- hes rare, that Kevin.

Piece of shit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I still can't tell if Kevin is a lying sack of shit himself, or if he's just swallowing hook, line, and sinker everything that Mathis has been telling him.  Certainly, Mathis can't seem to open his mouth without lying.  And I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that one of his lies was "don't worry, guys, I checked with the lawyers and it's perfectly legal for us to copy this animation."
Posted by: Kristine on April 15 2008,12:59

Aw, I wouldn't put it past them if they thought that this pre-screening controversy would help them, as the pre-screening "controversy" about anti-Semitism seemed to help Passion of the Christ.

Except I'm not sure I'd credit this bunch with that much planning. A little too convenient.

We'll see what happens. (Bleh, after this weekend it's all over. Good.)
Posted by: Maya on April 15 2008,13:05

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 15 2008,11:58)
ERV, I LOVE it when you talk dirty :-)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ERV should, of course, express herself as she wishes, but there is still latent bias against women in most industries, so she does us a disservice.  We have to live up to the same standards as men.  How often do we hear that kind of language from our generally larger, hairier colleagues?

Oh.  Wait.  Never fucking mind.
Posted by: Bob O'H on April 15 2008,13:16

It won't be quite all over, Kristine.  All over bar the court case, I say.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 15 2008,13:20

Quote (Maya @ April 15 2008,13:05)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 15 2008,11:58)
ERV, I LOVE it when you talk dirty :-)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ERV should, of course, express herself as she wishes, but there is still latent bias against women in most industries, so she does us a disservice.  We have to live up to the same standards as men.  How often do we hear that kind of language from our generally larger, hairier colleagues?

Oh.  Wait.  Never fucking mind.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Tarden Chatterbox is not as hairy as you. Or manly.
Posted by: BWE on April 15 2008,13:26

expelled:
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxSLw1LMvgk >

Harvard:
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkrQHM8AG1o >

I don't know if these have been posted side by side. Also, I'm not sure if it's really the one from expelled.

But they are the same damn thing. The stills don't do it justice.

I got it from this < Daily Kos page. >
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 15 2008,13:30

The first one isn't the expelled video, its the  XVIVO one being used without permission by Dembski.
Posted by: BWE on April 15 2008,13:44

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 15 2008,13:30)
The first one isn't the expelled video, its the  XVIVO one being used without permission by Dembski.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:)

so they in fact are the same damn thing.

My bad.
Posted by: cogzoid on April 15 2008,13:58

Has anyone posted a link to the version in Expelled?  Wasn't it in a youtube trailer?  I gave up searching, because I can only take 3 minutes of Ben Stein's voice at a time.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 15 2008,15:02

I suspect most of you live in a community where some fool has written to the local paper, telling everyone to go see Expelled. That is the case for my local paper, and their website also has a place for comments, as well as a forum where readers can introduce questions for discussion. If that is the case where you live, you need to sign in there and post a message about the movie, linking the ExpelledExposed website.

And if you link it to the actual word "expelled", like this

<a href="http://expelledexposed.com/"><i>Expelled</i></a>

it will help the ExpelledExposed website creep up the rankings so that it will be on the first page of google hits for folks who are searching "expelled".

So get busy and do your part in the culture war!
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 15 2008,15:36

Thunderf00t rips Ben Stein a new one in this YouTube video:


< Why do People Laugh at Creationists Part 22 >
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 15 2008,16:01

Better: <a href="http:/expelledexposed.org">Expelled</a> <a href="http:/expelledexposed.org">Exposed</a>
Posted by: Kristine on April 15 2008,16:23

Quote (ERV @ April 15 2008,10:42)
 
Quote (charlie d @ April 15 2008,10:42)
   
Quote (Assassinator @ April 15 2008,10:36)
Did biologists in general even worked on Expelled?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not sure what you mean.  Sternberg and Crocker are biologists of course, although I don't know if they had any role in the movie other than being interviewed while looking soulful and aggrieved.  But IIRC Kevin Miller claimed at one point that they had a "team of cell biologists" hard at work on the animations, so there must be at least 2.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He also made that statement before Billy D screamed 'LEEEEEROOOOOY JENKINS!' and admitted they just stole the fucking thing.

Any references to 'cell biologist(s)' were a lie.  OOOH LOOK!  A LYING FUNDIE CHRISTIAN!  Ooooh put that man in a museum-- hes rare, that Kevin.

Piece of shit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kent [Hovind], Ken [Ham], Kevin [Miller]…

Kennektion? :p

Kenspiracy? :)
Posted by: Shirley Knott on April 15 2008,16:26

and to think that 'ken' used to be a verb meaning 'know'.

sigh.

Shirley Knott
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 15 2008,17:03

Press Release RE the animation:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/expelle....imation >


and they've 404ed it. Did anyone grab it?
Posted by: ERV on April 15 2008,17:51

Peter got it.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 15 2008,17:55

Quote (ERV @ April 15 2008,17:51)
Peter got it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice!
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 15 2008,17:55

Quote (ERV @ April 15 2008,18:51)
Peter got it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Make sure Reciprocating Bill gets it for the archive.
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 15 2008,18:34

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 15 2008,17:55)
Quote (ERV @ April 15 2008,18:51)
Peter got it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Make sure Reciprocating Bill gets it for the archive.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They've just put it back up.
Posted by: ERV on April 15 2008,18:36

< I finally got angry. >
Posted by: cogzoid on April 15 2008,18:37

Just in case, here's what it read the first time around:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EXPELLED Producers respond to Dawkins, Bolinsky, XVIVO, etc. regarding copyright of its animation
William Dembski

The following statement is from the Executive Producers of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.

   Since we began working on this very interesting project, the producers have been the subject of any number of groundless accusations, most of which we found amusing. The vast majority of these accusations we chose to ignore given that agitation is typical with any provocative documentary. We also recognized that as the film took form, it would specifically disturb a vocal minority of academic elites, and tread on what some people involved with science and academia consider sacred ground. We therefore expected a high level of criticism against the film from this particular group, who view themselves as self appointed gatekeepers. We accepted in good humor many of the crazy insinuations that they made as part of the cost of pursuing our project.

   However, the latest claim concerning the copyright status of our proprietary animation is so ridiculous, bogus and misinformed that we must respond. Premise Media invested significant time and money into the research and original creation of the animation used in our film to illustrate cellular activity. Our own team of experts created the highest quality of animation that is available. In fact, the animation we use in the theatrical release of our movie is only a small portion of the animation we have created and plan to use in future projects.

   Concerning the intriguing smear campaign being carried on by long term activists on one side of the evolution controversy, we are completely confident of the validity of our copyright on our originally created animation. We can assure any opponents of free speech that the rights granted in the United States Constitution are extraordinarily strong, and most especially strong related to protecting film productions.

   We look forward to ordinary Americans from a broad range of backgrounds seeing our film.

   The Executive Producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

   **********************************

   Following the discovery of the kinesin in the late 1980s there were investigations into the locomotion method used for propulsion giving two models with one being an “inch worm” model and the other being the “hand over hand” model. We illustrate the hand over hand mechanism in the transport of a vesicle.

   A variety of papers, micrographs, illustrations and animations with depictions of the cellular transport system of kinesin were used and are freely available on the internet. We invite you to learn more about this incredible little transport engine through the following links:

   http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/december10/kinesinproof-1210.html
   http://www.stanford.edu/group/blocklab/kinesin.html
   http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bpa/reports_bmm.html
   http://www.umich.edu/news/MT/04/Fall04/story.html?molecular
   http://www.esi-topics.com/nhp/2006/july-06-NobutakaHirokawa.html
   http://bioweb.bio.uci.edu/sgross/NaturesNanotech.htm
   http://www.goldmanlab.northwestern.edu/images/iftransportcartoon.gif
   http://www.goldmanlab.northwestern.edu/intro.htm


This entry was posted Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Expelled. You can leave a response[HA!], or trackback from your own site.
Posted by: ERV on April 15 2008,18:42

That kinesin shit is bullshit to first year grad students all over the country.

We fought over that shit for a couple of weeks last fall.  "Hand over hand" blah blah blah is the tip of a huge iceberg.  That excuse is pure fucking shit and their little letter has done nothing but enrage XVIVO and Harvard.

I will have a post on kinesin just like I had one on actin some time soon.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 15 2008,18:59

ERV you are way basalt.

What about < Dave Tard >.  Jesus he is myopically retarded.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Do we need to know whether or not the mountains of Rushmore were designed or not in order to reach a design inference for the faces carved into them? No. Only the difference in specified complexity between the old and new patterns need be examined.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In a nutshell, this proves the vacuity of specified complexity (again, o noews) and also simultaneously (take that schroders piano) that DaveTard is mandlebrottedly stupid.  

please philosophers of science take note that this is the state of the art in cutting edge design research.  

in biology some have attempted to deal with the very real problem that there are no theory-independent observations.  others, like this poor poor dumb poor bastard, have spewed out observation-independent theories.  what a fuckface.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 15 2008,19:52

Here's the official Expelled Paternity Test. Who's your daddy?

< >
Posted by: BWE on April 15 2008,19:56

Pretty pictures Midwife,

I'd like Option J with a side of relish?
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 15 2008,20:03

Quote (BWE @ April 15 2008,19:56)
Pretty pictures Midwife,

I'd like Option J with a side of relish?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Damn, and it was supposed to be a hard test.
Posted by: BWE on April 15 2008,20:15

It probably was. I always choose the last option. :)
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 15 2008,20:23

Two words of the week!

Manufactroversy.

Mandelbrottedly stupid.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.  I'll use them often.

How about a Mandelbrottedly stupid manufactroversy?  Describes Expelled to a t.
Posted by: Aesahaettr on April 15 2008,21:33

I was leaning towards D, 'cause they're both brown. ;)
Posted by: Quidam on April 15 2008,22:02

I wonder how the < Expelled > producers presented the movie concept to the music copyright owners

< Yoko Ono Sells Out John Lennon To Creationist Manufactroversy. >

Or maybe they didn't?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 15 2008,22:42

Quote (Aesahaettr @ April 15 2008,21:33)
I was leaning towards D, 'cause they're both brown. ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In FtK world, all the answers are right.
Posted by: sparc on April 15 2008,22:43

I wonder why UD doesn't mention the work of
< Jed Macosko > who apparentenly is < affiliated with the DI >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dembski is known to all, Jed Macosko perhaps not so. Macosko holds the PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley, and in his portion of the introduction he recounts living in Johnson's basement for a period while in grad school. He is an ISCID fellow, and was a DI/CSC fellow between 2001 and 2003. He is currently an assistant professor (of biophysics) at Wake Forest University. Unlike most ID supporters, he seems to actually publish peer-reviewed scientific research, though none of it appears to offer a theory of intelligent design or any explicit discussion of design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He actually has a kinesin picture on his site:


Another depiction of kinesin prepared by his students for educational purposes is < this one >


but I am pretty sure that this was not the basis of Premise Media's animation.

Maybe Macosko just doesn't want to loose his reputation and thus stays out of the discussion.
Posted by: didymos on April 15 2008,23:18

Here're some great examples of how differently some of the same processes and structures can be animated depending on what the animator chooses to focus on:

< Translation and Intracellular Functions >

< Transcription >
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 15 2008,23:41

sparc that is a good find.  never heard of that one.

you know the ultimate reductionism behind 'design thinking' seems to fit right into that biophysical biology stuff that Macosko is doing.  I know nothing about it, and probably never will.  It is interesting.  But when liars claim that an understanding (or belief or acceptance of evolution is irrelevant to understanding biology, i can imagine that they think of some of the examples on Macosko's page.  

cells = machines.  tasks therefore are determine how machines function, using teleology imported from machine analogy.  

i'm not so sure that it's a good analogy (seems to be a category error to me, but I am skeptical about realism in general), but it sure as hell ain't a good teleology.  leads to the mechanical determinism that i found unrealistic in Selfish Gene etc.
Posted by: caerbannog on April 16 2008,01:39

Hilarious tin-foil hattery at < http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/58628 >

For example, David Klinghoffer, writing for Townhall Magazine on February 26, 2008, reveals the following true story:

A biologist I know recently bleached his hair and changed his appearance in other ways so as to be almost unrecognizable. I'm being deliberately vague about his looks and identity because he was going undercover. When I last saw him, he was ready for a stint of researching and lab work on intelligent design at a university that he declined to name. On returning to the lab after winter break, he said he would adopt a different disguise?.

The purpose is to avoid being spotted by scientists hostile to intelligent design (ID). If Darwinists realized that this stealthy biologist was working in their midst, as the guest of a professor at the same university, they could make that host professor pay a heavy career price.


What's next? Groucho glasses?  Har Har Har!
Posted by: didymos on April 16 2008,01:55

Sorry about the double post.  For some reason, it didn't appear immediately. I waited a couple minutes, tried again, at which point I figured it must be a glitch in the matrix or something.
Posted by: Annyday on April 16 2008,01:58

Um. I dunno about everyone else, but I'm in the habit of identifying professors and researchers by their names, positions, and publication records, not their faces. Bleaching your hair is about as effective as ... yeah, groucho glasses.
Posted by: paragwinn on April 16 2008,02:05

Quote (Kristine @ April 15 2008,16:23)
Quote (ERV @ April 15 2008,10:42)
   
Quote (charlie d @ April 15 2008,10:42)
     
Quote (Assassinator @ April 15 2008,10:36)
Did biologists in general even worked on Expelled?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not sure what you mean.  Sternberg and Crocker are biologists of course, although I don't know if they had any role in the movie other than being interviewed while looking soulful and aggrieved.  But IIRC Kevin Miller claimed at one point that they had a "team of cell biologists" hard at work on the animations, so there must be at least 2.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He also made that statement before Billy D screamed 'LEEEEEROOOOOY JENKINS!' and admitted they just stole the fucking thing.

Any references to 'cell biologist(s)' were a lie.  OOOH LOOK!  A LYING FUNDIE CHRISTIAN!  Ooooh put that man in a museum-- hes rare, that Kevin.

Piece of shit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kent [Hovind], Ken [Ham], Kevin [Miller]…

Kennektion? :p

Kenspiracy? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What Kenspiration!  
A lack of Kentegrity on Miller's part?

Can Dembski's Kexplanatory Filter account for Premise Media's Kenvoluted defenses against plagiarism or for their pre-Kemptive 'LEEEEEROOOOOY JENKINS!'-style lawsuit against XVIVO? Stay tuned for next week's Kepisode.
Posted by: Cheezits on April 16 2008,06:24

Quote (Doc Bill @ April 15 2008,21:23)
Mandelbrottedly stupid.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Eek!  Leave Mandelbrot out of this!  I'm pretty sure he's no creationist.  
Posted by: Zachriel on April 16 2008,09:02

Proving copyright infringement can be difficult. A court will tend not to enforce the claim without something more than mere resemblance, but typically require a striking similarity. And the plantiffs have to prove that these similarities are due to actual copying rather than a result of the underlying process being independently depicted. Angles and scales of depiction are certainly evidence of this (and derivative works are clearly protected).

But, there may also be a type of watermark. For instance, if particular objects have specific movements (e.g. jiggles) that are identical in both depictions, but are not due to a correlation of the underlying process, then that would be evidence of copying.

I'm sure this is something the original animator would immediately recognize.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 16 2008,09:26

[QUOTE][/For instance, if particular objects have specific movements (e.g. jiggles) that are identical in both depictions, but are not due to a correlation of the underlying process, then that would be evidence of copying.
QUOTE]

That kind of thing is exactly the basis of XVIVO's cease and desist.
Posted by: ERV on April 16 2008,10:22

Quote (Zachriel @ April 16 2008,09:02)
Proving copyright infringement can be difficult. A court will tend not to enforce the claim without something more than mere resemblance, but typically require a striking similarity. And the plantiffs have to prove that these similarities are due to actual copying rather than a result of the underlying process being independently depicted. Angles and scales of depiction are certainly evidence of this (and derivative works are clearly protected).

But, there may also be a type of watermark. For instance, if particular objects have specific movements (e.g. jiggles) that are identical in both depictions, but are not due to a correlation of the underlying process, then that would be evidence of copying.

I'm sure this is something the original animator would immediately recognize.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not just the animator.  Ive found at least a dozen such examples, and I didnt make 'Inner Life'.  I just actually pay attention in class, even when profs are blithering about shit that has nothing to do with HIV.

I dont think you all realize how 'artistically rendered' that kinesin bopping along is.  I dont even think old school scientists realize how bad it is-- We read lots of recent papers on kinesin last fall in class.  There is no way under god that EXPELLED 'independently' made that same kinesin, same camera angles, same bopping, in a fraction of the time it took XVIVO (which was using 3 year old data).

I was going to write more about these (ie my actin post), but since EXPELLED is suing XVIVO (Premise Media, mind you, not their so called 'animation studio' which would be most damaged by false allegations of plagiarism-- Premise Media.) Im keeping my mouth shut.  Lets just say that their Google list of 'resources' on kinesin made my classmates and I LOL.

I wonder if thats how Premise people think scientists do research?  Not PubMed-- 'Google'...  Jesus fuck.

Actually, Premise Media doesnt need to file any lawsuit.

All they need to do is show everyone the animation they used at their December 9th preview.  If 'Inner Life' is there, they are fucked.  If the Frankenstein 'Inner Life' is there, they should have all their data to back up their claims.

What was shown December 9, 2007?
Posted by: Quidam on April 16 2008,10:51

< Mathis seems confused > as to what animation is going to be shown in the final cut

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
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.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I think those promo DVD's are going to be very important to XVIVIO.  Since they were what XVIIO's letter was based on, if the final cut has changed once more, the DVD's will show the cdesign proponentist fossil record as it evolved.  Somewhere there exists a cut with the unaltered XVIVIO animation just waiting to be found.

Premise's retaliatory lawsuit would have to be based on the prerelease DVD not the final cut, since that was the best information XVIVIO had.  Also if they violated copyright on the promo DVD - it's still copyright violation for commercial gain.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 16 2008,11:34

Another review:

< http://www.floridabaptistwitness.com/8690.article >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...Courtney Tarter, a master of divinity student from Minneapolis, Minn., said the movie helped her to understand more clearly the arguments made by evolutionists and reminded her of the importance of being able to engage cultural issues biblically.

“My initial impression of the movie was sadness, especially when I heard Richard Dawkins talk about the ignorance of those who believe in Intelligent Design and Christianity,” Tarter said. “It made me realize that the god of this world really has blinded the minds of people to think that God is only for the ignorant. It gave me a greater desire to see people come to Christ and to know the God who created them.

“I thought that it was a very engaging movie, which I think will draw people in regardless of their belief on creation. It also made me realize that, as Christians, it is so important for us to know the arguments, to engage with those opposed to us, but most importantly to know and believe our Bibles.”


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So the message is clearly to thump thine bible harder.

This is a film by tards for tards.

Edited to and:

Just to recap, "the god of this world really has blinded the minds of people to think that God is only for the ignorant" - Then he's going to make them burn forever, because he is after all, Love.

She going to have a masters in divinity. Woo Hoo!
Posted by: ReligionProf on April 16 2008,11:36

I finally managed to photoshop my own version of the Stein graphic, which I've posted at < http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008....ed.html >

It doesn't want to post the image in the message, so I guess you'll have to go there to look. Feel free to share the image freely (giving credit where credit is due, of course).
Posted by: J-Dog on April 16 2008,12:11

This Just In:

An email addressed to "Friends Of Expelled" begging for help against the Evil Darwinists.

I guess we could all hold a vigil and stay online, hold virtual hands and sing inspirational songs before this blog and Sci-Blog close down permanently on April 19.

Either that or toast marshmallow on the coals of our Last Church Burnings.  Damn it's been so much fun too.

< http://by125w.bay125.mail.live.com/mail....9954878 >
Posted by: Moses on April 16 2008,12:26

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 05 2008,01:35)
By your logic, it was right for Galileo to be persecuted for his views, because the overwhelming majority of astronomers were certain that geocentrism was right and heliocentrism was wrong. The evidence was just so overwhelmingly obvious.  The same goes for virtually any other scientist that revolutionized his discipline.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So are you saying the Catholics are going to persecute Intelligent Design?  Because that's who persecuted Galileo.

Or are you just another "Liar For Christ" who pulls stupid crap out of his ass every time he's challenged?
Posted by: uriel on April 16 2008,12:41

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 16 2008,11:34)
Edited to and:

Just to recap, "the god of this world really has blinded the minds of people to think that God is only for the ignorant" - Then he's going to make them burn forever, because he is after all, Love.

She going to have a masters in divinity. Woo Hoo!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, just to point out- in the vernacular of people like Ms. Taylor, "The God of this world" isn't the big guy upstairs. It's his opposite number. The one with the pointy, pointy horns and the well trimmed goatee. Mwwwwwhahahaha, and all that.

So, whole she is breathlessly inane, she is still being consistent in her crazy.
Posted by: Jim_Wynne on April 16 2008,13:55

Quote (J-Dog @ April 16 2008,12:11)
This Just In:

An email addressed to "Friends Of Expelled" begging for help against the Evil Darwinists.

I guess we could all hold a vigil and stay online, hold virtual hands and sing inspirational songs before this blog and Sci-Blog close down permanently on April 19.

Either that or toast marshmallow on the coals of our Last Church Burnings.  Damn it's been so much fun too.

< http://by125w.bay125.mail.live.com/mail....9954878 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's the full text (I just received it too):


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dear Friend of Expelled,

They’ve become enraged over it…
They’ve told movie theaters to reject it…
They’ve hurled false accusations against it…
They’ve bashed it in the press…

BUT THEY COULD NOT SHUT IT DOWN…

The most controversial film of 2008
Ben Stein's “EXPELLED”
Opens on 1,000 movie screens this Friday, April 18!

Be there! We need your support!

Check HERE to see where EXPELLED is playing near you.

The EXPELLED controversy has catapulted to #1 most popular blog on the Internet (3/24/08) and #6 on Yahoo’s “Top Searches” (4/8/08), and driven 2,000,000 people to the movie website wondering,

“What is Ben Stein saying that has people so fired up?"

Ben Stein is being called both “an idiot” and “a genius”

Atheists are enraged by the movie, “crashing” EXPELLED screenings

Liberal movie critics are slamming EXPELLED, while leaders are raving

Organizations are urging theaters to reject the movie, while others are holding movie marathons for all Expelled showings at their theaters…
Ben Stein’s EXPELLED has struck a cultural NERVE as it exposes a modern day witch hunt in which scientists, educators and students are being persecuted because they dare to question Darwinism and argue that life may be the result of "intelligent design".

As Ben takes on the world's leading atheists, and their global agenda, the hilarious but sobering results make us realize, “It’s time to get involved!”

CLICK HERE to take a GROUP to see EXPELLED


Stand with Ben Stein and support academic freedom by seeing EXPELLED.


IN THEATERS FRIDAY, APRIL 18!

Please forward this email to friends and contacts!

Sincerely,

Paul Lauer
CEO, Motive Entertainment


WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING:

"I recommend EXPELLED enthusiastically!"
- James C. Dobson, Ph.D., Chairman of the Board, Focus on the Family


"Four stars!" - Ted Baehr, Editor, MovieGuide


“A powerful and riveting film… every open-minded person will love it.”
- Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, Founder & Chairman of American Family Association


"EXPELLED is an enormously important project."
- Michael Medved, national radio host


"We highly recommend EXPELLED to anybody."
- Ken Smitherman, President, Association of Christian Schools International


"SEE THIS FILM, bring your friends and bring your church."  
- Lee Strobel, Author, Case for a Creator


“See EXPELLED and you’ll understand why they want to censor those who question their dogmas.” - Dr. Richard Land, Southern Baptist Convention

“Those who are suppressing belief in God and trying to make materialism the law of the land should beware. Ben Stein is on a mission to stop the suppression, and millions of Americans are behind him."
- Pat Robertson, Host, 700 Club

"In EXPELLED, Ben Stein shows us what happens when academic freedom takes a day off. We should all be listening."
- Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus

"EXPELLED is both an eye-opening documentary and riotous entertainment."  - Joseph Farah, CEO, WorldNetDaily.com


"This movie may trigger a cultural revolution."
- Dennis Wagner, Executive Director, Access Research Network


"EXPELLED could easily be one of the most important movies of the year."
- Denny Rydberg, President, Young Life


"EXPELLED is earthshaking. I was absolutely blown away. Everyone in America, even skeptics of Intelligent Design, must see this film."
- J. Matt Barber, Director for Cultural Issues, Concerned Women for America


"A cultural earthquake... Everyone I talked to after the screening used words like 'fabulous' and 'incredible'." - Dr. Tom Woodward, Director, C.S. Lewis Society


"A solid case for giving the theory of Intelligent Design a respected place in the classroom alongside Darwin's theory of Evolution."
- Dick Rolfe, Co-Founder and CEO, The Dove Foundation

CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING FOR MORE INFO:

THEATER LOCATOR

GET EXPELLED MOVIE RESOURCE WEBSITE

OFFICIAL MOVIE WEBSITE

SEE WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT EXPELLED

BECOME OUR MYSPACE FRIEND

EXPELLED NEWS

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE EXPELLED UPDATES
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All science so far!!1
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 16 2008,13:59

Quote (J-Dog @ April 16 2008,10:11)
This Just In:

An email addressed to "Friends Of Expelled" begging for help against the Evil Darwinists.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry, I saw nothing at your link.

Edited to add: Thanks Jim.

That is some primo tard.


Posted by: godsilove on April 16 2008,14:49

Yet another Expelled animation, in which the Kinesin molecule is different from the Frankenstein version:

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Abz0t_yf4&feature=related >
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 16 2008,14:52

Midwifetoad's most excellent < Paternity Test > has been picked up at < PT. >  Which is somehow apt.
Posted by: Kristine on April 16 2008,15:10

Quote (Jim_Wynne @ April 16 2008,12:55)
   
Quote (J-Dog @ April 16 2008,12:11)
This Just In:

An email addressed to "Friends Of Expelled" begging for help against the Evil Darwinists.

I guess we could all hold a vigil and stay online, hold virtual hands and sing inspirational songs before this blog and Sci-Blog close down permanently on April 19.

Either that or toast marshmallow on the coals of our Last Church Burnings.  Damn it's been so much fun too.

< http://by125w.bay125.mail.live.com/mail....9954878 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's the full text (I just received it too):
   *snip*

All science so far!!1
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gee, I never thought I'd say this, but too bad Jerry Falwell died. Then he could dish up a big heap of praise for this faux shimmy-shamboree, too.

Although, then Ben not-an-ein-Stein most likely would not have asked the Disco Boys if they "got any money from Jerry Falwell," of course, steering clear of the Christian MacLellan Foundation, etc.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 16 2008,15:34

OOOH. I'm 'inspired' by TEH WITCH.


wait for it...
wait for it..



BEN NEIN! STEIN© Tardwurks animations 2008
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 16 2008,15:34

jerry ain't gone nowhere.  As Carter and Ralph mentioned,



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mothers not dead, she's only a-sleepin
Patiently waiting, for Jesus to call
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I presume this hymn also applies to Herr Falwell.  I bet that sombitch is still rotting.  Imagine just how many pounds of preservatives were entombed in the Adipose Mountains that was his neck roll alone.

ETA I will not, post SHF, enjoy eating these obese fuckers.  It seems to me that if we can keep them around long enough to trim them down a bit that they will be much better table fare.  That is, if you can stand the shrill sound of their oinking in a cage.  Fuck the brass knuckles and storm trooper boots, I say we break out the ketchup!!!
Posted by: BCtheEra on April 16 2008,15:36



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"EXPELLED is earthshaking. I was absolutely blown away. Everyone in America, even skeptics of Intelligent Design, must see this film."
- J. Matt Barber, Director for Cultural Issues, Concerned Women for America
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I believe Mr. Barber's occupation is listed incorrectly.  I think it should read:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
J. Matt Barber, Director for Cultural Issues, Concerned Misogynists of America
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 16 2008,15:37

neinstein.

god damn you are one of my favorite tard watchers.  if only you weren't sooooooooooooooo gay.

-sniffs-
-tosses hair-
-rolls eyes-
-squelches queef-
-votes for Ron Paul-
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 16 2008,15:38

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 16 2008,15:37)
neinstein.

god damn you are one of my favorite tard watchers.  if only you weren't sooooooooooooooo gay.

-sniffs-
-tosses hair-
-rolls eyes-
-squelches queef-
-votes for Ron Paul-
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm only gay when I kiss you, Rasser.




Oh, buy my book!
Posted by: bfish on April 16 2008,16:37

Yesterday I listened to the Mark Mathis roundtable discussion on the SciAm site. All I can say is.....ugh.

Anyway, April 18 is getting awfully close now, isn't it? My local movie house even has their show times up. Sure enough, "Expelled" is opening on Friday, and even has matinee showings. Interestingly, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is opening at the same theater, with almost identical showtimes. Hmmm....

* strokes beard thoughtfully*
Posted by: ERV on April 16 2008,16:56

There is no reason to go to EXPELLED now, at least for me.  I was planning on going to check out the animation, but they removed XVIOVs stuff, so I dont care anymore.

Glad that came out before Friday!  Saved me $10 and a 20-30 minute drive!

godsilove, you rock!
Posted by: BWE on April 16 2008,17:17

< This Youtube vid > made me laugh. They keep using this word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

Or, in gutter parlance, own goal.
Posted by: bfish on April 16 2008,17:39

Quote (ERV @ April 16 2008,14:56)
There is no reason to go to EXPELLED now, at least for me.  I was planning on going to check out the animation, but they removed XVIOVs stuff, so I dont care anymore.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I was talking about seeing "Sarah Marshall." Except - I'm not sure there are enough Nazis in it to satisfy my taste.

Actually, I am curious to see Expelled fairly early in it's run. I'm interested in mingling with the folks who might show up on the first day...hear what they have to say about it. I can't really talk to my fundamentalist brother about these things, so the audience can be a sort of proxy for what he might be thinking. Or maybe his family will see it too, and then we can talk about that.

More likely I'll be at the microscope all day, but who knows.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 16 2008,18:20

Quote (ERV @ April 16 2008,14:56)
I was planning on going to check out the animation, but they removed XVIOVs stuff, so I dont care anymore.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are we sure?

Besides, I am going to pass out cards saying;

The movie you have just watched, Expelled, contains little actual fact and many misrepresentations and outright lies. For the actual evidence, visit

< http://www.expelledexposed.com >
Posted by: don_quixote on April 16 2008,18:21

In their list of favourable quotes, they forgot:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

"Waterlooooooooooooooo!!!!"
- William Dumbski, the Trofim Lysenko of ID


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Jkrebs on April 16 2008,18:44

Someone just posted on the KCFS Discussion Forum that all the staff at his school (in the Kansas City area) received the following email from the Intelligent Design Network today.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ATTENTION Teachers, Principals, School Officials & Support Staff,

This Friday, April 18th, is FREEDOM FRIDAY!

You will no longer have to live in fear of the Darwinian Thought Police and their power to ruin your career! They are about to be 'publicly exposed' by the new documentary movie, "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed"!

"EXPELLED," starring Ben Stein, is opening in 1,000 theaters nationwide. Smart students and their parents can't wait to see it! They have all heard the Darwinists' side in the debate over origins. Now they will determine if the Darwinists have acted properly by censoring the scientific data and evidence from students, teachers and parents that opposes Darwinian evolution and points to the reality of God!

Have you ever wondered about the scientific validity of the major proofs of evolution?

Have you ever wondered what the controversy over the teaching of origins science is really about?

Have you wondered why Darwinists will not allow origins science to be taught objectively?

Have you wondered if scientists have found evidence for God?

Have you ever fully understood why you have this fear of mentioning God in the classroom?

If your answer to any of these questions is 'yes', then this earth-shattering documentary will open your eyes to the cover-up of the century!

Students, teachers, and parents will now see and hear the other side of the story as they view "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed". They will begin to draw new conclusions for themselves about the "thought police" as well as the most important question they will ever try to answer: Where did I come from?

Make plans now to SEE THIS MOVIE. You can be sure that your students will!

Check it out at: www.expelledthemovie.com

YOU ARE ALSO INVITED TO ATTEND!!~ a Conference in Overland Park, KS, on Saturday, April 19 * * "Darwin, Design, & Democracy VII" * *

At the conference you will meet a professor who is in the movie and was "expelled" for trying to present students with scientific data and evidence that opposed Darwinism. For more details please open the attached flyer, or go to: www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org

Thanks for taking time from your busy schedule to become more informed as to why teaching origins science OBJECTIVELY is critical for good [end chopped off.]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Note the line "opposes Darwinian evolution and points to the reality of God!"

It seems like they have abandoned entirely any effort to pretend that they can get by separation of church and state issues.

What a bunch of appalling propaganda.  I do, however, think that the more over-the-top they are (Freedom Friday, Darwinian Thought Police, cover-up of the century) the more obvious it will be to even those somewhat sympathetic that they have overplayed their hand (such as it is.)
Posted by: Kristine on April 16 2008,19:16

Well, I cannot believe that they had the nerve to send me that e-mail that you're all getting, considering that I

1. did not give my snail mail address on the so-called "agreement form" (which should have alerted them that something is up)
2. was seen talking with PZ right as he was expelled
3. and my name is all over the blogosphere as an "enemy" of the film and as the person who sent the link to "gate crasher" PZ in the goddamned first place

Honestly! "Atheists!" "Liberal art critics!" Etc.! We are supposed to read URLs before responding, to make sure that it doesn't have the word "private" in the link? But they can't look at an e-mail and think, "Hey, it's a school, maybe we shouldn't spam her? Maybe that is unethical and also makes us look bad?

Spam violates my school's internet ethics policy and I just told them so. I also told them not to use my school's e-mail to promote hatred. I informed them that I, taking a clue from the film's purported theme, felt free to disagree with the film and that the fact of my attendance should not automatically constitute agreement - a charge that they launch against others.

Just sickening, these people.  :angry:
Posted by: didymos on April 16 2008,20:28

What DaveScot says about the Premise campaign in < Hilarious Expelled Advertisement on The Science Channel >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Premise is doing a GREAT job with this. Anyone who thinks they’re incompetents is in a state of denial.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What he should be saying:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Ow, Ow, son of a bitch, someone get this fucking Giant Redwood out of my eye!!! My Stein, my Stein, why hast thou forsaken me? Giveth me some Clear Eyes!!!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on April 16 2008,20:39

DaveScot blats:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I saw a shot of Ben Stein walking out of a science classroom and going down the hall to sit on a bench outside the principle’s office. Another “kid” was sitting there too. The other kids says to Stein “So what did YOU do wrong?” [Actually the line is, "So what are you here for?" Freudian slip, DaveScot?] Stein deadpans “I made a movie”.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stein made a bowel movie.
Posted by: Quidam on April 16 2008,20:49

It also seems likely that the music played in the pre-release showings and DVD were not liciensed either
< http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2008....ly.html >

However given recent events I rather think that the final release will have elevator musak instead of Lennon and the Killers

I wonder if the Michael Edmondson witness protection and internet cleansing thing is because they are not using his animation any more.
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 16 2008,21:25

Yoko Ono's lawyer has officially said that < Expelled > did not have the right to use John Lennon's Imagine.

Even if they take it out of the final release, they had it in the promotional releases - promotional releases are a form of advertising and I really don't see how the hell Expelled is going to slime their way out of this one.

"Ms. Ono's lawyer, Jonas Herbsman, of Shukat, Arrow, Hafer, Weber & Herbsman, said in an interview Wednesday: "It was not licensed." With respect to the filmmakers, he says: "We are exploring all options." It is not clear what remedies if any may be available to Ms. Ono.

In a written statement, the film's three producers -- Walt Ruloff, John Sullivan and Logan Craft -- acknowledged that they did not seek permission, but they called the use "momentary." "After seeking the opinion of legal counsel it was seen as a First Amendment issue and protected under the fair use doctrine of free speech," the statement said. A spokeswoman said under 25 seconds of the song are used in the movie."

< Full Story >

So their official story is "We only used less than 25 seconds and we swear we were going to take it out!"

I have heard of a 'less-than-15-seconds' rule for radio bumper music, but this seems a little stretchy and I'd love to see a judge's opinion on the matter.

These expelled guys are more sketchy than a police artist.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 16 2008,21:31

Yeah man Yoko is pissed!

And I heard the Expelled radio ad today.  Dumbshits quoted Michael Medgood.  Um, it's Medved, you dorks.  Those morons don't even know the names of the people on their side.

IDiots.
Posted by: Kristine on April 16 2008,21:59

I think this person < is joking >, but a blogger claims that this whole flap/flop was carefully orchestrated to make intelligent design look bad!  :D

No, I don't believe that - they're just such incompetent fuckwits that this disarry is their just desserts.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Fast forward to last night, when our suspicions were confirmed. On the way into the screening, my bag was searched and a security guard frisked me with one of those squealy wands they use to find weapons on people at airports. Now I don't remember the last time someone hijacked a movie theater, so what are they hiding in there?

In we went to find out, and we weren't disappointed. Throughout the movie the intrepid Ben Stein (the movie's hero and narrator) keeps reappearing at a lectern, looking like George W. Bush, talking about 'freedom' this and 'freedom' that. An audience sits rapt before him, reminiscent of the Whitehouse press corps. Clearly, this is a thinly veiled attempt to equate Ben Stein's credibility on science issues with those of W himself. As if to drive home the point, snippets of Ronald Reagan's speeches are spliced in as well, again yammering on about 'freedom.'

Other points only serve to harden the case for conspiracy. Consider:

Fact: when someone asked during the Q&A session "So who did finance this movie?" Premise Media's marketing director, George Lange responded, "I don't know...certainly not George Soros." Oh really? Why was Soros, a famously liberal billionaire on the tip of Lange's tongue?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Of course we don't have any evidence that Walt Ruloff funding this film with help from Al Qaeda. ;) What are birdbrains? < "We just don't know!" >
Posted by: didymos on April 16 2008,22:23

Ooh, fun.  Kevin Miller helpfully points out the long version of that oh so funny commercial on YouTube.  It has nifty video of microtubules being peeled apart that I swear I've seen somewhere before:



(edited 11/4/2008: New Image Host)
Posted by: didymos on April 16 2008,22:26

Gack. Sorry.  Here's the commercial:

< crap >
Posted by: Quidam on April 16 2008,22:36

All we need are for XVIVIO, Harvard, Yoko Ono and The Killers to pool funds and show them why you get expelled for stealing.

This is no casual oversight.  They have said that they think fair use covers using a 25 second music clip in an advert - I rather think there are some well financed musicians who would disagree.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 16 2008,23:16

And Dembski was prattling on about the legal savvy of these cats.
Posted by: Quidam on April 16 2008,23:40

They are obviously thinking 5 moves ahead.  Just think of the free publicity as they get from three Waterloos


Make that two - it seems they did license the Killers


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Bloggers also questioned whether another popular rock group, the Killers, had given permission for the inclusion in the film of one of their songs, "All These Things That I've Done." A spokesman for Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, which owns the band's record label and music publisher, said licenses had been issued.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: paragwinn on April 17 2008,03:02

Is anyone else having extreme difficulty tearing their eyes away from this slow-motion train wreck led by the < Ben Stein Express >?
It's like watching the Bizarro-world version of The Mothman Prophecies except, rather than getting phone calls, I get ambushed by those nauseating commercials.

Must.Switch.Off.TV...
Posted by: Louis on April 17 2008,04:30

I know it's been mentioned before, but the IDCists have utterly given up any pretence that IDC is scientific. They are touting its religious nature simply to make bucks. This has, yet again, exposed the IDC movement as a) a pious fraud designed to fleece the flock of the faithful, and b) a finger on the hand that is flicking the badly perforated chad on the corruptly counted ballot in order to get as close to a theocracy as the appeasers will allow.

They've basically abandoned their more obvious lie, and are plumbing the tard mines of "Wot a fwend we have in JJEEEEEEEEEEZIS" for all they are worth. It's only a few stragglers and dishonest fucks like FTK that haven't woken up to how hard they are being rammed on this issue by its proponents.

Pathetic.

Louis
Posted by: didymos on April 17 2008,04:39

Wow.  Shermer really pissed off Luskin.  There's a two-part denunciation on the DI "blog":


< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008....ta.html >

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008...._1.html >
Posted by: bystander on April 17 2008,04:57

Quote (didymos @ April 17 2008,21:39)
Wow.  Shermer really pissed off Luskin.  There's a two-part denunciation on the DI "blog":


< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008....ta.html >

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008...._1.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Must have melted their site. I can't connect.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 17 2008,05:22

< Expelled > < Exposed > needs to be spread everywhere, now that it's up and running.

Kate even took one for the team and gave up her spot in my sig.
Posted by: didymos on April 17 2008,06:05

Quote (bystander @ April 17 2008,02:57)
Must have melted their site. I can't connect.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No such luck.  The LORD of Tubes has granted them a reprieve.
Posted by: ERV on April 17 2008,07:19

Quote (didymos @ April 16 2008,22:26)
Gack. Sorry.  Here's the commercial:

< crap >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Excuse me, but < lest we forget, >WAD completely agrees with Dawkins-- that a Designer is just as likely as hobgoblins or 'gremlins', if you will.
Posted by: didymos on April 17 2008,08:04

Quote (ERV @ April 17 2008,05:19)
 
Quote (didymos @ April 16 2008,22:26)
Gack. Sorry.  Here's the commercial:

< crap >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Excuse me, but < lest we forget, >WAD completely agrees with Dawkins-- that a Designer is just as likely as hobgoblins or 'gremlins', if you will.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I hadn't read that entry yet.  Lo and behold, the first word of the first comment is....gack.

You think we could ask Dembski do to a "Bayesian sort of thing" and give us the odds on that?  I'm pretty sure it proves the Ecumenically Acceptable Designer is teh realz.
Posted by: ReligionProf on April 17 2008,08:16

Looks like I might have to change that image slightly...


Posted by: improvius on April 17 2008,08:57

< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 17 2008,09:03

Looks like somebody broke the template at < Expelled > < Exposed >.

Anybody here that can get someone's attention on it pronto?


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 17 2008,09:15

I've sent email to Carrie. Unless she arrives early for work, though, it will be a couple of hours before she gets that.

That problem, not loading the CSS style sheet, sometimes happens when a server is bogged down, too. That's tough to fix if so.
Posted by: caerbannog on April 17 2008,09:17

Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,08:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


To put things into better perspective, the official Tomatometer rating for Howard the Duck (one of the all-time stinkaroos) is 19.

Ishtar, another famous Hollywood turkey, also clocks in at 19 on the Tomatometer.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 17 2008,09:49

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 17 2008,10:15)
I've sent email to Carrie. Unless she arrives early for work, though, it will be a couple of hours before she gets that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Okee Doke.

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 17 2008,10:15)
That problem, not loading the CSS style sheet, sometimes happens when a server is bogged down, too. That's tough to fix if so.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I just checked, and they're coming up 8th on a google search both for "expelled" and "expelled movie", so maybe it's a server load thing.
Posted by: didymos on April 17 2008,09:56

Yeah, that new cell animation?  Not so different, only yet more shitlike:


(edited 11/4/2008: New Image Host)
Posted by: Annyday on April 17 2008,10:30

"If it's crappy enough, maybe they'll feel too sorry for us to sue."
Posted by: factician on April 17 2008,10:40

Quote (caerbannog @ April 17 2008,10:17)
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,08:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


To put things into better perspective, the official Tomatometer rating for Howard the Duck (one of the all-time stinkaroos) is 19.

Ishtar, another famous Hollywood turkey, also clocks in at 19 on the Tomatometer.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, but Super Mario Brothers is a 6%, so Expelled is apparently slightly better than that stinker.

< Bwa ha h ah hah haaa! >
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 17 2008,10:55

"lead animator, Joseph Condeelis; animation, Light Prods., Out of Our Mind Studios"

Condeelis heads Light Productions.  Their main products are religious films, and their demo reel is very weak in animation. "Out of Our Mind Studios" at least has won an animation award (New Hampshire, 2005).  The release running time is given as 88 min.s, down from the March 28 review copies at 97 min.s.


Posted by: Lou FCD on April 17 2008,11:47



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


   * EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed
   * Opens tomorrow, April 18, 2008 | Runtime: 1 hr. 30 min.
   *
     PG
     thematic material, some disturbing images and brief smoking
   * Ben Stein follows his journey around the globe where he discovers that scientists, educators and philosophers are being persecuted in a modern day witch hunt because they dare to go against the theory of evolution. These pillars of education are being fired, ridiculed and ostracized for merely challenging Darwin’s theory; proposing that life on this planet could be a part of some intelligent design and not random chance. This thought-provoking film not only forces us to question what we have been taught but challenges us to ask--What else is being kept from us?
   * Cast: Ben Stein
   * Director: Nathan Frankowski
   * Genres: Philosophy, Science & Technology, Biological Sciences, Culture & Society
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< At Fandango >

The icon for the trailer is a close-up head shot of Ben Stein.  It is indeed disturbing.  Smoking, not so much.

The clip shown on the page under the heading of critic reviews reads thus:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"...a flimsy attempt to discredit Darwinist theory as the cornerstone of modern biology..."  Variety Justin Chang
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: ReligionProf on April 17 2008,11:59

A < student of mine > has created a better image than I did: Yoko Ono as Kali standing on Ben Stein's chest:


Posted by: improvius on April 17 2008,12:13

Quote (ReligionProf @ April 17 2008,12:59)
A < student of mine > has created a better image than I did: Yoko Ono as Kali standing on Ben Stein's chest:[/img]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's actually not very appropriate in the greater context.  That's Shiva lying down there.  He's lying down in order to stop her murderous rampage, not because she's defeated him.

It does make a good visual at first glance, though.
Posted by: charlie d on April 17 2008,12:23

Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,12:13)
Quote (ReligionProf @ April 17 2008,12:59)
A < student of mine > has created a better image than I did: Yoko Ono as Kali standing on Ben Stein's chest:[/img]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's actually not very appropriate in the greater context.  That's Shiva lying down there.  He's lying down in order to stop her murderous rampage, not because she's defeated him.

It does make a good visual at first glance, though.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Great, that's all we needed here: a Mahabharata literalist.
Posted by: BWE on April 17 2008,12:26

Quote (Jkrebs @ April 16 2008,18:44)
Someone just posted on the KCFS Discussion Forum that all the staff at his school (in the Kansas City area) received the following email from the Intelligent Design Network today.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ATTENTION Teachers, Principals, School Officials & Support Staff,

This Friday, April 18th, is FREEDOM FRIDAY!

You will no longer have to live in fear of the Darwinian Thought Police and their power to ruin your career! They are about to be 'publicly exposed' by the new documentary movie, "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed"!

"EXPELLED," starring Ben Stein, is opening in 1,000 theaters nationwide. Smart students and their parents can't wait to see it! They have all heard the Darwinists' side in the debate over origins. Now they will determine if the Darwinists have acted properly by censoring the scientific data and evidence from students, teachers and parents that opposes Darwinian evolution and points to the reality of God!

Have you ever wondered about the scientific validity of the major proofs of evolution?

Have you ever wondered what the controversy over the teaching of origins science is really about?

Have you wondered why Darwinists will not allow origins science to be taught objectively?

Have you wondered if scientists have found evidence for God?

Have you ever fully understood why you have this fear of mentioning God in the classroom?

If your answer to any of these questions is 'yes', then this earth-shattering documentary will open your eyes to the cover-up of the century!

Students, teachers, and parents will now see and hear the other side of the story as they view "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed". They will begin to draw new conclusions for themselves about the "thought police" as well as the most important question they will ever try to answer: Where did I come from?

Make plans now to SEE THIS MOVIE. You can be sure that your students will!

Check it out at: www.expelledthemovie.com

YOU ARE ALSO INVITED TO ATTEND!!~ a Conference in Overland Park, KS, on Saturday, April 19 * * "Darwin, Design, & Democracy VII" * *

At the conference you will meet a professor who is in the movie and was "expelled" for trying to present students with scientific data and evidence that opposed Darwinism. For more details please open the attached flyer, or go to: www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org

Thanks for taking time from your busy schedule to become more informed as to why teaching origins science OBJECTIVELY is critical for good [end chopped off.]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Note the line "opposes Darwinian evolution and points to the reality of God!"

It seems like they have abandoned entirely any effort to pretend that they can get by separation of church and state issues.

What a bunch of appalling propaganda.  I do, however, think that the more over-the-top they are (Freedom Friday, Darwinian Thought Police, cover-up of the century) the more obvious it will be to even those somewhat sympathetic that they have overplayed their hand (such as it is.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Shows two things:

1. They know they can't ever put god into public school and

2. They are attempting to salvage what they can from their organization by attempting one last fleecing of the alopecia suffering rubes. (p.t. barnum style)
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 17 2008,12:49

Quote (Jkrebs @ April 16 2008,18:44)
Someone just posted on the KCFS Discussion Forum that all the staff at his school (in the Kansas City area) received the following email from the Intelligent Design Network today.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ATTENTION Teachers, Principals, School Officials & Support Staff,

----massive amount of bleep deleted----
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ironically, an email a lot more subdued than this one resulted in the firing of Chris Comer in Texas.

Pathetic.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 17 2008,12:50

Quote (BWE @ April 17 2008,13:26)
Shows two things:

1. They know they can't ever put god into public school and

2. They are attempting to salvage what they can from their organization by attempting one last fleecing of the alopecia suffering rubes. (p.t. barnum style)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Except that as long as there are rubes, there will be no "last" fleecing, and these particular rubes never seem to get any less "rubesque".  (Cue the witch.)

There will always be more money to squeeze from some groups, so there will always be these particular pickpockets.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 17 2008,13:48

Interweb folks, what would be the effect of us all putting expelled exposed links in our sigs?
Posted by: BWE on April 17 2008,14:18

dunno. Let's see.
Posted by: ToSeek on April 17 2008,14:32

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 17 2008,13:48)
Interweb folks, what would be the effect of us all putting expelled exposed links in our sigs?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Google is pretty tight-lipped about how their ranking algorithms work, but the general belief is that multiple links from one location don't have much effect. Better to have one link each from many locations, which is why many science bloggers are linking the word "Expelled" to the NCSE site.
Posted by: ToSeek on April 17 2008,14:37

Quote (ReligionProf @ April 17 2008,11:59)
A < student of mine > has created a better image than I did: Yoko Ono as Kali standing on Ben Stein's chest:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But why does she have a bunch of < Neil deGrasse Tyson > heads around her waist?
Posted by: ReligionProf on April 17 2008,14:39

You're right about the literal meaning of the original image. But it does suggest a good course of action for the makers of Expelled in dealing with Oko's wrath!  :-)
Posted by: guthrie on April 17 2008,15:01

Quote (didymos @ April 16 2008,20:28)
What he should be saying:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Ow, Ow, son of a bitch, someone get this fucking Giant Redwood out of my eye!!! My Stein, my Stein, why hast thou forsaken me? Giveth me some Clear Eyes!!!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'm sure Davetard is using an even bigger one.  No wonder he can't see straight.
Posted by: skeptic on April 17 2008,15:24

I don't know if you guys have mentioned this but I actually heard a commercial on the radio for the movie.  I was shocked because the style of commercial implied that the movie was a comedy.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 17 2008,15:25

Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
Posted by: Monado on April 17 2008,15:27

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 16 2008,23:16)
And Dembski was prattling on about the legal savvy of these cats.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dembski's contribution to Intelligent Design theory reminds me of my brother's conversations with girls. He used to "prove" that they were so unlikely it was a miracle they existed. Or maybe that they might *poof* out of existence at any moment. (I think the next logical step was that they might as well enjoy themselves while they could.)

Wesley Elsberry noted the strategy: ignore the reality or evidence that's in front of you and concentrate on a theoretical construct. And I've named it the Dembski Dodge for its most familiar practitioner.



< Science Notes: The Dembski Dodge >
Posted by: Quidam on April 17 2008,20:55

More on the copyright licensing scandal.  It seems that scientists weren't the only ones lied to...

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I just spoke to the band's manager, and adding to the confusion was the fact that they did authorize a project months ago with this request:

Quote:
'The film is a satirical documentary with an estimated running time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, exploring academic freedom in public schools and government institutions with actor, comedian, economist, Ben Stein as the spokesperson.']

What they authorized was a documentary about 'academic freedom in schools', not the film that the producers produced.

They contacted the producers of the film to ask that the song be removed but it is too late. Unfortunately it was misrepresented to them when the request came through to use it. Add this band to a long line of people who were misled by the producers of this film."


She later added:

"The band asked the producers to remove their song from the film when they became aware of the true nature of it. They were told it is too late. That's all there is."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2008....ng.html >

I doubt they have any comeback any more than PZ, Dawkins, Scott et al do.  

But the idea that Premise can use half a minute of a Beatles song under 1st amendment or 'fair use' is bizarre.  it all comes down to whether Ono will go after them ... I rather think she will.  

Then Stein, Mathis and crew will be singing another Lennon song:

Christ you know it ain't easy,
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.
Posted by: Chayanov on April 17 2008,21:30

Long ago I ceased to be surprised by their lies. The only thing that would shock me now would be an instance of them telling the truth, but that doesn't seem to be forthcoming.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 17 2008,21:41

Woowee!

"Red Carpet" Premier Gala Thingy:


The church was booked so we went with 'plan B'.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 17 2008,21:47

< Truth Tickets >.

Grand Idea.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 17 2008,21:58

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 17 2008,21:41)
Woowee!

"Red Carpet" Premier Gala Thingy:


The church was booked so we went with 'plan B'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I know it's nothing new or original, but I just can't help but remark how blithely that sad little bunch of people will walk right under the board reading "No intelligence allowed," without even flinching.

So they weren't born so stupid.  They are now dumb enough via acculturation to suppose that a poignant reminder of what a collection of swill their movie and reputations are won't be made by someone taking their picture as they saunter beneath the sign disallowing intelligence in the premises.  If not there, then likely elsewhere--I have to hope that someone will get such a picture there.

I thought this was interesting, not for itself, but because the paper of the great unwashed petty bourgeoisie, and classes under them, considers Expelled to be a political rant:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There's plenty of rhetoric and posturing, but not much truly intelligent debate, in this controversial documentary about evolution. Co-writer and host Ben Stein is startlingly one-sided in his unnatural selection of experts.

The proponents of intelligent design are well-spoken and rational, and almost uniformly American. Those who believe in evolution often have foreign accents, are stuffed shirts or seem ready to foam at the mouth. This is propaganda, a political rant disguised as a serious commentary on stifled freedom of inquiry.

A documentarian is not required to be objective, but Stein's point of view is blatant advertising. While he cites the holes in Darwin's theory, he never identifies specific flaws. He does directly link the theory to Nazism and eugenics.

While he gets points for addressing the debate, the way in which Stein goes about it undermines his efforts to be even-handed and intellectually rigorous.(Rated PG for thematic material, some disturbing images and brief smoking. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Opens today nationwide.) -- Claudia Puig

< http://www.usatoday.com/life....g_N.htm >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: caerbannog on April 17 2008,22:52

Quote (Glen Davidson @ April 17 2008,21:58)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 17 2008,21:41)
Woowee!

"Red Carpet" Premier Gala Thingy:

.........


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Heh heh...  I just had a look at the Expelled "gala premiere" pix over at evolutionnews.org.

Hell, we had a bigger crowd at my Aunt Barbara's for Passover last year!
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 17 2008,23:40

Just saw an expelled ad on Comedy Central. Good luck with that demographic, kids!
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 18 2008,01:30

My next door neighbor is a film editor and director.  I just told him about a few of the "expelled" screw ups.

He can't imagine how they could open at all.

This is going to be very interesting.
Posted by: stevestory on April 18 2008,01:44

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 17 2008,22:41)
Woowee!

"Red Carpet" Premier Gala Thingy:


The church was booked so we went with 'plan B'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Seriously? That's it? I have more supporters when I do a triathlon, and I'm nobody. (< Amandalin > and I are doing the next one around June 30)


Posted by: dnmlthr on April 18 2008,06:28

< A positive review of Crossroads Expelled! >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Although I have friends that vigorously debate with me on this, I just can’t get away from how plainly the first chapter of Genesis describes how everything began…and I believe it. Because I’m a scientist? No. I wasn’t even that good at science. I believe it because the Bible says it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Bolding mine.

All science so far.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 18 2008,06:44

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 17 2008,13:48)
Interweb folks, what would be the effect of us all putting expelled exposed links in our sigs?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not an interwebber but < Apollos > over at UD has an interesting factoid:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Blog comments (and typically forum comments as well) instruct Google and other responsible crawlers to ignore comment hyperlinks. (rel=”nofollow”)

It makes a good spam deterrent, and prevents Google bombing from spurious blog and forum commenting.

You need a cluster of “legitimate” sites, committed to the same purpose, for a Google bomb to work properly, AFAIK.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Plausible, and therefore a very rare gem indeed from the tardpits. Of course, the explanation could simply be that apollos is a sock puppet. Oh wait, so is everybody else on UD.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 18 2008,07:01

Reviews are coming in:

< Minneapolis Star-Tribune >: "Typical of all propaganda, it also distorts language."

< The Old Gray Lady >: "One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time"

< Salt Lake Tribune >: "a slick but intellectually dishonest documentary "

< E! Online >: "A flunkout of a documentary, this features Ben Stein....Stein's credibility is blown on this poorly constructed diatribe, and you'd be smart to save your bucks."
Posted by: Zarquon on April 18 2008,07:09

Which one of those isn't totally rubbish?



wait for it....


the round one on the right!
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 18 2008,07:23

Quote (dogdidit @ April 18 2008,06:44)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 17 2008,13:48)
Interweb folks, what would be the effect of us all putting expelled exposed links in our sigs?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not an interwebber but < Apollos > over at UD has an interesting factoid:    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Blog comments (and typically forum comments as well) instruct Google and other responsible crawlers to ignore comment hyperlinks. (rel=”nofollow”)

It makes a good spam deterrent, and prevents Google bombing from spurious blog and forum commenting.

You need a cluster of “legitimate” sites, committed to the same purpose, for a Google bomb to work properly, AFAIK.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Plausible, and therefore a very rare gem indeed from the tardpits. Of course, the explanation could simply be that apollos is a sock puppet. Oh wait, so is everybody else on UD.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The version of ikonBoard used here predates general use of the "nofollow" tag. Your comments as of yet have all the link magic intact.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 18 2008,07:59

Uh-oh!

< Movie Mom at Beliefnet.com >: "shrill and irrational" and "he should understand that freedom of speech also guarantees the freedom not to have to listen to mangled, manipulative, and disingenuous rhetoric like this."
Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 18 2008,08:10

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 17 2008,21:41)
Woowee!

"Red Carpet" Premier Gala Thingy:


The church was booked so we went with 'plan B'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My God, even their photography sucks, and I am NOT a photographer. However I know that the three top rules of photography are:

1) Don't point camera at sun.
2) Don't point camera at things that are pointing at sun.
3) Don't photograph people next to trashcans.

Of course, it may be one of the writing staff, in which case I apologise to the Dalek homeworld for insulting one of their offspring.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 18 2008,08:16

Quote (Venus Mousetrap @ April 18 2008,08:10)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 17 2008,21:41)
Woowee!

"Red Carpet" Premier Gala Thingy:


The church was booked so we went with 'plan B'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My God, even their photography sucks, and I am NOT a photographer. However I know that the three top rules of photography are:

1) Don't point camera at sun.
2) Don't point camera at things that are pointing at sun.
3) Don't photograph people next to trashcans.

Of course, it may be one of the writing staff, in which case I apologise to the Dalek homeworld for insulting one of their offspring.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


4) When getting the gang together for a group photo, agree beforehand on a dress code.
Posted by: BWE on April 18 2008,08:19



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
(Latest | Earliest) View (newer 50) (older 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Anyone want to guess what that's from?




You might get a kick out of this one.

< Here it is >
Posted by: improvius on April 18 2008,08:19

Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 18 2008,08:29

I see that the usual idjwits at UD have engaged their persecution complexes in order to bitch and moan about the unfairness of US copyright enforcement. Naturally, this allows them to avoid the real question - Are the makers of < Expelled > really that stupid?

I guess it is pretty easy to be cavalier about the intellectual property of others when you have no intellectual property of your own.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 18 2008,08:40

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 18 2008,07:23)
Your comments as of yet have all the link magic intact.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good.
Speaking of which: ExpelledExposed is still holding at #8 on a Google search for "expelled". Pharyngula's thread is at #5. Best of all, < News Results for expelled > is #1, just below the movie showtimes widget. The reviews are *snigger* less than glowing.
Posted by: BWE on April 18 2008,09:00

ETA: Info too sensitive.
Regards,
Secret Agent BWE

Just sayin.
Posted by: Jkrebs on April 18 2008,09:10

Albatrossity writes,



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I guess it is pretty easy to be cavalier about the intellectual property of others when you have no intellectual property of your own.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Sentence of the week!
Posted by: caerbannog on April 18 2008,09:19

Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,08:19)
 
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you look at the "top critics" section over at rottentomatoes.com, you'll see that Expelled is "running the table" at a perfect 00%.   Expelled is even smoking Battlefield Earth (4%) in the "top critics" department.

Here's hoping that the collateral damage from Expelled ends a few careers.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 18 2008,09:42

< http://www.alexa.com/data....=Medium >
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 18 2008,10:03

Clearly the deities are miffed at someone; there was an < earthquake in the Illinois/Indiana border region > this morning.

J-Dog and RTH and the rest of the infidels in the Chicago area might want to take it easy on NeinStein and his crockumentary, or there might be another. Just ask Pat Robertson...
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 18 2008,10:13

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ April 18 2008,08:29)
I see that the usual idjwits at UD have engaged their persecution complexes in order to bitch and moan about the unfairness of US copyright enforcement. Naturally, this allows them to avoid the real question - Are the makers of < Expelled > really that stupid?

I guess it is pretty easy to be cavalier about the intellectual property of others when you have no intellectual property of your own.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My favourite argument so far is "The song Imagine says 'imagine no possessions!'  Yoko is certainly not living up to that!"


Have we figured out if the song is actually in the final cut?   I thought before when they said 'momentary,' they meant only in the promotional bits, but then I got to thinking maybe they mean momentary temporally because the song is only in for 25 seconds.
Posted by: Raevmo on April 18 2008,10:26

Rumor has it on < http://www.torrentportal.com/torrents.php > the movie can be downloaded (search "expelled", bottom 2 results allegedly good quality copies). Please don't break the law though.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,10:34

Indeed, let's not be promoting theft.

Plus, it's not like the < Expelled > folks are going to be keeping your ticket money anyway.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 18 2008,10:55

< Seattle Times >: "A hard-core, fundamentalist bit of right-wing propaganda"
Posted by: JohnW on April 18 2008,11:00

< Expelled > gets a prestigious < no stars > in the Seattle Times (via a news service - they had better things to do themselves).



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Pop quiz: What is the real source of evil in the modern world? Greed? Intolerance?

Well, according to "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," it's Darwinism
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It looks like they've shot themselves in the foot with the "evolutionary biologists = Nazis" angle.  A lot of what I'm reading is commenting on the ridiculousness of this claim - not surprisingly as its sheer silliness requires absolutely no knowledge of science to understand.  Concentrating on ID, rather than slandering science and scientists, might have had more impact on a general audience.  If only they'd devoted more time to outlining the theory of intelligent des - what?  Oh.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 18 2008,11:26

Two films get a D+

< http://www.mlive.com/enterta....&coll=7 >

Expelled is not one of them
Posted by: Kristine on April 18 2008,11:52

Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,07:19)
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My < favorite review > thus far:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Either the filmmakers suckered these [pro-Darwinist] participants under false pretenses, or the evolutionists are more open to debate than Stein suggests.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:D

Ben Stein, you're finished in Hollywood. Can we say box office poison?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,12:00

< Eddy Goombah does it again >.

Expelled, the song.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein is a Douche.

I'm busy recording this song for him in the studio. If anyone wants to construct a video for it, please let me know.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




You may remember Eddy as the writer of this classic:

< Tribute to Kent Hovind > (AKA "You're a FuckTard, aren't ya Kent?")
Posted by: Louis on April 18 2008,12:19

Quote (Kristine @ April 18 2008,17:52)
Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,07:19)
 
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My < favorite review > thus far:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Either the filmmakers suckered these [pro-Darwinist] participants under false pretenses, or the evolutionists are more open to debate than Stein suggests.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:D

Ben Stein, you're finished in Hollywood. Can we say box office poison?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know, there seems to be no depths which Hollywood will not plumb. I have, after all, seen movies!

And given the budget that fundies in the USA seem to have at their disposal....

One thing I do know is where there's muck there's brass. In other words, as long as fundies keep paying the dreck will keep coming, and Ben Stein will surf a wave of utter dreck all the way to the bank.

My my, could that be why they're doing it?

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on April 18 2008,12:29

Quote (Louis @ April 18 2008,11:19)
 
Quote (Kristine @ April 18 2008,17:52)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,07:19)
   
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
     
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My < favorite review > thus far:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Either the filmmakers suckered these [pro-Darwinist] participants under false pretenses, or the evolutionists are more open to debate than Stein suggests.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:D

Ben Stein, you're finished in Hollywood. Can we say box office poison?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know, there seems to be no depths which Hollywood will not plumb. I have, after all, seen movies!

And given the budget that fundies in the USA seem to have at their disposal....

One thing I do know is where there's muck there's brass. In other words, as long as fundies keep paying the dreck will keep coming, and Ben Stein will surf a wave of utter dreck all the way to the bank.

My my, could that be why they're doing it?

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Most movies, even in America, are not funded by and for fundies. They are funded by and for hedonists, who watch the bottom line.

And this is about as bottom as I've seen a movie go. :) It deserves it, too. Hands-down the worst film I've ever attended (and when I was reviewing films I gave Eddie Murphy's Dr. Dolittle a half star out of five).
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 18 2008,12:37

< New York Times: >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry....Mixing physical apples and metaphysical oranges at every turn “Expelled” is an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike. In its fudging, eliding and refusal to define terms, the movie proves that the only expulsion here is of reason itself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,12:45

< Orlando Sentinel >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...a cynical attempt to sucker Christian conservatives into thinking they're losing the "intelligent design" debate because of academic "prejudice."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 18 2008,12:47

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 18 2008,13:45)
Orlando Sentinel:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...a cynical attempt to sucker Christian conservatives into thinking they're losing the "intelligent design" debate because of academic "prejudice."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The same review is posted at the Dallas Morning News. Both addressed to the heart of Expelled!'s putative audience.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,12:48

Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,09:19)
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


7%
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 18 2008,12:52

Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,06:19)
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


7%

Missed it by >< that much


Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,12:54

Quote (Dr.GH @ April 18 2008,13:52)
Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,06:19)
 
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


7%

Missed it by >< that much
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You gotta be quick around here, Doc.
Posted by: Kristine on April 18 2008,13:06

Garbled message on intelligent design, but < another bad review >:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I went into Expelled with an attitude that a certain ex-girlfriend of mine would have called condescending. The prospect of a pro-Intelligent Design documentary sounded so batsh*t crazy, it had to be awesome, watching intellectuals spin a story about how they're persecuted for their beliefs. Not to say I didn't give it a fair chance, but they made it really easy for me..

The film opens with shots of oppression, from the construction of the Berlin Wall, Eastern European politicians, guillotines and gangsters. That's the Triumph of the Will technique right there. They even get Planet of the Apes in there at one point. When the gunslinger speaks in a grizzled dubbed voice, "Creationists," it's outrageous.

Ben Stein's point of view is not a religious one. It's about freedom, so that's hopeful. Of course people should have the freedom to explore any belief. You can instantly feel his bias though. He plays devil's advocate with total insincerity, blatantly leading his interviews. My issue is not with a documentarian leading interviews, it is the blatant part.

First of all, I would have gone to greater lengths to verify the reasons for Richard Sternberg's firing. Someone suggests there's more to it than a single paper mentioning Intelligent Design, but they are dismissed. For another terminated professor, they do include some soundbites from her superior.

Stein tries to be Michael Moore, staging an difficult search for the Discovery Institute to demonstrate how minimized it is. Is a shot of Stein scratching his back supposed to be humor? There's even a Bowling for Columbine style animated segment, which is a total agenda piece and it just feels like an A-hole bully.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: carlsonjok on April 18 2008,13:34

< SExpelled!! >
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 18 2008,14:20

I think I'll archive this exchange here, as Kevin has changed the record before.  The first part is Kevin's post (at the time of this writing, on the first page and near the top):



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Is Expelled too nice?

That's what Greg Wright concludes in his review of the film over at Past the Popcorn.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



[Now my comments]



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That was a hideous quotemine, Kevin. Here's what he really wrote:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But if they are—and I stress, if they are, and they might be—Expelled simply plays too nice to catch them red-handed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He seems to know about as little about these things as you do, Kevin, but at least he's cautious, and stresses the "if".

You simply quotemine the "if" out, and thereby egregiously misrepresent him. But I guess "Expelled" and its promotion have prepared us for these run-of-the-mill prevarications.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 18 2008,14:22

Who  says this:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[edit] A Christian perspective
It is nevertheless clear to thinking Christians that Intelligent design is simply an attempt to force an impossible marriage between Biblical Truth and atheistic Science, and as such Intelligent Design and Darwinism are equally wrong

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



?

< Clicky for answer! >
Posted by: JohnW on April 18 2008,14:28

< Expelled > down to < 7% > now.  Going down faster than Louis in the men's bogs at Twickenham.

Another kicking, from < E! Online >.  The reviewer has taken the claim of scientists being fired for questioning evolution at face value, but still:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Despite insisting "intelligent design" isn't pro-God propaganda, Stein argues we're waging a religious war (cut to cannon fire) with Darwinists smiting the faithful with—gasp!—atheistic ideas. Most outrageously, he plays the overused Nazi card—he tours an old concentration camp and notes Hitler himself was influenced by Darwin. Yes, kids, studying evolution leads to this (cut to dead prisoners).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: BCtheEra on April 18 2008,14:29

< 6% and falling... >
Posted by: caerbannog on April 18 2008,14:33

Quote (Dr.GH @ April 18 2008,12:52)
Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,06:19)
 
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


7%

Missed it by >< that much
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


6%

(Still "running the table" with the "top critics", at 0%)
Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 18 2008,14:38

Quote (Glen Davidson @ April 18 2008,14:20)
I think I'll archive this exchange here, as Kevin has changed the record before.  The first part is Kevin's post (at the time of this writing, on the first page and near the top):

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Is Expelled too nice?

That's what Greg Wright concludes in his review of the film over at Past the Popcorn.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



[Now my comments]

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That was a hideous quotemine, Kevin. Here's what he really wrote:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But if they are—and I stress, if they are, and they might be—Expelled simply plays too nice to catch them red-handed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He seems to know about as little about these things as you do, Kevin, but at least he's cautious, and stresses the "if".

You simply quotemine the "if" out, and thereby egregiously misrepresent him. But I guess "Expelled" and its promotion have prepared us for these run-of-the-mill prevarications.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I actually have to disagree here. The truth of the statement 'Expelled is too nice' does not depend on the truth or falsity of the if.
Posted by: JohnW on April 18 2008,14:42

I clicked on the < Rotten Tomatoes > solitary < decent review >.  There's some good stuff in there too:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The subject of intelligent design is one that has sparked a lot of controversy and hopefully, this review won't bring out the loonies on either side of the debate, because personally, I don't feel like religion and faith is something that can or should be argued or debated on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


(my emphasis)

All Science So Far!
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,14:51

Quote (caerbannog @ April 18 2008,15:33)
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 18 2008,12:52)
Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,06:19)
 
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
   
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


7%

Missed it by >< that much
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


6%

(Still "running the table" with the "top critics", at 0%)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


5%
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,14:58

< TV Guide >:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"What's so insulting? Perhaps it's the way the film skews its perspective to the point where evolutionary theory is made to appear old-school, reactionary and intolerant of such innovative ideas as Creationism, a line of inquiry roughly as fresh and cutting-edge as the Holy Bible's Book of Genesis. Or maybe it's the way a flag-waving Stein casts responsible attempts to keep faith-based belief outside the realm of empirical science as a violation of free speech and a threat to our American way of life, likening conditions in this "scientific gulag" to life in East Berlin (the film makes ample use of Cold War-era newsreel, kitschy social engineering films from the '50s and footage of Stalin). Or maybe it's the way in which the lack of evidence supporting "I.D." is glossed over in favor of a one-sided attack on Darwinism's "failings," like evolutionary theory's inability to provide a simplistic answer to the huge question of how life was first created. Perhaps the real insult comes from the cloying sympathy heard in Stein's voice as he interviews those brave Darwin-doubters who sacrificed to what he characterizes as a vast, anti-I.D. conspiracy involving the Academy, the media and the courts, the undisguised sneer with which he dismisses speculative evolutionary theories as "science fiction," and the tone with which he poses loaded, ridiculous questions to the likes of Oxford biologist and pop-atheist Richard Dawkins."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



My bold.


Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 18 2008,15:07

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 18 2008,11:34)
< SExpelled!! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


'Sexpelled' now comes up second in Google searches of the word 'expelled'. :O

'Expelled Exposed' is now below the fold at #10.  :angry:
Posted by: caerbannog on April 18 2008,15:10

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 18 2008,14:51)
Quote (caerbannog @ April 18 2008,15:33)
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 18 2008,12:52)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,06:19)
   
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
   
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


7%

Missed it by >< that much
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


6%

(Still "running the table" with the "top critics", at 0%)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


5%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Next stop: Battlefield Earth at 3%
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 18 2008,15:13

As I read these reviews of Expelled! I am struck by one commonality with "The Passion of the Christ":

Excoriation.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 18 2008,15:20

Quote (Venus Mousetrap @ April 18 2008,14:38)
Quote (Glen Davidson @ April 18 2008,14:20)
I think I'll archive this exchange here, as Kevin has changed the record before.  The first part is Kevin's post (at the time of this writing, on the first page and near the top):

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Is Expelled too nice?

That's what Greg Wright concludes in his review of the film over at Past the Popcorn.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



[Now my comments]

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That was a hideous quotemine, Kevin. Here's what he really wrote:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But if they are—and I stress, if they are, and they might be—Expelled simply plays too nice to catch them red-handed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He seems to know about as little about these things as you do, Kevin, but at least he's cautious, and stresses the "if".

You simply quotemine the "if" out, and thereby egregiously misrepresent him. But I guess "Expelled" and its promotion have prepared us for these run-of-the-mill prevarications.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I actually have to disagree here. The truth of the statement 'Expelled is too nice' does not depend on the truth or falsity of the if.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And what is it about conditionals that you do not understand?

Glen D
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,15:36



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
A brand-new feature there: the "Set Ben Straight" contest. In promoting the creationist propaganda film Expelled, Ben Stein managed to stick his foot in his mouth over and over again, issuing what seemed to be a ceaseless stream of ignorant, offensive, and just plain daffy claims. Here's your chance to set Ben straight. Send your favorite claim with a short, well-documented, and well-reasoned refutation. We'll post the best for all the world to see. And five lucky entrants will receive a year's subscription to Reports of the NCSE along with their choice of a book from NCSE's shelf. But you only have ten days, and a wealth of silliness to examine, so act now! Full contest details are available on the ExpelledExposed website.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< From the NCSE's website >, an article about < Expelled >< Exposed >.
Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 18 2008,15:40

Quote (Glen Davidson @ April 18 2008,15:20)
Quote (Venus Mousetrap @ April 18 2008,14:38)
Quote (Glen Davidson @ April 18 2008,14:20)
I think I'll archive this exchange here, as Kevin has changed the record before.  The first part is Kevin's post (at the time of this writing, on the first page and near the top):

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Is Expelled too nice?

That's what Greg Wright concludes in his review of the film over at Past the Popcorn.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



[Now my comments]

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That was a hideous quotemine, Kevin. Here's what he really wrote:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But if they are—and I stress, if they are, and they might be—Expelled simply plays too nice to catch them red-handed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He seems to know about as little about these things as you do, Kevin, but at least he's cautious, and stresses the "if".

You simply quotemine the "if" out, and thereby egregiously misrepresent him. But I guess "Expelled" and its promotion have prepared us for these run-of-the-mill prevarications.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I actually have to disagree here. The truth of the statement 'Expelled is too nice' does not depend on the truth or falsity of the if.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And what is it about conditionals that you do not understand?

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I didn't see what Kevin was commenting on, so I could be wrong, but the conditional does not seem to link to the statement that 'Expelled plays too nice', but rather to the fact that they could be caught red-handed.
Posted by: Lowell on April 18 2008,16:18

Slate.com just posted an article examining Expelled's claims of academic suppression in the context of other conspiracy theories.
< http://www.slate.com/id/2189178/entry/2189361/ >
Posted by: hooligans on April 18 2008,16:39

Here's another review from < FlickFilosopher.com >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It’s apeshit crazy nuttiness right from the opening moments of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, as imagery of Nazi atrocities and the terrors of life behind the Berlin War are smugly deployed in a demented attempt to editorialize away basic scientific fact.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Gotta love that review!
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 18 2008,16:46

Quote (hooligans @ April 18 2008,16:39)
Here's another review from < FlickFilosopher.com >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It’s apeshit crazy nuttiness right from the opening moments of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, as imagery of Nazi atrocities and the terrors of life behind the Berlin War are smugly deployed in a demented attempt to editorialize away basic scientific fact.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Gotta love that review!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I told her off a week ago for recommending people see it.
Posted by: improvius on April 18 2008,16:57

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 18 2008,15:51)
Quote (caerbannog @ April 18 2008,15:33)
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 18 2008,12:52)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,06:19)
   
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
   
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


7%

Missed it by >< that much
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


6%

(Still "running the table" with the "top critics", at 0%)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


5%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


...and back to 9% again, thanks to a lukewarm review from Christianity Today.
Posted by: KimvdLinde on April 18 2008,17:01

Yup. Someone seeing the appearance of a bimodal distribution, generally a sign of a propaganda movie in which you either like it or not.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,17:10

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 18 2008,15:51)
Quote (caerbannog @ April 18 2008,15:33)
 
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 18 2008,12:52)
 
Quote (improvius @ April 18 2008,06:19)
   
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 17 2008,16:25)
     
Quote (improvius @ April 17 2008,06:57)
< Reviews > are starting to roll in now.  Current Tomatometer rating: 11% and falling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Down to 9%.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


8%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


7%

Missed it by >< that much
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


6%

(Still "running the table" with the "top critics", at 0%)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


5%
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Back up to 9%.  On the strength of a review from Christianity Today.

All Science So Far!

ETA- And this time, I was too slow.


Posted by: Doc Bill on April 18 2008,17:39

Based on the picture at the "premiere" showing, who is Robert Marks and what is he doing hanging around with this motley crew?

I've read some idiotic comments made by Marks in the press, but aside from trying to pass Baylor cafeteria vouchers to his pal Dr. Dr. D*mbski, Marks is obviously associating himself with this Nazi propaganda film.

Maybe it feels good to hang around with losers.  I dunno.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 18 2008,17:41



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Hopefully, big crowds will turn out for this movie, said Brent Bozell in NewsBusters.org. “Everyone should take the opportunity to see Expelled—if nothing else, as a bracing antidote to the atheism-friendly culture of PC liberalism.” But it’s also “a spotlight on the arrogance of this movement and its leaders, a spotlight on the choking intolerance of academia, and a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little.”

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The arrogance of the movement? That would justly be a dig at the antievolutionists, as would the comment on ignorance.

Drat that academia, insisting that people know what they presume to criticize.
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on April 18 2008,17:47

Don't forget the ever erudite comments on < IMDB >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I would say it is about time someone made a movie about this debate. Some people seem to think that Intelligent Design is an insult to the human race which confuses me. I would much rather be insulted by being created with purpose than to be insulted by accidentally being formed from "soup". Great movie and a great way of getting the point across. This documentary really sheds light on something that remains unseen to many people in the education fields! Anyone who is struggling with the question of "how" should watch this movie. Would recommend this to anyone who is actually open to new ideas and can think for themselves! A great film for the open-minded!


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And!


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I just have one question for all who believe in evolution.

Why do we still have monkeys? Shouldn't they all have evolved into people by now?

Also, why do some men go bald? What purpose does that serve? If baldness is a good thing, shouldn't we all be bald due to evolution? If it's a bad thing, evolution should have wiped out baldness by now.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 18 2008,17:50

So are they raking in the big bucks today?  Setting any world record for the most money by a anti-science propaganda film?

Inquiring minds want to know!
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,18:19

From Rotten Tomatoes:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Consensus: A cynical political stunt in the guise of a documentary. Full of patronizing, poorly structured arguments, Expelled is a cynical political stunt in the guise of a documentary.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on April 18 2008,18:41

I think that the MoviePhone Review site needs some immediate attention from some of us Darwinsits...

They are drinking deep of the ID Kool-Aid, and I think we need to stage an intervention ASAP.

If anyone already has an AIM or AOL account, that would be great.

< http://movies.aol.com/movie....reviews >
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,19:03

< Andrea Thompson @ LiveScience >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If you’re heading out to the movie theater this weekend, I wouldn’t recommend spending your money on “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” the latest attempt by the intelligent design movement to infiltrate science classrooms and labs with a decidedly unscientific idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



and later:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
After this unbelievably intellectually dishonest exercise, what stood out to me was the utter lack of science in a movie purportedly about the oppression of a “scientific” idea. I kept waiting and waiting for an explanation of either evolution or intelligent design, but the movie made only the lamest attempt at defining either idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 18 2008,19:04

< False WAD was prophetic: >


Posted by: didymos on April 18 2008,19:36

The One True WAD is still a quote-mining < jackass >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I’m moving it to the top of the queue because of all the fuss about Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED connecting Darwin to Hitler. Get over it — there was a clear connection!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 18 2008,19:50

Quote (didymos @ April 18 2008,19:36)
The One True WAD is still a quote-mining < jackass >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I’m moving it to the top of the queue because of all the fuss about Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED connecting Darwin to Hitler. Get over it — there was a clear connection!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This from the same chap who denies any 'clear connection!' between ID and religion.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 18 2008,20:28

GRATE PROMIZE OFF TARD. THIS THREAD HAS IT:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....essions >
Posted by: Quidam on April 18 2008,20:31


"Will you critics stop sending me these"
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 18 2008,20:40

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/discovery_salutes_expelled.html >

"Ben Stein's unique and uproarious humor" says Casey.
Posted by: UnMark on April 18 2008,20:42

Quidam, you've brought much hilarity to my evenings the past couple days with these gems; the bald Dr. Evilstein had me in tears.
Posted by: godsilove on April 18 2008,20:52

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 18 2008,20:40)
< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/discovery_salutes_expelled.html >

"Ben Stein's unique and uproarious humor" says Casey.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Hearing and seeing Richard Dawkins criticize the disingenuous and propagandistic approach of the National Center for Science Education"

What's that about?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,20:53

< Expelled > < Exposed > has moved up to the fourth spot in Google searches.

Edited for accuracy.  Fourth, not third.



yet.


Posted by: didymos on April 18 2008,20:57

You know what's weird?  They still have have two upcoming screenings listed at the ultra-super-ninja-secret RSVP site:

< http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/events/list >
Posted by: didymos on April 18 2008,21:01

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 18 2008,18:28)
GRATE PROMIZE OFF TARD. THIS THREAD HAS IT:

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....essions >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dave can haz firstest < post >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

DaveScot

04/18/2008

7:11 pm

12:20pm Arbor - Great Hills, Austin

70 people

Some laughter, not a lot. Some groaning at the gratuitous God bashing, not a lot. Loud applause lasting about 1 minute from most of the audience at the conclusion.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I think he probably meant: "Some applause at the end, not a lot."
Posted by: davey on April 18 2008,21:15

so i'm assuming the finished film included Imagine and the xvixo knockoff?
Posted by: silverspoon on April 18 2008,21:16

So I went with my daughter and her boyfriend to see the movie Street Kings, and ended up watching the wrong movie. I think we ended up in the wrong theater because I stood on my head and saw “theater #9”. That’s how we ended up in theater #6.

My daughter & companion, both in their mid twenties, had no foreknowledge of what to expect from this movie. All they knew is what I told them on the drive over; That it was a creationist propaganda flick. Neither of them follow the anti-evolution crap that’s spewed from the mouths of these knaves. Afterwards I asked each of them what the message this move is. This is what they told me:

1) If it wasn’t for Darwin the holocaust would never have happened.
2) Science leads to atheism.
3) Richard Sternberg lost his office and was fired from the Smithsonian.
4) Robert Marks lab at Baylor was shutdown by the administration.
5) Boyfriend noticed the contradiction, where on the one hand the film tried to say ID wasn’t religion, while making the exact opposite point at the same time.

I would have quizzed them more, but they just wanted to get away from this crazy man who drug them to the most boring movie either of them ever saw. It’s amazing what my daughter will go thru for movie Gummy Bears & Raisenetts.
.
I counted 35 people in a 150 seat theater. Most in attendance were in the 40 to 50 age range. One couple brought 2 under 10 year old kids. I couldn’t observe them from my vantage point. The teen (about 15 in front of me) was bored to tears, and kept checking her cell phone. This was at the 6:50 showing.  I figure Yoko Ono made about $315 at $9 a pop from this showing. Or maybe not. Imagine played for only about 10 seconds. I don’t know if that’s enough for her to collect any damages.

I don’t know enough about the Inner Life of a Cell animation to pass judgment whether they ripped off Harvard. But they did show a walking stick dragging a balloon while walking a string of DNA.

All in all it was exactly what I expected; lies and distortions galore. I hope Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker are happy now that they have  my $27 & the 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back because their movie looked like a 6 to me. I’ll have a beer now if you don’t mind.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,21:18

< Yahoo! reports 22,740 links > to Expelled Exposed.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 18 2008,21:21

Quote (silverspoon @ April 18 2008,22:16)
All in all it was exactly what I expected; lies and distortions galore. I hope Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker are happy now that they have  my $27 & the 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back because their movie looked like a 6 to me. I’ll have a beer now if you don’t mind.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for the report, ss.
Posted by: silverspoon on April 18 2008,21:28

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 18 2008,20:40)
< http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/discovery_salutes_expelled.html >

"Ben Stein's unique and uproarious humor" says Casey.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The only laughter, which was slight, was when Berlinski called Dawkins a lizard and when Stein scratched his back. About 5 of the 35 (at the showing I was at) people clapped lightly at the end.  Oh, and Egnor believes he is Expelled because people on blogs call him names. What a nut.
Posted by: Quidam on April 18 2008,21:29


"More bad reviews? SEND IN THE FEMBOTS!
Posted by: didymos on April 18 2008,21:39

Fresh from the < DI >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it. (In recent days they even resorted to threatening lawsuits, just confirming their growing reputation for ill-liberal spite.)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The whole this is just pure awesome. But I dig this bit:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Frankly, I not only was skeptical, but also suspicious when I first heard about the film project a couple of years ago.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Frankly, I not only am skeptical about the expressed skepticism, I am also deeply unshocked that we now have the DI President and Stein confirming that the filmmakers had the whole thing planned out at least 2 years ago.
Posted by: didymos on April 18 2008,21:43

That DI link was supposed to be < http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/discovery_salutes_expelled.html >

Sorry.
Posted by: godsilove on April 18 2008,22:05

Expelled Drinking Game:

< http://bruinskeptics.org/2008/04/18/expelled-no-intelligence-allowed/ >
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 18 2008,22:34

Quote (Quidam @ April 18 2008,22:29)

"More bad reviews? SEND IN THE FEMBOTS!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's help...


Posted by: silverspoon on April 18 2008,22:43

On beer three now, and I just remember something that really set me off from the get-go. The first three minutes or so of Expelled had a soft violin version of All Along The Watchtower by Hendrix. That pissed me off from the start. It was like listening to a tuba & fife version of Blue Cheers Summertime Blues. I wanted to puke.

Yeah, Yeah--- it’s a Who song originally I think. But Cheers version was better.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 18 2008,22:53

Quote (silverspoon @ April 18 2008,22:43)
On beer three now, and I just remember something that really set me off from the get-go. The first three minutes or so of Expelled had a soft violin version of All Along The Watchtower by Hendrix. That pissed me off from the start. It was like listening to a tuba & fife version of Blue Cheers Summertime Blues. I wanted to puke.

Yeah, Yeah--- it’s a Who song originally I think. But Cheers version was better.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Watchtower is by Dylan, although Hendrix's version is the definitive one. Everyone tune to Eb and 3 and 4 and..
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 18 2008,22:56

Quote (silverspoon @ April 18 2008,20:43)
On beer three now, and I just remember something that really set me off from the get-go. The first three minutes or so of Expelled had a soft violin version of All Along The Watchtower by Hendrix. That pissed me off from the start. It was like listening to a tuba & fife version of Blue Cheers Summertime Blues. I wanted to puke.

Yeah, Yeah--- it’s a Who song originally I think. But Cheers version was better.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, Eddie Cochran did it first. His version blows Blue Cheer's and the Who's versions out of the water.  :angry:
Posted by: Reed on April 18 2008,23:05

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 18 2008,20:53)
Watchtower is by Dylan, although Hendrix's version is the definitive one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Anyone want to lay odds they legitimately acquired the rights to this and the "Another brick in the wall" ?

A bottle of single malt scotch perhaps ? Anyone ? B....
Posted by: silverspoon on April 18 2008,23:10

YOU HOMOS DON’T KNOW NOTHING. BLUE CHEER WAS THE LOUSTED BAND EVER !!! (next to Grand Funk who blew windows out of the Hampton Rhodes Coliseum), AND HENDRIX WHO COULD PLAY WITH HIS TEETH.

(I forgot about  Dylan)
Posted by: Nerull on April 19 2008,00:00

Quote (Reed @ April 19 2008,00:05)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 18 2008,20:53)
Watchtower is by Dylan, although Hendrix's version is the definitive one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Anyone want to lay odds they legitimately acquired the rights to this and the "Another brick in the wall" ?

A bottle of single malt scotch perhaps ? Anyone ? B....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gilmore is an atheist. I'm not sure about Waters, but he's certainly anti-religion. My money is on no, unless they mislead them like they did The Killers.
Posted by: didymos on April 19 2008,00:29

The real reason for all those mean reviews from < Matteo >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I find it amusing that it is just a nine at rottentomatoes. 18 out of 20 reviewers seem constitutionally afraid of sticking their necks out and expressing the slightest approval for anything coming from the hated “creationists”. I guess they want to hold on to their careers (and prejudices) or something. These are no doubt the same folks who wholeheartedly approve of propagandistic schlock from Morgan Spurlock or Michael Moore. But no one gets in any trouble for cheering that stuff.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yeah, either that or maybe they just didn't actually like it.  Jesus Christ.....
Posted by: didymos on April 19 2008,00:51

Some more choice snippets for your consideration:


< CatSlinger >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

This ought to be merely the first of many well crafted excursions into the mainstream with ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



One can only hope....

Cat continues:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

With such a small crowd, I was struck to hear sustained applause, that’s rare.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Apparently, going to sparsely attended documentary screenings is something of a hobby for the Slinger, since he/she seems to have some basis for applause duration comparison.

< Sal >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The 7:10 showing in Memphis was sold out!!!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Notable for it's brevity, mostly.

< russ >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The area where I saw the film is mostly lower to lower middle class and recent immigrant communities, which probably isn’t the best demographic for this type of film, IMHO.

Great movie, but my skeptical friend slept through half of it (he’s 70, and a regular napper).

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Which half did he sleep through? If it's the latter, he may just have been 70 and really fucking bored.

< Gods iPod >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I was surprised by the ending drawing the lines between Hitler and Darwin. I thought it was unnecessary, perhaps. And then, perhaps it’s time to really slap the Darwinists about a bit. I took a Catholic girl to watch the movie, she liked it too.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Suprised? Apparently, Gods iPod was avoiding spoilers. Uneccessary, perhaps? That's not quite the right word, either of them.

< bevets >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I was concerned that the Nazi connection would be overplayed. It was not. The central theme was the Berlin Wall. I thought it worked quite well. The reviews have been unfair and out of touch.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How does a review qualify as "out of touch"?  What, they were bitching that this newfangled technicolor nonsense was too distracting and the director needs to stop watching the Emm-Tee-Vee and get a haircut?
Posted by: Reed on April 19 2008,01:46

Just so you know not all the reviews are negative: < How to Share Your Faith Using Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed >. Baptist press calls it < A must see >.

All Science so far!
Posted by: didymos on April 19 2008,02:04

And people wonder why anyone would have a problem with the movie. Why? < This > is why:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Friday, April 18, 2008
 

Expelled
Current mood: tired

So Alisha and I just watched Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. That's the movie by Ben Stein about the wall that evolutionists have up against any form of intelligent design. The argument he made is not one of getting religion into schools, but rather, to simply open the field of discussion and allow the freedom for scientists to approach science from whatever view point they'd like. No matter what you do every scientist is going to do research with certain presumptions about how things work, either randomly as in evolution, or by design as in intelligent design. Therefore, since this is America, science should be allowed from either view point. He proves that that isn't happening and that any scientist who values their career must keep quiet about any intelligent design fueled discoveries  that they make. The funny thing is, a ton of the greatests scientist, such as Newton and Einstien, believed in some form of creator and even went about their work with that as an important factor in mind. Yet today, some how, if you go about your work in a scientific field with that in mind, you won't have anything you write published and you'll probably lose all funding for your research. How does that make sense? Why not just let the evidence speak for itself, no matter what you believe about Darwin and religion.
Another interesting thing that he brought up was the connection between Dawinism, Hitler, and the Nazis. Apparently Hitler was a stout Darwinist and he actually thought he was doing a good thing by exterminating lesser humans. You see, from a true Darwinists perspective, humans are merely animals, and when we die, we just die, there is no real value in human life. So when Hitler opened the concentration camps he was using them for political purposes obviously, but also to get rid of the sick, the lame, the old, and the lesser races in order to speed evolution along and help create the next generation of more advanced human beings. From his point of view this was a good thing, and if Darwinism were true, it really would be a good thing. I think we all know better that that though. I hope.
Anyway, it was an interesting movie that was simply about freedom, and the current state of persecution in science. I recommend it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Bolding mine. So, even though they swear it wasn't really their point, the filmmaker's have now convinced someone that, yep, the Holocaust was Darwin's fault.  And, as you can see the patriotic, protect-the-underdog button-pushing worked like a goddamn charm.
Posted by: don_quixote on April 19 2008,04:55



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
Posted by: deejay on April 19 2008,08:42

According to my cable guide, NeinStein was supposed to be on Larry King last night (was this a repeat?), but he got bumped for breaking news on the Eldorado polygamist cult.  Poor Ben got stifled by the Darwinist conspiracy yet again.
Posted by: ERV on April 19 2008,09:15

< *COUGH!* >

AAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Name for their animation "Inner Life of a 1982 TRON Cell"

They tried soooooooo haaaaaaaaaaaard and its still stupid LOOOOOL!
Posted by: charlie d on April 19 2008,09:36

Ooooohh... pretty colors.... shiny....  
They know their target audience.
Posted by: Timothy McDougald on April 19 2008,12:08

From < Evolution News and Views >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The producers of Expelled have high hopes as the film opens today.

Practical questions of theater exposures and audience awareness are things that we, as a think tank, cannot assess, of course. But we are cheering the filmmakers on. First signs look positive. The over-the-top attacks of most official reviewers--offended by the film's message, not its quality--may turn out to help in some quarters. These are the exact same reviewers who commonly tell us not to object to offensive Hollywood products, but just to judge a film for its production quality. By now a large share of the population is wise to such hypocritical standards.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Now for the truth from < Fantasy Moguls >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Nathan Frankowski's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a documentary being released on more than 1,000 screens by Christian-friendly Rocky Mountain Pictures. Those who have seen it categorize it as anti-Darwinism propaganda, featuring right wing commentator Ben Stein. I’m sure that there's an audience out there somewhere for this type of doc, but there has been very little "intelligent design" involved in marketing the movie. With a Total Aware of only 19 percent and a First Choice score of just 2 percent, Expelled will manage only $1 million-$3 million this weekend, and it will have a difficult time holding on to those screens. It's doomed to $5 million domestic in its theatrical engagements (survival of the fittest?), although a fair number of DVD copies may be sold in evangelical bookstores in the future.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 19 2008,13:03

< FtK > links to a blog post by uber-tard Jason Rennie, invoking the bias of the "liberal media" as a factor in the thus far tepid response to NeinStein's crockumentary. Jason's blog has a single comment congratulating him on this stunning insight, posted by another uber-tard, William Wallace. All three seem to agree that this liberal bias is a problem.

FtK, can you not admit the possibility that the movie actually just plain stinks? Have you read the reviews? Why invoke a complicated explanation (liberal media conspiracy) when a simple one (bad movie) will do? Can you bypass the seemingly automatic persecution reflex just this once?
Posted by: don_quixote on April 19 2008,14:17

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ April 19 2008,13:03)
< FtK > links to a blog post by uber-tard Jason Rennie, invoking the bias of the "liberal media" as a factor in the thus far tepid response to NeinStein's crockumentary. Jason's blog has a single comment congratulating him on this stunning insight, posted by another uber-tard, William Wallace. All three seem to agree that this liberal bias is a problem.

FtK, can you not admit the possibility that the movie actually just plain stinks? Have you read the reviews? Why invoke a complicated explanation (liberal media conspiracy) when a simple one (bad movie) will do? Can you bypass the seemingly automatic persecution reflex just this once?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That was a rhetorical question, wasn't it? FtK exhibits a textbook case of true believer syndrome, and also has incurable confirmation bias.
Posted by: factician on April 19 2008,14:39

$1.1 million at box office on opening night.  I'm not sure whether to celebrate or cry.


< Linko >
Posted by: didymos on April 19 2008,15:28

Otherwise Known As Kevin < writes >:
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

< Expelled Exposed > is supposed to reveal < Expelled > to be nothing more than "anti-science propaganda aimed at creating the appearance of controversy where there is none." But all it really does is expose the NCSE as an anti-science, anti-education propaganda mill that is hell bent on stifling discussion and debate at every turn.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Shorter Miller:  Don't disagree with me.  That's suppresive. *whine*

Kev also says < Expelled > opened in 1050 < theaters. > So, taking the box-office from < "The Numbers" >, $1,126,000, and doing a Dembski-style Bayesian thing, you get an average of $1072.38 in ticket sales per theater.  Taking $7 as the average ticket price, that gives an average of roughly 153 tickets sold per theater.  If you just divide the box-office, then approx. 160,857 people across the land actually paid to watch the soon-to-be-a-classic film.  Yeah, that sucks.  Clearly, a chilling example of the Darwinist Thought Suppression Directorate at work.
Posted by: PennyBright on April 19 2008,16:01

I think they'll probably see a boost in the numbers on Sunday,   what with various after church socials and youth groups getting taken to it.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 19 2008,16:01

About 160,857 people across the land are now slightly more ignorant than they were on Thursday.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 19 2008,16:10

Edited as I contemplate my own brilliance!
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 19 2008,16:17

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 19 2008,14:10)
Am I breaking any rules when I say I've been reading Kevin Miller's blog for a while now and it's easy to conclude Kevin Miller XI is a whiny little pussy?

It's an informed conclusion, it's not like I'm calling him a little pussy because I don't like him.  

Anyhow, sorry if I have broken any rules, feel free to delete this post or banish me to UD for it, but I just felt the need to be blunt. What a whiny little dishonest weak sister.

Me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, there is a slight (alot) of sexism in you choice of invective.  I perfer the gender neutral "ass hole" or "scum sucking worm" or "turd brained coward."  You get the idea.
Posted by: Kristine on April 19 2008,16:21

Quote (factician @ April 19 2008,13:39)
$1.1 million at box office on opening night.  I'm not sure whether to celebrate or cry.


< Linko >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Give it time. Box office receipts must be measured against the number of days it runs.

I don't think it looks promising for them.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 19 2008,16:46

Ahh what was I saying again?
Posted by: Annyday on April 19 2008,16:53

Quote (Dr.GH @ April 19 2008,16:01)
About 160,857 people across the land are now slightly more ignorant than they were on Thursday.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The real question is how many people altered their opinions in favor of ID based upon it.
Posted by: godsilove on April 19 2008,16:56

Quote (Annyday @ April 19 2008,16:53)
Quote (Dr.GH @ April 19 2008,16:01)
About 160,857 people across the land are now slightly more ignorant than they were on Thursday.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The real question is how many bought it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From the blog posts I've read of people who've seen the movie, a large proportion of them seem to rather credulous.

Big Gadget has a lot of work to do.  We're tracking down their IP addresses and will send over the Thought Police pronto.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 19 2008,17:03

Quote (don_quixote @ April 19 2008,04:55)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ROFL =gasp= MAO I can't =wheeze= stand it! =gasp= Gimme some =gasp= oxygen! =turns blue, falls over=

"This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it."

A classic what? Drunken frat-party flick? All-time record downloaded torrent?

Speaking of torrents, they're all reported as fake so far. Too soon for anyone even to have cameraphone-bootlegged it. But fear not—it will be out on DVD long before the producers had hoped.  :p  :p  :p  :p
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 19 2008,17:08

Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 19 2008,15:03)
 
Quote (don_quixote @ April 19 2008,04:55)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ROFL =gasp= MAO I can't =wheeze= stand it! =gasp= Gimme some =gasp= oxygen! =turns blue, falls over=

"This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it."

A classic what? Drunken frat-party flick? All-time record downloaded torrent?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A 'classic' in the same sense as Reefer Madness, Red Dawn, or Triumph of the Will.

But I doubt it'll make as much money as any of those.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 19 2008,17:17

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 19 2008,18:08)
Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 19 2008,15:03)
   
Quote (don_quixote @ April 19 2008,04:55)
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ROFL =gasp= MAO I can't =wheeze= stand it! =gasp= Gimme some =gasp= oxygen! =turns blue, falls over=

"This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it."

A classic what? Drunken frat-party flick? All-time record downloaded torrent?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A 'classic' in the same sense as Reefer Madness, Red Dawn, or Triumph of the Will.

But I doubt it'll make as much money as any of those.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey now, I liked Red Dawn when it came out.

'course I was a fundy then...
Posted by: steve_h on April 19 2008,17:50

Quote (factician @ April 19 2008,20:39)
$1.1 million at box office on opening night.  I'm not sure whether to celebrate or cry.


< Linko >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is that before or after the various "cash for stubs" schemes are accounted for?
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on April 19 2008,18:02

Quote (factician @ April 19 2008,14:39)
$1.1 million at box office on opening night.  I'm not sure whether to celebrate or cry.


< Linko >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Expelled could be as big a hit as One Night with the King:

< http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2006/ONWTK.php >

It made 4,1 million dollars in its first weekend, with only 909 theaters. One Night with the King was also distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures.
Posted by: Annyday on April 19 2008,18:02

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 19 2008,17:17)
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 19 2008,18:08)
Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 19 2008,15:03)
   
Quote (don_quixote @ April 19 2008,04:55)
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ROFL =gasp= MAO I can't =wheeze= stand it! =gasp= Gimme some =gasp= oxygen! =turns blue, falls over=

"This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it."

A classic what? Drunken frat-party flick? All-time record downloaded torrent?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A 'classic' in the same sense as Reefer Madness, Red Dawn, or Triumph of the Will.

But I doubt it'll make as much money as any of those.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey now, I liked Red Dawn when it came out.

'course I was a fundy then...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Triumph of the Will is one of the most influential films ever made. I mean, it's batshit, but that's not the point! Riefenstahl was good at being lying propagandist.
Posted by: blipey on April 19 2008,19:23

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 19 2008,17:08)
Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 19 2008,15:03)
   
Quote (don_quixote @ April 19 2008,04:55)
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ROFL =gasp= MAO I can't =wheeze= stand it! =gasp= Gimme some =gasp= oxygen! =turns blue, falls over=

"This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it."

A classic what? Drunken frat-party flick? All-time record downloaded torrent?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A 'classic' in the same sense as Reefer Madness, Red Dawn, or Triumph of the Will.

But I doubt it'll make as much money as any of those.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey, Reefer Madness: the Musical is one of my favorite movies of all time.  And who do we have to thank for that, those wacky 50s Reefer Madness people.  Cranks have their place.
Posted by: TheMissingLink on April 19 2008,20:17

I took a field trip today and gave those lying snakes my $7.50. I figured that since I've been following the saga for the last year or two I should actually see the film.

I live about 2 miles from Stephan Meyer's office in Redmond, WA and I saw the film in the theater just down the street from there.

There were perhaps 80 to 100 people at the 2:50pm matinee. It looked to me like most were in their 40s or older. There were two teenage girls a few rows in front of me, and I was really wondering if Bueller-Ben was that big of a draw for them. They left before Ben's 3 minute opening speech, though, so I guess the answer was no.

Based on the location of the laughs and the post-film conversations I overheard, I'd say that one half or more of the audience was neutral or positive about the movie's message.

I was a little surprised that the movie was even more badshit than I expected; so in that sense I'm glad I saw it. And I'm sad to say that I can see where it would be compelling to someone who knows little about the history of evolution science.

It was great to see, though, that the top IDiots all lined up on camera to convincingly assosciate ID with "God." The ID movement would have trouble winning any first amendment case on the back of anyone in that film now, I think.

For the full effect, I even went to "Victors Coffee" (the coffee shop where Stephan Meyer was interviewed) on the way home. I'd never been in there and it turns out they have pretty good coffee and cheesecake! So, thanks Ben, for educating me. There is an 8x10 Expelled flyer hanging next to the register with a note that reads "Go see this movie - Victor's is in it!".
Posted by: paragwinn on April 20 2008,05:52

I've seen a few posts from attendees to the < Neinstein Express > that mention the age make-up of the audience to be mainly 40+. Based on such scant evidence, I'm willing to conjecture that the appeal to such a demographic stems from the "darwinism threatens our American way of life" theme of this mockumentary rather than concerns about academic persecution. There's something here that needs to be addressed but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Posted by: Annyday on April 20 2008,06:37

Old people are evil.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 20 2008,06:57

It's good to know that Dembski is clutching at straws:
< watching-expelled-by-buy-a-ticket-for-another-movie/ >
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< This just in from those ever so clever Internet Infidels: > “So I went and saw it [EXPELLED] today. No, I didn’t give Ben Stein any of my money — I bought a ticket to a different movie starting at the same time.”

It makes one wonder how much larger EXPELLED’s take would be if Darwinists pulling this trick were factored in.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The comments in this thread are fantastic. Here are some of the best:
FTK adds
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I’ve seen this mentioned by Darwinists several times today as well.

Yes, it really makes you wonder what the box office would report if Darwin supporters made an attempt to be honest and pay to see the film they were actually attending.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Dog_of_War runs some numbers
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You figure about 4 people per showing (just a number I pulled out of the air, but it seems reasonable), 1,050 theaters with 2 showings per theater, that’s 8,400 people per day.

At 7 dollars per ticket, that’s $58,800 a day. Not a big number as movie grosses go, but it adds up. Over a reasonable run, that could easily add up to over a million dollars.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


P-Chaw. It won't run that long, apart from anything else.

Larry "I'm not insane" farfarlanman with his steel trap lawyer mind says:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have an idea for putting an end to this nonsense. The theatres should place guards outside the projection rooms along with nice big conspicuous embarrassing signs — for everyone to see — saying “Darwinists without tickets for ‘Expelled’ will not be admitted.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In his alternate reality that might be possible. In the actual reality? It appears Larry has never tried to organise or cost anything more then complex then a happy meal.

Gerry Rzeppa then caricatures the worst of pious religious people when he says
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Two points for Christians:

1. We shouldn’t expect bad people to do good things. Nor should we be surprised or disappointed when they do bad things. It’s their nature to act as they do.

2. We shouldn’t waste time and energy trying to coerce bad people to do good things. That’s the job of the secular government, not the Church. Our job is to overcome evil with good, Romans 12:21.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"It’s their nature to act as they do"? And anyway, it's good to know Dembski is out there surfing the forums looking for blog posts.
Posted by: Nomad on April 20 2008,07:01

On his blog, Kevin < wrote >:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Watch the film for yourself, and you'll discover that at no point does it or Sternberg claim he was fired. Just goes to show that you should probably study the evidence before you draw your conclusions.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I wrote a simple response reminding him that afterwards Sternberg's picture was covered with a great big expelled rubber stamp, and asked him from what Sternberg was expelled.

The dishonest little weasel deleted the comment, after he had said that he was just too gosh darn busy to answer everyone's questions immediately.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'm just way to busy right now to duke it out with you folks. Don't worry though, a thorough response to all of the so-called "rebuttals" to our film is forthcoming. You may have to wait until the fall to get it, but it will come.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In other words, don't call me, I'll call you, right Kevin?  You'd love to explain how you're really NOT a deceitful fundamentalist propagandist, but you're too busy... doing what exactly?  Defending against copyright lawsuits?  Practicing your Oscar acceptance speech?

I guess he's at least more savvy than the UD people, he selectively grooms the dissent to make it look like he's allowing people to freely question him, but he removes the simple questions that he has no answer for.  It fooled me, that's why I posted.  I was hoping he'd try to dazzle me with bullshit, not just pretend the question had never been asked.

I do know that he's been asked the same question here back when he was playing at being our friendly neighborhood screenwriter, and that he failed to answer it then as well.  That's where I got the question from, it's so much simpler than any details about the way that the movie uses lies by omission to attempt to "technically" speak the truth while misleading the viewers.
Posted by: godsilove on April 20 2008,07:09

Anybody know any < lightbulb jokes >?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 20 2008,07:14

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 20 2008,07:57)
Dog_of_War runs some numbers
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You figure about 4 people per showing (just a number I pulled out of the air, but it seems reasonable), 1,050 theaters with 2 showings per theater, that’s 8,400 people per day.

At 7 dollars per ticket, that’s $58,800 a day. Not a big number as movie grosses go, but it adds up. Over a reasonable run, that could easily add up to over a million dollars.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He forgot to subtract the cuts to Yoko Ono and XVIVO, and the legal fees associated with that.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 20 2008,07:41

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 20 2008,06:57)
It's good to know that Dembski is clutching at straws:
< watching-expelled-by-buy-a-ticket-for-another-movie/ >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He's not only clutching at straws, but he's also "unwittingly" revealing his true character.

Rather than rejoicing at the knowledge that his message is reaching even hard-core evilutionists, he whines about the fact that not enough money is coming into the collection plate.

With these guys, it's all about the money. All the time.
Posted by: Annyday on April 20 2008,08:58

Conservapedia's talk page on Expelled is a riot.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I took my family to see Expelled last night, and I was surprised at how liberal and obscene it was. They don't mention anything about how Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, and they include secular music from "The Killers" (how could you allow a band with that name to be included in a Christian movie?) and John Lennon. I thought I would not have to cover my kids eyes and ears for once in a movie theater, but I was proved wrong with this one. I guess the next time a documentary comes out exposing the evil of evolution, I will stay home with my family and watch Passion of the Christ instead. At least that movie has a strong Christian message. -Nathan

   Odd reaction, Nathan. I haven't heard that reaction from any Christians I know. Do you shield your kids' eyes and ears when they are in public school also, or when they watch television??? Consider me skeptical about your comment.--Aschlafly 12:29, 19 April 2008 (EDT)

       Aschlafly, my kids attend a private Christian school, and I only allow them to watch Christian shows and movies on television (and only Godtube and Conservapedia online). Consider me skeptical of your true faith in Christianity for thinking that a movie full of secular music and absent of the Lord's message is good. Actually, you stated that you haven't even seen the movie yet, but you're still on here causing controversy; it clearly states at the top that this forum is for people who have seen the movie. It is not for people who want to debate something that they haven't even seen. -Nathan --john1989 19:00, 19 April 2008 (EDT)

           Unfortunately, there is no news of a theatre release in the UK. I may have to buy it on DVD in order to see it. A disappointment, because watching a significant event in the company of others is more uplifting than watching it on ones own. :( BrianCo 12:22, 19 April 2008 (EDT)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Obvious troll is obvious. The first guy can't be real ... can he?

ETA:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I added a comment that, from a Christian point of view, ID is as a false as evolution. Mr Rayment has just told me - in answer to a question about why the Gap theory is not given "equal time" here Quote:

but really, the YEC view is the only one that actually fits what the Bible says, so this encyclopedia is not going to treat other views as though they have equal validity.

Why, then, was my comment about ID being as false as evolution removed? It is obvious that ID has no validity, why not say so?Tolerance 11:22, 19 April 2008 (EDT)

   What part of ID is false (from a Christian point of view)? Surely not the part which says life is to complex to have come into being by natural forces and physical laws alone? If there's a Christian (or any other kind of Creationist) who disagreed, you would have named him. So your comment is not constructive - and is in fact unrelated to discussion about how to improve this article. --Ed Poor Talk 21:07, 19 April 2008 (EDT)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Just for giggles!
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 20 2008,09:06



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You figure about 4 people per showing (just a number I pulled out of the air, but it seems reasonable), 1,050 theaters with 2 showings per theater, that’s 8,400 people per day.

At 7 dollars per ticket, that’s $58,800 a day. Not a big number as movie grosses go, but it adds up. Over a reasonable run, that could easily add up to over a million dollars.

Well, you’re only off by a bit over two orders of magnitude. Now go away. -UD admin

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Must be Dembski math. He is aware, isn't he that this is a hypothetical calculation of the losses due to screen hopping? If true, the box office is under-reported by about five percent. Probably a lot less than the under-reporting of 'R' rated movies.
Posted by: blipey on April 20 2008,09:06

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 20 2008,07:14)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 20 2008,07:57)
Dog_of_War runs some numbers
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You figure about 4 people per showing (just a number I pulled out of the air, but it seems reasonable), 1,050 theaters with 2 showings per theater, that’s 8,400 people per day.

At 7 dollars per ticket, that’s $58,800 a day. Not a big number as movie grosses go, but it adds up. Over a reasonable run, that could easily add up to over a million dollars.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He forgot to subtract the cuts to Yoko Ono and XVIVO, and the legal fees associated with that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It appears that the UD big cheeses take exception with Dog of War--though for the life of me I can't figure out what that would be.

< The BIG BOLD VOICE IN THE SKY. >

I can't find anything in his math that would be off by 2 orders of magnitude, so it must be in his assumptions?

I'm guessing that they don't think he overestimated the ticket jumpers (.04 per screen).  So, it must be that they think that 400 people are sneaking into each screening of Expelled.

That would work out to a box office shift of 5.88 million dollars a day.  That seems improbable some how.

ETA: I guess they also may think that $700 tickets or 200 showings per day per theatre are reasonable numbers....
Posted by: Assassinator on April 20 2008,09:06

Quote (Annyday @ Posted: April 20 2008,08:58)
Obvious troll is obvious. The first guy can't be real ... can he?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He sure as hell is, I live next to people who are actually worse. Yes, indeed, worse then that guy. *shivers*
Posted by: 1of63 on April 20 2008,09:10

Quote (godsilove @ April 20 2008,07:09)
Anybody know any lightbulb jokes?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Michael Behe: None.  The lightbulb and socket are an irreduceably complex system which clearly does not work if the components are separated.  Darwinian accounts of bulbs being screwed into sockets are nothing more than "just so" stories so the whole assembly must have been intelligently-designed from scratch as complete system - Light: No Installation Required.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 20 2008,09:15

It seems apparent from the initial numbers that Expelled! is going to preach to the converted, without wider influence. This is the same audience that consumed Darwin's Deadly Legacy ("To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler" - D. James Kennedy). We know there is a large segment of US society that finds that sort of smegma appealing - which is quite dismaying, but not news. All that remains to be seen is what fraction of this constituency will lay down money and watch this film.

One wonders what the impact will be in the wider culture of the avalanche of extremely negative reviews within the general media. Circulating widely are statements such as, "One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time," "This is propaganda, a political rant disguised as a serious commentary on stifled freedom of inquiry," and "As a lawyer, [Stein] should understand that freedom of speech also guarantees the freedom not to have to listen to mangled, manipulative, and disingenuous rhetoric like this" (New York Times, USA Today, and Chicago Sun-Times, respectively). Perhaps the net impact of the film will be to attach to the ID movement an additional, deserved stench of dishonesty.
Posted by: blipey on April 20 2008,09:16

< DaveTard rewrites box office hype already! >

That's right, just a few days ago Expelled was going to shatter all box office records.  Now?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
According to Box Office Mojo on Friday alone ticket sales were $1.2 million.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Friday ALONE!!!  Ladies and Gentleman, I give you a smashing success!  No one figured this movie would make a dime and it made over a thousand dollars per theatre!  God bless the turnout (just don't try to calculate what it was).
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 20 2008,09:34

Quote (Annyday @ April 20 2008,06:37)
Old people are evil.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey, I resemble that remark! says the almost-55-year-old flaming liberal crazy woman... :D

Or, as my former Significant Other used to say:

"The older I get, the more radical I get. I'm going to be a Red Depends Senior Citizen."

Obama for President.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 20 2008,09:35

Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 19 2008,17:03)
Quote (don_quixote @ April 19 2008,04:55)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Speaking of Comical Ali........ I found an old 'Shop job I did waybackinthewayback:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quote (don_quixote @ April 19 2008,04:55)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Speaking of Comical Ali........ I found an old 'Shop job I did waybackinthewayback:

< Baghdad Bob — Incomiiiiiiiing! >
Posted by: sparc on April 20 2008,09:35

Three of the < EXPELLED > are now < EXPOSED > on the < People > page of the < Biologic Institue > that showed up yesterday. At first I thought they finally managed to really get fired but it turns out that they are listed with their usal addresses:    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Guillermo Gonzalez is an assistant professor of astronomy at Iowa State University, soon to become an associate professor of astronomy at Grove City College in the Department of Physics.

Robert J. Marks II is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University.

Richard von Sternberg is a research collaborator at the National Museum of Natural History.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

So what the hell are they doing there? Does the BI need a pipetting astronomer? Or is this the BI's scientiffic advisory board. But then they would have more advisers than < working scientists >.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 20 2008,09:42

Is it just me, or is this board having a traffic jam? Since yesterday, when I've tried to refresh the page I've been getting a "connection timed out" message half the time.

I take that as a hopeful sign.......
Posted by: sparc on April 20 2008,09:44

I had the same with PT which I guess is hosted on the same server.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 20 2008,09:48

Quote (sparc @ April 20 2008,10:35)
Three of the < EXPELLED > are now < EXPOSED > on the < People > page of the < Biologic Institue > that showed up yesterday. At first I thought they finally managed to really get fired but it turns out that they are listed with their usal addresses:      

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Guillermo Gonzalez is an assistant professor of astronomy at Iowa State University, soon to become an associate professor of astronomy at Grove City College in the Department of Physics.

Robert J. Marks II is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University.

Richard von Sternberg is a research collaborator at the National Museum of Natural History.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

So what the hell are they doing there? Does the BI need a pipetting astronomer? Or is this the BI's scientiffic advisory board. But then they would have more advisers than < working scientists >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And note that, after all this, Sternberg has claimed the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History as his primary professional association. How fucking "expelled" can he be?

(And note that the NCSE exposed site states that "he has not shown up there in years.")
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 20 2008,09:54

Quote (Assassinator @ April 20 2008,10:06)
Quote (Annyday @ Posted: April 20 2008,08:58)
Obvious troll is obvious. The first guy can't be real ... can he?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He sure as hell is, I live next to people who are actually worse. Yes, indeed, worse then that guy. *shivers*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Certainly could be.

In my high school, getting caught in a movie theater was cause for being < expelled >.

It happened on several occasions while I was there.
Posted by: k.e.. on April 20 2008,10:05

Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 20 2008,17:34)
Quote (Annyday @ April 20 2008,06:37)
Old people are evil.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey, I resemble that remark! says the almost-55-year-old flaming liberal crazy woman... :D

Or, as my former Significant Other used to say:

"The older I get, the more radical I get. I'm going to be a Red Depends Senior Citizen."

Obama for President.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Viva La Revolucion!
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 20 2008,10:50

Quote (godsilove @ April 20 2008,07:09)
Anybody know any < lightbulb jokes >?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Fundamentalists: 9,000,001. One to screw the lightbulb in, and 9,000,000 to say God did it in 6 24-hour days 6000 years ago.
Posted by: stevestory on April 20 2008,11:11

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 20 2008,07:57)
Larry "I'm not insane" farfarlanman with his steel trap lawyer mind says:
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have an idea for putting an end to this nonsense. The theatres should place guards outside the projection rooms along with nice big conspicuous embarrassing signs — for everyone to see — saying “Darwinists without tickets for ‘Expelled’ will not be admitted.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In his alternate reality that might be possible. In the actual reality? It appears Larry has never tried to organise or cost anything more then complex then a happy meal.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Larry's fantasy reminds me of that bit from the Crackpot Index:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: factician on April 20 2008,11:12

I've now watched 2 separate comments go down the memory hole (by two different commenters - neither of them mine) that commented on the < absurdity of: >  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Well, you’re only off by a bit over two orders of magnitude. Now go away. -UD admin
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: snoeman on April 20 2008,11:27

Quote (Assassinator @ April 20 2008,09:06)
 
Quote (Annyday @ Posted: April 20 2008,08:58)
Obvious troll is obvious. The first guy can't be real ... can he?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He sure as hell is, I live next to people who are actually worse. Yes, indeed, worse then that guy. *shivers*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


On Friday, my wife forwarded an e-mail to me that she had received from a former co-worker, inviting a group of friends to attend a showing of Expelled on Sunday.  It turns out her husband works for the company that marketed the movie, and was in some way involved in that effort.  Apparently, she loved it, so much that it moved her to tears.

I had thought they were more or less rational people, but, you just never know.  "Less rational" seems more likely at this point.
Posted by: bfish on April 20 2008,11:35

Quote (blipey @ April 20 2008,07:06)
 
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 20 2008,07:14)
   
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 20 2008,07:57)
Dog_of_War runs some numbers
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You figure about 4 people per showing (just a number I pulled out of the air, but it seems reasonable), 1,050 theaters with 2 showings per theater, that’s 8,400 people per day.

At 7 dollars per ticket, that’s $58,800 a day. Not a big number as movie grosses go, but it adds up. Over a reasonable run, that could easily add up to over a million dollars.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He forgot to subtract the cuts to Yoko Ono and XVIVO, and the legal fees associated with that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< The BIG BOLD VOICE IN THE SKY. >

I can't find anything in his math that would be off by 2 orders of magnitude, so it must be in his assumptions?

I'm guessing that they don't think he overestimated the ticket jumpers (.04 per screen).  So, it must be that they think that 400 people are sneaking into each screening of Expelled.

That would work out to a box office shift of 5.88 million dollars a day.  That seems improbable some how.

ETA: I guess they also may think that $700 tickets or 200 showings per day per theatre are reasonable numbers....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, the movie is playing in ONE MILLION THEATERS....

Posted by: Quidam on April 20 2008,11:48

the one million dollars assumes that the film would show for 170 days at two showings perday.  The two orders of magnitude reflect a run of 1.7  days which sounds a lot more reasonable
Posted by: jcmacc1 on April 20 2008,12:13

I see that over at Uncommonly Dense, Dave Scot has had a sudden and ironic attack of concern over copyright theft:

www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/darwin-central-advocates-crime-make-a-pirate-copy-of-expelled/

Dave's developing a remedial conscience about Yoko Ono and Harvard/XVIVO given their copyrights would be violated by such a pirate copy. Well done him.

PS: If someone bit torrents Expelled but plays it through a brown filter in a poor screen resolution in 20 second chunks would the obviously sound legal conclusion be that it's then original material or would it be fair use?
Posted by: Louis on April 20 2008,12:17

I would just like to make the point that however much money it takes and however many people see it, it is still vastly too much money spent, and too many people exposed to this utter dreck.

It's efforts like these that drag people's minds back, back into the Dark Ages. One is too many.

Louis
Posted by: George on April 20 2008,12:36

Any word on Expelled getting international release?  From the initial figures, it seems like it would be lucky to show up straight to dvd outside the US.
Posted by: didymos on April 20 2008,12:50

Wow, Dembski's got a Nazi bee in his SS bonnet lately.

< The Road to the Holocaust — Darwin or the Pope? >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

So a film that shows how Christianity “culminated in the Holocaust” constitutes cutting-edge cultural commentary. But a film like EXPELLED, which shows explicitly how the Nazis appropriated Darwin’s ideas, is “bizarre ad hysterical.”

Thank God for EXPELLED, which is holding the secular media’s feet to the fire.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



If you read the actual review he quotes, it never does call the film "cutting-edge cultural commentary" and his claim that the film argues that Christianity "culminated in the Holocaust" is refuted right there in the text above. If you're gonna quote-mine, you should try to make it just a little bit harder for people to figure out you're full of shit. Otherwise, what's the point?  

You have to wonder if Dembski's aware of what the origin of "holding feet to the fire" is. Hints for ya Billy: It was very popular during a period of successive military expeditions to the Holy Land, and it involves torture, and heretics. Oh, and you know who really came out good in that period there, guy?  Another hint: it wasn't the Jews.

Jackass.
Posted by: stevestory on April 20 2008,12:51

(original clips from UD and Wikipedia and a PT link)



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
   6

   DaveScot

   04/16/2008

   11:32 am

   This is getting funny. Not long ago the chance worshippers were wondering if Expelled had a big enough budget to licence teh Bad To The Bone music.

   Now it’s looking more like a documentary category killer.

   In other words it’s all like “we own the space”.

   I wonder when it’ll make it to HBO and after that probably FOX broadcasting.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The only other newcomer in the Top 10 was conservative commentator Ben Stein's documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed which makes the intelligent design argument. Playing in 1,052 theaters, the pic distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures fell over the weekend from 8th to 10th place after earning $1.2M Friday and $989K Saturday for a $2.9M weekend. But the per screen average for Friday was a feeble $1,145 and for Saturday $940 (and $2,830 for the entire weekend), showing there wasn't much pent-up demand for the film despite an aggressive publicity campaign on right-wing media.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



and let's look at a real documentary blockbuster, An Inconvenient Truth:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Box office

The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006. On Memorial Day weekend, it grossed an average of $91,447 per theater, the highest of any movie that weekend and a record for a documentary, though it was only playing on four screens at the time.[16]

At the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the movie received three standing ovations. It was also screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and was the opening night film at the 27th Durban International Film Festival on June 14, 2006. An Inconvenient Truth was the most popular documentary at the 2006 Brisbane International Film Festival.[17]

The film has grossed over $24 million in the U.S. and over $49 million worldwide as of June 3, 2007, making it the fourth-highest-grossing documentary in the U.S. to date (after Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins and Sicko).[18]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: jcmacc1 on April 20 2008,13:03

Quote (George @ April 20 2008,12:36)
Any word on Expelled getting international release?  From the initial figures, it seems like it would be lucky to show up straight to dvd outside the US.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If Expelled is released outside the US, at least the UK has advanced warning on the content even for people who don't follow the blogsphere. From today's Sunday Times:

< http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol....012.ece >

Very amusing to see the "PZ expelled" incident, the extras-not-students at Pepperdine and the producer's dishonest methods to get interviews are the major points covered.

I'd predict that in the UK at least, the best Expelled could hope for is free distribution to the more "fundie" religious groups paid for by it's rich backers. There's no way it could make money in the UK to cover distribution as a mainstream film. If it was to be released in cinemas in the UK the critics will destroy it, the 9% rotten tomatoes rating would look like charity.
Posted by: Kristine on April 20 2008,13:18

Quote (godsilove @ April 20 2008,06:09)
Anybody know any < lightbulb jokes >?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I seek to find out how many ID advocates it takes to screw in a lightbulb:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben Stein holds it in the socket, and the world revolves around him. :)
Posted by: 1of63 on April 20 2008,13:18

I hear that, following the furore about the XVIVO clip, Mathis and Miller's next project could be a searing expose of the racket behind the patent and copyright laws - tentative title "Expired:  No Royalties Required".
Posted by: stevestory on April 20 2008,13:47

Quote (Kristine @ April 20 2008,14:18)
 
Quote (godsilove @ April 20 2008,06:09)
Anybody know any < lightbulb jokes >?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I seek to find out how many ID advocates it takes to screw in a lightbulb:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben Stein holds it in the socket, and the world revolves around him. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Seven. < One > to claim the socket can't be used for anything else, < One > to miscalculate how not to change it, < One > to forgive us for laughing at them, < One > to claim the old light bulb was installed six minutes ago, < One > to narrate From Flourescents to Fascism, < One > to ban any actual electricians from the premises, and < One > to ask "Why bother actually changing a lightbulb?"




Posted by: Texas Teach on April 20 2008,13:57

Quote (stevestory @ April 20 2008,13:47)
Quote (Kristine @ April 20 2008,14:18)
   
Quote (godsilove @ April 20 2008,06:09)
Anybody know any < lightbulb jokes >?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I seek to find out how many ID advocates it takes to screw in a lightbulb:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben Stein holds it in the socket, and the world revolves around him. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Seven. < One > to claim the socket can't be used for anything else, < One > to miscalculate how not to change it, < One > to forgive us for laughing at them, < One > to claim the old light bulb was installed six minutes ago, < One > to narrate From Flourescents to Fascism, < One > to ban any actual electricians from the premises, and < One > to ask "Why bother actually changing a lightbulb?"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Joke of the week. With references no less.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 20 2008,14:55

Quote (jcmacc1 @ April 20 2008,11:03)
 
Quote (George @ April 20 2008,12:36)
Any word on Expelled getting international release?  From the initial figures, it seems like it would be lucky to show up straight to dvd outside the US.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If Expelled is released outside the US, at least the UK has advanced warning on the content even for people who don't follow the blogsphere. From today's Sunday Times:

< http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol....012.ece >

Very amusing to see the "PZ expelled" incident, the extras-not-students at Pepperdine and the producer's dishonest methods to get interviews are the major points covered.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Some highlights:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein was always a contrarian: rather than join the mob praising the exposure of Nixon’s political corruption, he blamed the journalists for the Khmer Rouge “Killing Fields” genocide – because Nixon, if he had been left in power untroubled by public scrutiny, would have prevented the atrocities. What did Bernstein do to him in school?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So now I'm noticing a trend: Darwin killed all the Jews, and liberals killed all the Cambodians. If we can only figure out how secular humanists caused the Rwandan genocide, we'll be set.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

A few years ago, with television ratings sliding and creationist museums opening across America, Stein came to the conclusion that the greatest threat to the country’s righteous empire were the Darwinists, whom he credited with the same world-shaping omnipresence that previous generations awarded to Jesuits, Jews and Freemasons.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Anti-Semite! Anti-Semite!

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The film’s producers, meanwhile, have refused to test Expelled with critics, instead arranging shows for friendly audiences, such as the governor of Missouri. He wants biblical accounts of creationism taught in schools, but not similar tales from the Koran – “freedom” has its limits.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



A deep concern for not trampling church/state separation too much, I'm sure.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 20 2008,15:01

< DT sez > that < Expelled > is the "#2 Highest Grossing Political Documentary" (second only to Fahrenheit 9/11) in terms of opening weekend box office receipts. Skipping over the part about how gross is might be, I found this to be a bit surprising. All this time I thought it was a SCIENCE documentary.

Teach the controversy!
Posted by: stevestory on April 20 2008,16:02

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ April 20 2008,16:01)
< DT sez > that < Expelled > is the "#2 Highest Grossing Political Documentary" (second only to Fahrenheit 9/11) in terms of opening weekend box office receipts. Skipping over the part about how gross is might be, I found this to be a bit surprising. All this time I thought it was a SCIENCE documentary.

Teach the controversy!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


according to < this site >, the Expelled people had enough money to open it on more screens than any previous documentary, vastly more than most docs, so their numbers are nothing to brag about. Expelled had an opening weekend of $2,997 per theater. In terms of Box Office Per Theater it looks like it's not even in the top 30. In the end, projections suggest it will probably wind up ranked about #10 in terms of money.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 20 2008,16:32

Anyone know how theaters and the film owner work the box office mone?  Is it split or?
Posted by: BathTub on April 20 2008,17:13

Usually split heavily towards the studio for the first couple of weeks.
Posted by: blipey on April 20 2008,17:32

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 20 2008,16:32)
Anyone know how theaters and the film owner work the box office mone?  Is it split or?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


For the first several weeks, it goes to the studio, starting at about 90/10 with the ratio gradually going down.  After several weeks, it evens out at 50/50.  That's why popcorn is $14.00; the theaters are getting basically nothing for a month.
Posted by: bystander on April 20 2008,17:39

Quote (BathTub @ April 21 2008,10:13)
Usually split heavily towards the studio for the first couple of weeks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So the theatres will be losing money on this turkey (unless the fans like to eat the godless popcorn and choc tops). I'm sure that that they wont be keen on showing the next Premise Media epic.
Posted by: didymos on April 20 2008,18:36

Not so fast there.  Apollos begs to < disagree >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

FtK, the movie will have an impact and make a difference. What you’re seeing is like a vampire’s violent reaction to sunlight.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So, getting pissed off at and/or making fun of polarizing, manipulative, and dishonest propaganda is basically the same as bursting into flames and screaming in melodramatic agony?  Or are you saying that Darwinists are not only Nazis, but Nazi Vampires.  Hey, you remember that one episode of Angel where.....

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

However this film is a “knocking” event, and it will have an impact, though not necessarily one that’s easily assessed from the outset.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Or, to put it another way: yeah, I know it looks like a miserable failure and for the most part everyone thinks it sucks, but trust me: 'tis a classic that shall be passed down through the ages.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

   (Revelation 3:20) Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

I believe knocks are being answered even as I type this. Be encouraged!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Knock knock.

Who's there?

Jesus.

Jesus who?

Jesus Christ, will you shut up already. The movie just fucking sucks, OK?

Oh, and apparently, Darwinists have almost ruined FTK's son's birthday < party >.  Are you happy now?  Huh?  You Darwinist Nazi Vampire motherfuckers?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 20 2008,18:51



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Oh, and apparently, Darwinists have almost ruined FTK's son's birthday party.  Are you happy now?  Huh?  You Darwinist Nazi Vampire motherfuckers?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Shit, FTK sucks at childrearing. I've never once let FTK ruin my daughter's birthday party. Weren't we Nazi Darwinist Vampires the ones supposed to be the ones who can't be trusted with children?


Posted by: ERV on April 20 2008,19:21

Quote (didymos @ April 20 2008,18:36)
Oh, and apparently, Darwinists have almost ruined FTK's son's birthday < party >.  Are you happy now?  Huh?  You Darwinist Nazi Vampire motherfuckers?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


FTKs sons birthday is April 20th?

Hitlers birthday?

???
Posted by: REC on April 20 2008,19:28



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I seek to find out how many ID advocates it takes to screw in a lightbulb:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



You forgot one to deny its getting dark in here.......
< Denialists >

By the way...I can't believe the UDers are comparing their mass-market, ads every 5 seconds on Comedy Central, subsidized ticket rollouts to documentaries choosing to premier on one screen (Sundance). Most of the documentaries I've heard of premiered on 1-4 screens, but if you click the title and look at 'wide release" its clear its not that high:

March of the penguins:
Opening Weekend: 4 Theaters $137,492
Wide Release: Opening Weekend: 695 theaters $4,382,340

Sicko:
Opening Weekend: limited, 1 theaters $68,969
Opening Weekend: wide: $3,600,179 702 theaters, $5,128 average
< Sicko >

So if you look at 'wide release' stats, expelled falls down the list.

Plus, its just apples and oranges comparing at a trend like this:
< Inconvienent Truth >where the movie  has a slow rollout (but big earnings) on a couple hundred screens each weekend, with the big opening weekend approach.

Makes me wonder if Expelled will make any more money, or if they blew their whole wad. Blockbusters like Men In Black only opened in 3000 theaters, so 1000 seems saturating. Might also prove a waste of money making that many release prints ($1500 a pop). < Wired >

Seems like they're celebrating dumb marketing....though I guess the fundie backers would rather have a headline than to make a buck....
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 20 2008,19:34

Quote (REC @ April 20 2008,20:28)
Makes me wonder if Expelled will make any more money, or if they blew their whole wad.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The real question is how much did WAD pay for it.
Posted by: didymos on April 20 2008,21:47

This one's a < goner: >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Glarson24

04/20/2008

6:52 pm

FTK - If I can amend Apollos’ post: “The movie will not have an impact, except on the uneducated, and it’s not going to make any difference long-term”, except to make IDers even more liable to ridicule, so have fun at your kid’s party!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Now that was just mean.  Funny, though.  So, a wag of the finger and a tip of the hat.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 20 2008,22:13

< WorldTard > has a thread for folks who saw the movie.  it's good.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I really enjoyed the film. Very enlightening for me as I did not realize that the Intelligent Design theory was backed not just by Christians, but by Jews, Muslims and others. The hard nosed Darwin/Evolution teachers gave me a chill because they are preaching this to our kids from 1st grade on up. As one of the professors said in the film, “Life is meaningless. You’re born, you live and you die. After that, it’s all over and there is nothing else.” That’s what I got out of the film. If one truly believes there is no creator then there truly is no purpose to life. I was very disturbed by the reality of that message. I hope the movie encourages open-minded people to stand up for what they believe in with an intelligent designer living within them! Let’s change the hearts and minds of our children and young adults!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ALL SCIENCE SO FAR
Posted by: Kristine on April 20 2008,22:14

Quote (didymos @ April 20 2008,17:36)
Not so fast there.  Apollos begs to < disagree >:

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

FtK, the movie will have an impact and make a difference. What you’re seeing is like a vampire’s violent reaction to sunlight.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So, getting pissed off at and/or making fun of polarizing, manipulative, and dishonest propaganda is basically the same as bursting into flames and screaming in melodramatic agony?  Or are you saying that Darwinists are not only Nazis, but Nazi Vampires.  Hey, you remember that one episode of Angel where.....

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

However this film is a “knocking” event, and it will have an impact, though not necessarily one that’s easily assessed from the outset.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Or, to put it another way: yeah, I know it looks like a miserable failure and for the most part everyone thinks it sucks, but trust me: 'tis a classic that shall be passed down through the ages.

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

   (Revelation 3:20) Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

I believe knocks are being answered even as I type this. Be encouraged!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Knock knock.

Who's there?

Jesus.

Jesus who?

Jesus Christ, will you shut up already. The movie just fucking sucks, OK?

Oh, and apparently, Darwinists have almost ruined FTK's son's birthday < party >.  Are you happy now?  Huh?  You Darwinist Nazi Vampire motherfuckers?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why, did they remove her and her son from the well-armed "hunting" compound? :D

JHC, I went outside to our lake today and dodged deer poop on our land. You know, outside, Ftk? Where the world is? I totally forgot about Neinstein, Expelled, and you, so maybe you should do the same (that is, forget yourself if you can). Crap. Get a life! Your kid doesn't want you to use him to gain sympathy with the UDudes.

What a drama queen. :)
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 20 2008,22:26

< TJ > is a tard.  I think he is a youth pastor.  Mr DNA when you get back buddy this guy is the one you were < talking about >.

He won't let your comments up.  At least he won't let mine.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you irony.  We have observed the obliviot in his native habitat.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It probably does say something about the controversial nature of a film when a reviewer must resort to a steady stream of fallacious appeals to ridicule in order to write the review. Why not comment on production values instead of another rant on behalf of the Richard Dawkinses of the world? Isn’t that what film critics are supposed to do, rather than fancy themselves to be spokesmen for science? But I digress.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



but TJ, < Expelled > is nothing but a steady stream of fallacious appeals to ridicule.  Forgot that already didn'you bub.

I SWEAR TO ALL GODS THAT THIS IS THE VERY NEXT FUCKING LINE.  i'll be buying shares, go see this movie.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I would like to see this movie do well, and it does need to be seen by those who might be unaware of the academic escapades that are affecting some scientists. It is difficult to get a valuable evaluation when the well has been poisoned by one side in particular prior to the opening of the movie (but it is amusing to find movie reviewers suggesting that folks with Ph.Ds aren’t really scientists). Training in logical thinking isn’t really popular either these days, so fallacies aren’t hard to come by anymore. If that was a stock that was being publicly traded, I’d be buying shares and telling all my friends to do the same.

If you’ve got $8 or $10 to burn, go see the movie.
 I doubt many will be swayed one way or another by it, though. It does put forth some stories that otherwise might get buried by the mainstream media. But the fervor this is generating should be proof enough that something is amiss. Someone doth protest too much methinks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------







---------------------QUOTE-------------------
UPDATE: In the original post, I forgot to include this quote from a local paper (that would be the paper published by our friendly neighborhood giga-church, the same I referenced in a post below). You’re probably going to hear complaints from some of the evolutionists featured in the film, about how they’ve been misrepresented, etc. However, consider these words from one of the folks associated with Expelled:

Although some interviewees are raising a ruckus about the film, Steve Schmidt, director of distributing, said ‘every person was told this film would be about the conflict between Intelligent Design and Evolution, each person was given the questions in advance if they desired, each person was paid, and every one of them cashed their check. Our conscience is totally clean regarding the film — we misrepresented nothing.’

In this case, following the money trail would be a pretty good indicator, imho.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oh man.  You just can't beleive them atheists they have no morels.  Steve Schmidt says don't feel bad about them, they couldn't possibly believe in right and wrong.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 20 2008,23:14

The tards are jacking up the Google movie ratings for Expelled by flooding Epinions with favorable reviews.

See if this link < works... >

After you see the film be sure and vote < here! >
Posted by: stevestory on April 21 2008,00:08

Heddle is spot-on in this post:

< http://helives.blogspot.com/2008....ed.html >
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 21 2008,00:19

The latest < Numbers >:

Rank: 9
Theaters: 1,052
Per Theater: $2,997
Total Gross: $3,152,896
Days: 3

Apparently the "Let's take the youth group to see this flick after church" thing didn't pan out. (OTOH, going to the movies on a Sunday? OK, this coming Saturday. We'll see.....)

I wonder if they're all waiting for the thing to come out on DVD so they can just buy a copy and show it in the church auditorium.
Posted by: Louis on April 21 2008,03:12

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 21 2008,04:26)
[SNIP]

Oh man.  You just can't beleive them atheists they have no morels.

[SNIP]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Louis

P.S. Image "borrowed" from < here. >
Posted by: don_quixote on April 21 2008,04:29

Kevin Miller has just popped up on < Shifting Baselines >.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
J.J. Ramsey said, "I can see someone reading Kevin Miller's blog and getting the impression that ID detractors are hateful, etc., because Miller wants to send that message."

Sorry, J.J., but the commenters on my blog are generating that message loud and clear without any help from me. I'm merely providing a venue. For the record, I don't moderate my comments at all. The only thing I censor is spam.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is that true?

Aren't there some unanswered questions for him?


Edited to add: Talking of ScienceBlogs, Chris Mooney at The Intersection is unashamedly < calling Expelled a success >! He's obviously looking to get on UD, like his mate, Matt "haven't I got fabulous hair" Nisbet, did.
Posted by: guthrie on April 21 2008,06:32

Yes, I've just been over at the INtersection.  I shall unashamedly post what I put there, because I think Chris and Randy are getting their knickers in a twist unnecessarily.  



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I came over here from randy Olsons, and find Chris quoting this:

"It's sad to watch evolutionists swinging in the dark...let's go ahead and be honest here -- concede that these guys scored a major victory -- then figure out how to realistically deal with this communications failure rather than try to deny it happened."

It made no sense to me over there, and it still makes no sense to me here. The Creationists throw millions of dollars at a propaganda movie, make many slips, lie to people, get panned by the critics. This is all exactly as would be expected. It is entirely to be expected that they would attract a number of people who are committed Creationists to watch it.

So, there is no way for "Evolutionaists" to win here. The expelled liars are preaching to the converted. Randy is dead wrong here, and so is Chris- this is not a victory for the Creationists, unless you somehow think that us omnipotent Evolutionists should have been able to crush the film in a countrywide propaganda battle or prevent it from ever being screened in the first place. Which is patently impossible.

Instead, you could try thinking of it as another church sermon. And on that metric, it hasn't even lived up to the claims of its backers.

Let me repeat this in a different way- there is no communications failure here, because the Creationists are living in a hermetically sealed bubble- there was no way in which you could rationally have expected to have any "victory" over this film in the short term, i.e. in terms of people going to see it. If anyone did expect any different, please let me know.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: factician on April 21 2008,07:37

< FtK: >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It’s staggering to observe how people view these issues. What seems so abundantly clear to one person is a muddled mess to another.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



FtK, I do not think that means what you think it means...
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 21 2008,09:19

Blake Stacey graciously gave me permission to host his < essay on Creation, Power, and Violence > at AE.
Posted by: Kristine on April 21 2008,09:36

Quote (guthrie @ April 21 2008,05:32)
Yes, I've just been over at the INtersection.  I shall unashamedly post what I put there, because I think Chris and Randy are getting their knickers in a twist unnecessarily.  

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I came over here from randy Olsons, and find Chris quoting this:

"It's sad to watch evolutionists swinging in the dark...let's go ahead and be honest here -- concede that these guys scored a major victory -- then figure out how to realistically deal with this communications failure rather than try to deny it happened."

It made no sense to me over there, and it still makes no sense to me here. The Creationists throw millions of dollars at a propaganda movie, make many slips, lie to people, get panned by the critics. This is all exactly as would be expected. It is entirely to be expected that they would attract a number of people who are committed Creationists to watch it.

So, there is no way for "Evolutionaists" to win here. The expelled liars are preaching to the converted. Randy is dead wrong here, and so is Chris- this is not a victory for the Creationists, unless you somehow think that us omnipotent Evolutionists should have been able to crush the film in a countrywide propaganda battle or prevent it from ever being screened in the first place. Which is patently impossible.

Instead, you could try thinking of it as another church sermon. And on that metric, it hasn't even lived up to the claims of its backers.

Let me repeat this in a different way- there is no communications failure here, because the Creationists are living in a hermetically sealed bubble- there was no way in which you could rationally have expected to have any "victory" over this film in the short term, i.e. in terms of people going to see it. If anyone did expect any different, please let me know.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know what Randy or Chris expect.

As always, truth is multi-faceted. If you look at their goal of 2-3 million, then yes, Expelled is a success. Ditto for the "political documentary" category, a small niche of less than 100 films. Critically, and in real numbers, the film is a stinkeroo.

I don't think Stein is going to benefit from this project and I stand by my "box office poison" statement. This film is marred by too many scandals and headaches for the typical studio to want to employ Stein again.

But who knows? Creationism sells in America. Everyone knows that. So what do Chris and Randy want to do about that? I debated my father for years and nothing was going to change his mind. What do they suggest, then? All I read is criticisms from them.

Wintermute hit the nail on the head:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If all publicity is good publicity, and PZ and Dawkins are only promoting Expelled, shouldn't we be thanking Ben Stein for doing so much to promote evolution? Shouldn't we be glad that they are spreading the word so far and wide?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I have this weird sense of relief that Expelled got made, especially with its attendant scandals and hypocrisy. The fight isn't over, but somebody sure ain't taking the high road.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 21 2008,09:40

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 21 2008,09:19)
Blake Stacey graciously gave me permission to host his < essay on Creation, Power, and Violence > at AE.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good essay.  

On a separate note, Wes, Ben Stein's knobby knees and spray paint tagging are showing up under the Advertising side bar.
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 21 2008,09:49

Am I the first person who has noticed this?   How old is this?  Ben Stein at the Missouri State Capitol with Representative Jane Cunningham who is apparently trying to push Intelligent Design into public schools.

< Ben Stein at the Missouri State Capitol >
Posted by: k.e.. on April 21 2008,10:03

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 21 2008,17:19)
Blake Stacey graciously gave me permission to host his < essay on Creation, Power, and Violence > at AE.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Fundamentalist Myth based Conservative Ideology and Identity Politics both require the removal of any objective truth test AKA Darwinism or the scientific method and their replacement of that by subjective propaganda to usher in their Brave New World.

The first victim of war.
Posted by: Kristine on April 21 2008,10:08

Wow, Hollywood hates this film! More bad reviews for Expelled.
< Columbus Dispatch: Editing Helps Create Propaganda >

< Entertainment Weekly >

< The Hollywood Reporter >

< The Los Angeles Times >
And this in the LA Times is the best one, in my opinion.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Someday, perhaps, it will be possible to look back on "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" as a relic and reminder of the rhetorical logic employed during the era of George W. Bush. Until then, it should be seen simply as a tiresome ideological bludgeon, an attempt to deceive audiences into believing it is one thing when it is, in fact, quite another.

Entertainer, pitchman and political commentator Ben Stein begins the film by intoning that there is a growing conspiracy within the academic and scientific communities blocking out proponents of "intelligent design" as a means to explain the origins of life and human development in favor of lock step enforcement of Darwinist theories of evolution.
By setting the argument up in this way, one which is never fully pursued or proven, Stein has, of course, attempted to utilize a textbook Karl Rove-ian tactic to "reframe" the discussion, putting it in terms by which his side seems the valiant underdog, suppressed and belittled by its opponent, while turning notions of right and wrong, freedom of speech and even the meaning of science upside down.

A movie review is, of course, not really the forum for debating the ins, outs and what-have-yous of intelligent design, but it certainly can be said here that if a film like "Expelled" is meant to be the vanguard action for turning public opinion, the movement has a long, long road ahead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stinkeroo.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 21 2008,10:10

Is it me or is Ben Stein keeping an awfully low profile since the movie was released?  I haven't hear a peep from him in days.  One of the last interviews I read he was talking about how some of the early reviews had been "personally hurtful".  That made me laff.
Posted by: don_quixote on April 21 2008,10:17

Kristine wrote "If you look at their goal of 2-3 million, then yes, Expelled is a success."

But as their stated goal was 12-15 million, I think most people would agree that they failed miserably.


Oh, and Chris Mooney is whining about being persecuted again. Film at ten.
Posted by: Kristine on April 21 2008,10:24

Quote (don_quixote @ April 21 2008,09:17)
Kristine wrote "If you look at their goal of 2-3 million, then yes, Expelled is a success."

But as their stated goal was 12-15 million, I think most people would agree that they failed miserably.


Oh, and Chris Mooney is whining about being persecuted again. Film at ten.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey! Do you have any idea how many eye drops you can buy with 3 million? Evolution tried to kill Ben Stein's dad! How could you be so mean? :D

(Now, that's reframing - "Evo tried to kill Ben's dad!" I think we should shout it mockingly from the rooftops.) :)
Posted by: don_quixote on April 21 2008,10:29

I can just imagine Ben Stein, in the not too distant future, pan-handling in LA, shouting "EVILUTION TRIED TO KILL MY DAD!!!"

:D
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 21 2008,10:37

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 21 2008,09:40)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 21 2008,09:19)
Blake Stacey graciously gave me permission to host his < essay on Creation, Power, and Violence > at AE.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good essay.  

On a separate note, Wes, Ben Stein's knobby knees and spray paint tagging are showing up under the Advertising side bar.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He certainly is there, isn't he? Golly, that "Darwinist materialist conspiracy" is so mean, it actually lets him make a fool of himself.

ETA: I've added a "More Ads" block pointing to < Expelled >< Exposed >.

If someone has a long block banner to match the "Expelled" one, but for "ExpelledExposed", let me know and I'll use it. Anyone? Anyone?


Posted by: guthrie on April 21 2008,10:59

Quote (Kristine @ April 21 2008,09:36)
I don't know what Randy or Chris expect.

As always, truth is multi-faceted. If you look at their goal of 2-3 million, then yes, Expelled is a success. Ditto for the "political documentary" category, a small niche of less than 100 films. Critically, and in real numbers, the film is a stinkeroo.

I don't think Stein is going to benefit from this project and I stand by my "box office poison" statement. This film is marred by too many scandals and headaches for the typical studio to want to employ Stein again.

But who knows? Creationism sells in America. Everyone knows that. So what do Chris and Randy want to do about that? I debated my father for years and nothing was going to change his mind. What do they suggest, then? All I read is criticisms from them.

Wintermute hit the nail on the head:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If all publicity is good publicity, and PZ and Dawkins are only promoting Expelled, shouldn't we be thanking Ben Stein for doing so much to promote evolution? Shouldn't we be glad that they are spreading the word so far and wide?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I have this weird sense of relief that Expelled got made, especially with its attendant scandals and hypocrisy. The fight isn't over, but somebody sure ain't taking the high road.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, exactly.  Other people made the same point as I, only better, and it seems Chris and randy are being both defeatist and rather silly.  
What would count as a win against "Expelled"?  
Even if the entire production team stood up and swore on the bible that they had set out to smear Evolution as much as they could for their own religious ends, and had lied to everyone in interviews deliberately to get the interviews, and the film makers were sued into extinction for copyright breaking, most of their intended audience would still applaud the film.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 21 2008,11:05

There is a fundie market out there, and they want things that 'confirm' the bible. Look how long the various long debunked creationist canards have been out there, yet still we see them every week. This is because they are repeated in Church every Sunday. Creationists know that education is their enemy, which is precisely why they choose to attack it with films like this.

No amount of homo-sex-scandles, kiddy fiddling, leader-fleeces the flock scandals seems to put them off. They are unthinking and want to ensure there kids remain the same.
Posted by: don_quixote on April 21 2008,11:08



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kristine wrote "I have this weird sense of relief that Expelled got made, especially with its attendant scandals and hypocrisy."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I think that it's going to be of great use to us. The whole affair demonstrates how vacuous ID is, and how duplicitous its proponants are.

Can you imagine if they had made an honest, academically thorough film instead? Oh, hang on a minute; then they wouldn't be psuedo-scientists would they?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 21 2008,11:13

Quote (don_quixote @ April 21 2008,11:08)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kristine wrote "I have this weird sense of relief that Expelled got made, especially with its attendant scandals and hypocrisy."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I think that it's going to be of great use to us. The whole affair demonstrates how vacuous ID is, and how duplicitous its proponants are.

Can you imagine if they had made an honest, academically thorough film instead? Oh, hang on a minute; then they wouldn't be psuedo-scientists would they?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The real win is the DI getting right behind it, despite its explicit theist message.
Posted by: Kristine on April 21 2008,11:21

< Kristine steps into the frame >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If you want to reframe this discussion, why not start calling this a "chick [Jack Chick] film"?
Why not sarcastically repeat, "Evolution almost killed Ben Stein's dad!" Okay, two suggestions on the table. Let's do something.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good grief, the news from Hollywood is that Expelled is looking more mangled than Michael Jackson’s face. Ohh, this isn’t looking good – National Review’s John Derbyshire < weighs in >. We know what a friend to creationism he is! ;)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Win Ben Stein's Money   [John Derbyshire]
The National Council for Science Education's Expelled Exposed website is running a competition in which you can win fabulous prizes by pointing out errors in Ben Stein's silly movie (errors, that is, in addition to the dozens already logged on that site).
Meanwhile, for all you guilt-by-association fans, here are some fervent anti-Darwinists on parade. None of that beastly, God-denying science'n'rationalism stuff for these bold lads!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The photo he links to:

Geez, Derb! Don’t mince words, just say what’s on your mind!

< Michigan Online hates it >.

< Slashdot hates it > (and also runs an Expelled Exposed plug).

Again from the Orlando Sentinel:
< “Jackie and Jet rule, Nobody forgets Sarah M., everybody forgets Ben Stein” >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And $3 million in tickets were sold to people who probably haven't been to a movie since The Cash-in of the Mel, a few years back. But Expelled? Mark it "absent." Over 1,000 screens, less than $3,000 per screen, lotsa hype from the pulpit, and America didn't buy it. Americans don't go to documentaries unless they're made by Michael Moore and Christian conservatives are not known to be big Discovery Channel/PBS Nova viewers. Thus, a perfect "yawn."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This has to hurt for sure, from The Raw Story:
< Ben Stein Shows He’s No Michael Moore >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If numbers are any indication, Ben Stein has shown he's no Michael Moore.
Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary which makes an argument for intelligent design over the theory of evolution, debuted at just number eight among the top ten grossing movies last week.
The film made $1.2 million on Friday in 1,052 theaters. By comparison, Michael Moore's 'Sicko' raken in $23.9 million its opening weekend from just 441 theaters, and Fahrenheit 9/11 did $23.9 million from only 868 slots.
"Playing in 1,052 theaters, the pic distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures earned $1.2M Friday for what should be a $3.4M weekend," penned Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily. "But the per screen average for Friday was a feeble $1,130 (that $3,000 ballyhooed on the Internet would be for the entire weekend), showing there wasn't any pent-up demand for the film despite an aggressive publicity campaign. So much for the conservative argument that people would flock to films not representing the "agenda of liberal Hollywood.'"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Okay, now the reviews are starting to link to Expelled Exposed. Take that, Chris and Randy.

< Two opposable thumbs down > from another Moore:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
All the loaded references to Stalin, communism et al. reminded me of Khrushchev's famous challenge to the West, "We will bury you," meaning that communism would use the very precepts of Western democracy and capitalism to weaken and break us. Stein and friends use scientists' need to speak in terms of probabilities, rather than absolutes, to undercut a scientific theorem that withstands test after test, from Darwin to the Scopes Monkey Trial.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And the reframing gets just brutal:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Shockingly, the "experts" Stein hurls up against evolution are disgruntled, under-credentialed academics dismissed from lesser colleges, they say, because they wanted to teach creation rather than science. Other "experts" in the film come from anti-evolution "think tank" cranks and a Pole who invites nothing so much as a really good Polish joke.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Holy crap, can an opening for a film suck any more than this?

I’m not worried. :D (Did I mention that Expelled sucks?)
Posted by: Quidam on April 21 2008,11:38

< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....iev.php >

Mike Edmondson has owned up.  He made the the "Beware the Believers" movie.  And has this sequel.

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QUt7nZdUJIk&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QUt7nZdUJIk&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

It seems there has been a falling out with the humorless clods and Mike.  Poe's Law in action!
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 21 2008,11:44

Quote (Quidam @ April 21 2008,12:38)
< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....iev.php >

Mike Edmondson has owned up.  He made the the "Beware the Believers" movie.  And has this sequel.

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QUt7nZdUJIk&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QUt7nZdUJIk&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

It seems there has been a falling out with the humorless clods and Mike.  Poe's Law in action!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your embedding is powerless here, young Jedi.

Visit the link, though.
Posted by: Quidam on April 21 2008,12:11



I ... will ... embed

Feel the Farce!
Posted by: improvius on April 21 2008,12:15

< Another positive review > that gets some of the facts totally wrong:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
One scientist in particular, biologist Richard Sternberg, has become a cause célèbre following his dismissal from the Smithsonian Institution, where he was a fellow until he allowed a peer-reviewed article on ID to be published in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I already sent Rex a request for a correction to this particular statement.  His email address  is in the "contact us" section, if anyone else cares to enlighten him.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 21 2008,12:52





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great. You have no power over me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on April 21 2008,12:56



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
To put it plainly, < I've come to the realization > that creationism is successful because there is a built-in audience for it, not because creationists are especially effective communicators.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice summary by Brian Switek.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I imagine that Expelled will ultimately do better on the DVD circuit than in theaters, being a staple of creationist websites and Christian book stores, although how quickly it fades from theaters will remain to be seen. From what I can see, however, the film is a flop and did not receive anywhere near the attention the filmmakers were hoping for. They advertised the hell out of the film (there was not a day that went by when I didn't see at least two Expelled advertisements on the internet on a variety of websites, including rottentomatoes.com), but it seems that the main audience that went to see it were people who already agreed with it or wanted to see just how bad it really was. Unless there's a huge number of churches that have reserved theaters for the second week, I think it's all downhill from here for Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on April 21 2008,13:00

Quote (Quidam @ April 21 2008,09:38)
< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....iev.php >

Mike Edmondson has owned up.  He made the the "Beware the Believers" movie.  And has this sequel.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I was right? Praise Jesus!  After I fingered him as a suspect on ERV's blog, a lot of people considered it all but certain, but I wasn't going to be satisfied until and if he actually took the credit.  I'm weird that way:  I actually like irrefutable evidence.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 21 2008,13:03

Quote (didymos @ April 21 2008,14:00)
After I fingered him ... on ERV's blog...I wasn't going to be satisfied...I'm weird that way...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:)


Posted by: didymos on April 21 2008,13:14

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 21 2008,11:03)
Quote (didymos @ April 21 2008,14:00)
After I fingered him ... on ERV's blog...I wasn't going to be satisfied...I'm weird that way...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Son of bitch....walked, nay sprinted, into that one.
Posted by: improvius on April 21 2008,13:21

Quote (improvius @ April 21 2008,13:15)
< Another positive review > that gets some of the facts totally wrong:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
One scientist in particular, biologist Richard Sternberg, has become a cause célèbre following his dismissal from the Smithsonian Institution, where he was a fellow until he allowed a peer-reviewed article on ID to be published in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I already sent Rex a request for a correction to this particular statement.  His email address  is in the "contact us" section, if anyone else cares to enlighten him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Update - Roberts already replied to me with a short but very courteous response.  He thanked me, and said he would change the review to say something to the effect that Sternberg "resigned under duress".  So I sent him a response explaining that Sternberg was never an employee, and using the term "resigned" would likely give a false impression that he was.

Hopefully Roberts will update his review accordingly.
Posted by: didymos on April 21 2008,13:26

Poe's Law strikes again.   Otherwise-known-as-shifty-bastard-Kev is gloating over "Beware the Believers":

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....an.html >

Oh, and good news folks:  Chuck Norris liked it.  Sort of.  His tears cure cancer, so he must be right:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....is.html >
Posted by: didymos on April 21 2008,13:52

WAD wants to fill your < chasm >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

You think the following statement from the AAAS is going to help heal the chasm in our society over evolution and ID*?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oh, so that's what < Expelled > is really about:  healing the rift between Science and Faith.  All that stuff on Nazi's and Academic Freedom is just a sideline.  Really, what matters is that the two camps need to come together....like at an intersection or, what's the word I'm looking for?  Crossroads?

Hey, WAD: fill your own chasm.
Posted by: improvius on April 21 2008,14:47

Quote (improvius @ April 21 2008,14:21)
Quote (improvius @ April 21 2008,13:15)
< Another positive review > that gets some of the facts totally wrong:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
One scientist in particular, biologist Richard Sternberg, has become a cause célèbre following his dismissal from the Smithsonian Institution, where he was a fellow until he allowed a peer-reviewed article on ID to be published in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I already sent Rex a request for a correction to this particular statement.  His email address  is in the "contact us" section, if anyone else cares to enlighten him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Update - Roberts already replied to me with a short but very courteous response.  He thanked me, and said he would change the review to say something to the effect that Sternberg "resigned under duress".  So I sent him a response explaining that Sternberg was never an employee, and using the term "resigned" would likely give a false impression that he was.

Hopefully Roberts will update his review accordingly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Still muddled, but I suppose it's an improvement:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
One scientist in particular, biologist Richard Sternberg, has become a cause célèbre following his his resignation, he claims under duress, from the Smithsonian Institution, where as a research fellow and managing editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, he published a peer-reviewed article on ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on April 21 2008,15:03

Quote (didymos @ April 21 2008,12:52)
WAD wants to fill your < chasm >:
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

You think the following statement from the AAAS is going to help heal the chasm in our society over evolution and ID*?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oh, so that's what < Expelled > is really about:  healing the rift between Science and Faith.  All that stuff on Nazi's and Academic Freedom is just a sideline.  Really, what matters is that the two camps need to come together....like at an intersection or, what's the word I'm looking for?  Crossroads?

Hey, WAD: fill your own chasm.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So WAD wants me to believe in God. Fine. I wish he and Ben Stein et al would come out and say it. :angry:

Quit trying to trick me with intelligent design and all that crap. But they have to guarantee a "win."

The real problem is, even if I were to believe in a god, I wouldn’t believe in the “right” one to satisfy them. I would still accept evolution as both a theory and a fact, and while religion makes a belief in the afterlife possible, I would still think that it has nothing whatsoever to do with what you think inside your head (i.e., no hell). I wouldn’t fit in at SWTS. I wouldn’t be a global warming denier. Well, that's not good enough for them, either.

So WAD is fighting two battles – against atheists, and against believers who don’t fudge the science (and we already know this). But my point is, WAD should be talking about these two “chasms” at the very least, then. But in fact, he and his friends are waging a War Against Everything—science, education, the “liberal” media, Hollywood, the best seller list, the art world, the music world, potential film audiences, belly dancers, etc. :) My point is: Who expelled whom? He can rejoin reality any time he wants to for pity’s sake! Once he and Ftk and Kevin & Co. stop going around pushing doors marked “Pull” on this desert isle that they themselves have exiled themselves to, that is.

Nobody kicked them out of the sandbox but themselves, so it's no one else's fault that their battles are multiplying. Yeah, go have a bad day on your kid's birthday about this crap! (It's not like I think that evolution is ever going to thank me for all my much speaking on its behalf.) :)

Someone at my blog said, "This is much ado about nothing" - and really, it is. (It's been a fun nothing, though.) :D
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 21 2008,15:18

< BeliefNet's MovieMom > hates this turkey! I'm willing to bet there are more "faith-based" reviewers who know a stinker when they see one. I'm going to watch out for them, just for fun.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 21 2008,15:20

Quote (didymos @ April 21 2008,11:52)
WAD wants to fill your < chasm >:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

You think the following statement from the AAAS is going to help heal the chasm in our society over evolution and ID*?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oh, so that's what < Expelled > is really about:  healing the rift between Science and Faith.  All that stuff on Nazi's and Academic Freedom is just a sideline.  Really, what matters is that the two camps need to come together....like at an intersection or, what's the word I'm looking for?  Crossroads?

Hey, WAD: fill your own chasm.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: don_quixote on April 21 2008,15:26

This is precious:





"Expelled Flops at Box Office" says Ed Brayton

"Expelled a Box Office Success" says Chris C. Mooney

"I am Labeled a "Creationist Apologist" says Chris C. Mooney

...and he wonders why?
Posted by: Quidam on April 21 2008,15:41

Quote (didymos @ April 21 2008,12:52)
fill your own chasm.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 21 2008,16:19

Quote (don_quixote @ April 21 2008,15:26)
This is precious:





"Expelled Flops at Box Office" says Ed Brayton

"Expelled a Box Office Success" says Chris C. Mooney

"I am Labeled a "Creationist Apologist" says Chris C. Mooney

...and he wonders why?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That is art!
Posted by: Kristine on April 21 2008,18:07

I bow to no one in my respect of Arthur Caplan as a bioethicist - and now, I guess the DI is going to have to list him as another of their "enemies."

< Ben Stein's so-called documentary ‘Expelled’ isn't just bad, it's immoral >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The definition of what science is and what should be taught as science in a world in which Asia and Europe are itching to clean our economic clocks by seeing us throw away our considerable lead in synthetic biology, genomics, agriculture and the biomedical, oceanographic, geological and energy sciences escapes Stein and his producers. This despite the fact they have ample time to regale us with all the documentary stylings involving old movies, public health messages and TV film clips that Michael Moore has already made stale. The failure to say what science is constitutes a huge failing in this cinematic cant.

Science, by the very definition of the term, wants to invoke god or divine intervention as little as possible in seeking explanations for natural phenomena. Is that because, as "Expelled" suggests, scientists hate religion? No. Rather it is because the whole point of science is to press to see how far natural causes and mechanisms can go in explaining what is going on around us. There is not much room in science, although there is in history, religion, philosophy or sociology class, for jumping up and down and invoking god as the explanation of anything and everything. Could such an explanation be true? Sure. Is it science? Hardly. Does the movie get us anywhere close to understanding the difference? Not a bit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


and


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This is the core of what is ethically rotten about this movie. Darwinism did not lead to Nazism in Germany. Nor does Darwinism inherently contain the seeds of Nazism.

There were many nations, such as Brazil, where Darwinism led to no political ideology. There were some such as Britain which embraced Darwinism but saw a considerable number of their population killed trying to eliminate Nazism. There were other nations, such as the Soviet Union, where Darwinism was seen as so dangerous and subversive to state sponsored dreams of social engineering that those who espoused it were killed or exiled and a complete biological fairy tale, Lysenkoism, put into classrooms and agricultural policy ultimately leading to the deaths of millions from starvation.

And there were some nations where Darwinism was greeted with glee because it seemed so compatible with the prevailing ideology of the day. In particular the United States at the turn of the 20th century where robber-baron capitalists like the Carnegies, Mellons, Sumners, Stanfords and yes, even Jack London, could not stop rattling on about how the "survival of the fittest" justified crushing unions, exploiting immigrant labor or being left unregulated to amass huge fortunes while administering monopolies.

Ben Stein apparently understands none of this. He flags Darwin but does not bother to go and stare at the busts of Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, Thomas Malthus so much beloved by American proponents of survival of the fittest.

Worse yet, while frowning at Darwin’s statute in a manly fashion, Stein makes no mention of the key factors driving Nazi ideology — racism, homophobia and hatred of the mentally ill and disabled.

To lay blame for the Holocaust upon Charles Darwin is to engage in a form of Holocaust denial that should forever make Ben Stein the subject of scorn not because of his nudnik concern that evolution somehow undermines morality but because in this contemptible movie he is willing to subvert the key reason why the Holocaust took place — racism — to serve his own ideological end. Expelled indeed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*whistle*
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 21 2008,18:32

Quote (Kristine @ April 21 2008,19:07)
I bow to no one in my respect of Arthur Caplan as a bioethicist - and now, I guess the DI is going to have to list him as another of their "enemies."  <snip>
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


WAD is pleased:


Posted by: Doc Bill on April 21 2008,18:34

However, let us not forget that Ben Stein did not write this movie, Kevin Miller did.

Ben is just the face, albeit one we'd all like to forget.

The architect of this bit of pathologic prevarication is our Kevin who should change his business card to read "documentary" writer.

I'm not letting Ben off the hook, though, he's smart enough to understand what he was promoting which makes him all the more a disgusting figure.

It's clear now (not that it wasn't before!) that Expelled is simply a series of lies strung together, lie after lie after lie, augmented by stolen intellectual property.  Expelled is now expelled.

I'm glad this particular creationist wad is finally shot and we can get on to more pressing discussions such as the trumped-up "academic freedom" bills which seems to be the mode du jour.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 21 2008,18:51

Speaking of Wad

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"The day Darwinism and Intelligent Design can be fairly discussed without fear of reprisal represents the removal of a barrier even greater than the Berlin Wall. When future intellectual historians describe the key events that led to the fall of 'Darwin's Wall,' Ben Stein's Expelled will top the list."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



See it all < here >

He just jinxed the movie like Behe jinxed his stupid book!  Ben should sue him!
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 21 2008,19:10

Quote (Doc Bill @ April 21 2008,16:34)
However, let us not forget that Ben Stein did not write this movie, Kevin Miller did.

Ben is just the face, albeit one we'd all like to forget.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben Stein is given writer credits, and is such an active and willing shill for the movie that I think that he deserves all that he gets.


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 21 2008,21:31

When you're in the mood for self-abuse (no, not THAT kind of self-abuse) you've got to read the Conservapedia article on < Expelled >.

It is so freaking mental.
Posted by: Nomad on April 21 2008,22:00

I found a positive < review >!

It starts off with an interesting premise, that the reviewer wasn't interested because he already knew what the movie was going to say, so why should he go see it to be told it again.

But the examples he picked are telling:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It is a reality of PC liberalism: There is only one credible side to an issue, and any dissent is not only rejected, it is scorned. Global warming. Gay "rights." Abortion "rights." On these and so many other issues there is enlightenment, and then there is the Idiotic Other Side. PC liberalism's power centers are the news media, the entertainment industry and academia, and all are in the clutches of an unmistakable hypocrisy: Theirs is an ideology that preaches the freedom of thought and expression at every opportunity, yet practices absolute intolerance toward dissension.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Those damned "PC liberalists" and their notions about tolerance.  Don't they know this is America, where we only tolerate what the bible tells us to tolerate?  Pardon me, what our ranting fundamentalist leaders TELL US that the bible tells us to tolerate?  I can see why he liked the movie, he fits right in to their demographic.  Intolerance regarding the gays is fine, but intolerance about crackpot pseudoscience, we can't have that.

The actual content regarding the movie is more or less what you'd expect, it's the bits around the edges of the review that I like.  Like his ending, where he says:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Everyone should take the opportunity to see "Expelled" — if nothing else, as a bracing antidote to the atheism-friendly culture of PC liberalism. But it's far more than that. It's a spotlight on the arrogance of this movement and its leaders, a spotlight on the choking intolerance of academia, and a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yeah, tolerance of atheism is such a terrible thing.  Give me some of that good old fashioned religiously fueled intolerance!  He says it all.  The movie isn't really about modern evolutionary theory.  It's about trying to overthrow modern, enlightened culture.  Clearly he's read the wedge document, he knows it's about working to replace a secular democracy with a theocracy.

And then he caps it off with a heaping helping of unwitting irony.  Let me just quote that bit again.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



You got that right Mr Bozell the third.
Posted by: didymos on April 21 2008,22:00

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 21 2008,19:31)
When you're in the mood for self-abuse (no, not THAT kind of self-abuse) you've got to read the Conservapedia article on < Expelled >.

It is so freaking mental.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Enh.  It just doesn't induce that gibbering Lovecraftian horror I was looking for.  C'mon wingnuts, you can do better.  I know you can.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 21 2008,22:21

yeah




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The movie completely omits Theistic Evolution, which is not taught in public school and used primarily by evolutionists to rebut their obvious correlation with atheism. Mark Mathis, an associate editor of Expelled, when asked why alleged religious evolutionists such as Catholic Kenneth R. Miller were not in the film, replied that this form of fallacious liberal logic (see point 6) "would have confused the film unnecessarily."[24]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



thanks conservapedia.  that is hilarious.  fallacious liberal logic kills me.
Posted by: Annyday on April 21 2008,22:31

Make sure to hit the linked article on "liberal logic". It's awesome. You might also look for "professor values"...
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 21 2008,22:44



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"We think we were very above board with them," Mathis said. "... The people who want to attack the film are raising some issues that are really kind of irrelevant issues –- side issues, diversionary issues -– and not addressing the content of the film."

The content, Stein agreed, should be the focus. Asked how he could question Darwinian evolution when those in academic leadership say it's been established as fact, Stein gave one of his patented half-serious, half-joking answers.

"The intelligentsia often is wrong," he said in a serious tone. "I'd say they're wrong at least as often as they're right. We aim to show them that they're wrong again. We're sick of being pushed around by the intelligentsia."

Then he added jokingly, in his famous monotone voice, "Even though I am one of the intelligentsia, we don't like to be pushed around; we don't like to be pushed around by other members of the intelligentsia, and I don't even like pushing myself around."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



wow.  them sombitches are funnier than hell aint it.  arden knows what i mean too. god damn.  funny like a big purple throbber.  

by the way, they're as wrong as often as they're right.  THAT is a null model for anti-realism.  Someone at Baptist Press is even stupider than Ben STein.
Posted by: UnMark on April 21 2008,22:46

Isn't the Conservapedia the site that "refutes" the TalkOrigins Common Creationist Claims?  I remember perusing that list a few months ago, clicking on random topics until I came to an article that blithely brushed aside the ancient age of the earth as a mere "farce."  When I stopped laughing, I closed the browser and successfully attempted to forget all specifics about the site.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 21 2008,22:47

more from there. annyday thanks for pointing that out.  I stopped to look for Nicrophorus in the yard but you pointed out that it is all really great habitat over in the field.




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If you acknowledge this idea that design can be detected scientifically in the universe, then you open up the door to saying, 'Maybe this atheistic view isn't true,' [and] the entire worldview of people who are atheists crashes down around them," Mathis said.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ALL SCIENCE SO FAR!!!!
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 22 2008,03:06

From that conservapedia article about Expelled this make me chuckle, tagged under "Viewer Reception"
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Expelled opened on April 18, 2008, on 1000 screens. It grossed $3.2 million US, or more than $3,000 per screen.[11]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



erm, that's how much it made on the opening weekend. Nothing to do with " Viewer Reception" whatsoever. I guess you can only polish a turd so much...

Elsewhere is this


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Justin Chang wrote the following for the liberal publication Variety, which has a circulation smaller than Conservapedia's daily page views
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How proud they must be!
Posted by: don_quixote on April 22 2008,06:23

Chris Mooney has been wondering why people have accused him of creationist apologetics. Do you think that now his (and Randy's) posts have appeared on Uncommon Descent he will get the message?

< Chris Mooney - Shaken (Not Stirred) by Expelled >
Posted by: CeilingCat on April 22 2008,06:30

< Hector Avalos confirms "Expelled" is a bomb. >  The bad news is < at Box Office Mojo >: They took in $1,205,000 Friday, $990,000 Saturday and $775,000 Sunday.  That's a loooonnngg way from Faherenheit 911!

Avalos also directs us to < the Iowa State Daily > for a "close up" look at the debute in Gonzalez's home town.

I wrote this reply to the article, although it hasn't made it through moderation yet:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dr. Gonzalez states that he was "shocked" to learn that he didn't achieve tenure.  How was this possible, Dr. Gonzalez?  You were on a tenure path at Iowa State for seven years.  You received yearly reviews.  Surely people at those reviews told you that you were missing the requirements for tenure by miles.  You knew that attracting grants and telescope time was vital for achieving tenure, but you were never able to think up a research project good enough to attract grants or telescope time.  Didn't you notice that you weren't bringing any money in and never got to use a telescope?  Helping graduate students attain degrees is another important factor in achieving tenure.  Didn't you notice that not a single one of your graduate students attained a degree in your seven years at Iowa State?

Professor Gonzalez, I think you realized years ago that you weren't going to earn tenure.  I think that's why you wrote "Privileged Planet".  "Martyr" sounds better than "academic failure".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: CeilingCat on April 22 2008,06:45



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Arthur Kaplan: Worse yet, while frowning at Darwin’s statute in a manly fashion, Stein makes no mention of the key factors driving Nazi ideology — racism, homophobia and hatred of the mentally ill and disabled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Even worse, he leaves out the number one cause of murderous anti-semitism, a group that was hating Jews 2000 years ago and which has been slaughtering them in wholesale lots for the last thousand years: Christianity. And not just any old Christians, either.  A few liberal Christians did oppose the Nazis.  Hitler killed about 600 of them.  The Conservative Christians were enthusiastic supporters of the Nazi party.
 
ALL of the top Nazis and all of their minions were Christians.  Hitler only got into power because the Roman Catholic church dismantled the Catholic Zentrum party in return for money and recognition.

See < here > for the gory details of Hitler and Christianity's role in his rise.
Posted by: improvius on April 22 2008,08:05

Quote (UnMark @ April 21 2008,23:46)
Isn't the Conservapedia the site that "refutes" the TalkOrigins Common Creationist Claims?  I remember perusing that list a few months ago, clicking on random topics until I came to an article that blithely brushed aside the ancient age of the earth as a mere "farce."  When I stopped laughing, I closed the browser and successfully attempted to forget all specifics about the site.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, Conservapedia is the site that "refutes" Wikipedia's claims.  Because Wikipedia has a blatant liberal bias.
Posted by: celdd on April 22 2008,08:57

For those who haven't seen it, Matt Chandler who wrote the lyrics for the Beware the Believer video, talks about how it came about over on  < Pharyngula >
Posted by: Kristine on April 22 2008,09:25

Quote (celdd @ April 22 2008,07:57)
For those who haven't seen it, Matt Chandler who wrote the lyrics for the Beware the Believer video, talks about how it came about over on  < Pharyngula >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, what a wish-I-was-a-fly-on-the-wall moment! :p
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That night at a dinner party [director Nathan] Frankowski's wife asked me what I'd been working on for the film. When I told her I was writing a rap she asked me if I wouldn't mind busting out with little sample. Emboldened by the island's finest boxed wine I unwisely obliged.

I'll spare you the gory details of its initial reception. Let it suffice to say this- if you are ever needing to dry up a dinner party in a hurry try busting out the line 'don't you know that this Dick is uncock-fricken-blockable!' wearing a linen napkin doo-rag and singing into a bread stick microphone. It really does the trick.

The next day I was reasonably confident I'd be getting pink-slipped. But it didn't happen.

In fact the producers responded to it quite positively. And to their credit they got what I was going for in the text.

Neither the double meanings nor the purposed ambiguity was lost on them. At least that was my impression. Movie producers in general can be an unscrupulous inscrutable lot.

Be that as it may, I am happy to report the only parts redacted were cut for time, not for content; an unexpected shock considering the previous night's debacle. (A pox upon you Boone's Farm! And your wild strawberry hurricane flavored cabernet too!;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:D He's quite a writer. We should have him over for a little Little Penquin. ;)
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 22 2008,10:24



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Wikipedia has a blatant liberal bias.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So does reality.  :)

Another Christian who gets it:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Rarely do you find a movie so courteous as to write a review into the title, but Ben Stein's crockumentary Expelled does just that.... Intelligent Design is not science. Period. I say this as a committed Christian who firmly believes that God created the earth, the heavens and all the things in them.

< Shots Across the Bow >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: midwifetoad on April 22 2008,11:08



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It may be interesting to hear from professors who teach science who HAVE been granted tenure, even while being known to express doubt that every event experienced by mortals is determined --- completely and solely by natural processes, in respect of which any superior expression of consciousness or will is foreclosed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Maybe we could find a few among those who signed the DI statement. ;)
Posted by: Kristine on April 22 2008,11:13

Now someone has < written to Michael Shermer > calling him a Nazi.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I understand that Shermer is on friendly terms with many ID advocates, including Dembski, Behe, and others. I am sure that they know that Shermer is no Nazi sympathizer, and I wonder if all their supposed knowledge includes that old adage about unintended consequences.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 22 2008,11:23

Quote (Kristine @ April 22 2008,09:13)
Now someone has < written to Michael Shermer > calling him a Nazi.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I understand that Shermer is on friendly terms with many ID advocates, including Dembski, Behe, and others. I am sure that they know that Shermer is no Nazi sympathizer, and I wonder if all their supposed knowledge includes that old adage about unintended consequences.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I wonder if that's a prank. Except for Ben Stein, Jews are usually far more intelligent than that.

Or alternately, it might be Michael Korn using a pseudonym.
Posted by: dheddle on April 22 2008,11:28

Quote (midwifetoad @ April 22 2008,11:08)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It may be interesting to hear from professors who teach science who HAVE been granted tenure, even while being known to express doubt that every event experienced by mortals is determined --- completely and solely by natural processes, in respect of which any superior expression of consciousness or will is foreclosed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Maybe we could find a few among those who signed the DI statement. ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Heh-That would be me on all points. I have tenure (at a public university). I am known as a devout Christian. I firmly believe and have made it known that I think God intelligently designed the universe. And I signed the DI statement.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 22 2008,11:32

Quote (dheddle @ April 22 2008,11:28)
And I signed the DI statement.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What was the wording, Dave?
Posted by: dheddle on April 22 2008,11:45

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,11:32)
 
Quote (dheddle @ April 22 2008,11:28)
And I signed the DI statement.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What was the wording, Dave?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I assume we are talking about their standard dissent:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



which in a certain sense is a statement beyond dispute. That makes it both clever, in a way, and meaningless. Like the anti-abortion bumper statement: "Abortion stops a beating heart." It must be accepted as manifestly true, yet it still sends a message that conveys the holder's position.

People ask me about having signed that all the time. I'm of the school: I did it, so be it. I signed maybe four or five years ago, when it was the DI 300. I knew nothing of the shenanigans of the DI movement. I was contacted, did a little investigating, and thought: here's a group that thinks like I do, that faith and science can live together, so I signed.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 22 2008,11:54

Quote (dheddle @ April 22 2008,11:45)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,11:32)
   
Quote (dheddle @ April 22 2008,11:28)
And I signed the DI statement.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What was the wording, Dave?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I assume we are talking about their standard dissent:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



which in a certain sense is a statement beyond dispute. That makes it both clever, in a way, and meaningless. Like the anti-abortion bumper statement: "Abortion stops a beating heart." It must be accepted as manifestly true, yet it still sends a message that conveys the holder's position.

People ask me about having signed that all the time. I'm of the school: I did it, so be it. I signed maybe four or five years ago, when it was the DI 300. I knew nothing of the shenanigans of the DI movement. I was contacted, did a little investigating, and thought: here's a group that thinks like I do, that faith and science can live together, so I signed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Caveat; I really like you Dave.

Now, the hard stuff.

I don't think any biologist has thought that "random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life" for Decades. There are < many other mechanisms > that would help account for this, and they are likely not complete either. The argument is Straw man attack on evolution. So I'm going to ask you, why did you sign it? Did you think that RM + NS was all there was? Did you feel "qualified" to sign it? Do you regret signing it? Would Jesus sign it?
Posted by: dheddle on April 22 2008,12:02

Richard,

I recognized it as a meaningless strawman in exactly the way you suggested. I simply wanted to be part of that group--I admired them at that point. I would not have signed a blatantly scientifically incorrect statement, but I succumbed to signing  what I recognized as a between-the-lines political statement. I was, I am embarrassed to admit, flattered to be asked. Mea Culpa. By leaps and bounds it is not the worst thing I have ever done.
Posted by: JohnW on April 22 2008,12:03

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,09:54)
Would Jesus sign it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There's no evidence that Jesus could read English, and if the statement was translated into Aramaic, I doubt the phrases "random mutation" and "natural selection" meant much to anyone at the time.  I don't think he would have put his name to anything he didn't understand, so: No.

As to whether he would have signed a more explicit statement of the subtext ("I believe Daddidit"), who knows?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 22 2008,12:08

Quote (dheddle @ April 22 2008,12:02)
Richard,

I recognized it as a meaningless strawman in exactly the way you suggested. I simply wanted to be part of that group--I admired them at that point. I would not have signed a blatantly scientifically incorrect statement, but I succumbed to signing  what I recognized as a between-the-lines political statement. I was, I am embarrassed to admit, flattered to be asked. Mea Culpa. By leaps and bounds it is not the worst thing I have ever done.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's okay Dave. I hold you as decent sort and admitting mistakes is a good thing. I mess up on a regular basis myself, so I know the feeling. I can also see how the concept of ID would be exciting in its early stages... "Looking for made by God" would be fun. Unfortunately, they're looking for "not made by not God"...


Do you want a hug?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 22 2008,12:20

Quote (dheddle @ April 22 2008,10:02)
Richard,

I recognized it as a meaningless strawman in exactly the way you suggested. I simply wanted to be part of that group--I admired them at that point. I would not have signed a blatantly scientifically incorrect statement, but I succumbed to signing  what I recognized as a between-the-lines political statement. I was, I am embarrassed to admit, flattered to be asked. Mea Culpa. By leaps and bounds it is not the worst thing I have ever done.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 22 2008,12:21



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I don't think any biologist has thought that "random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life" for Decades.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Even Darwin was clear in stating that he believed natural selection to be the major, but not only, mechanism of "descent with modification".

Ever since Lewontin et al. discovered rampant protein polymorphism in the 1960s, the "major" assertion has been in trouble. Even Dawkins has stated that when one looks at the level of DNA molecules, most evolution appears to be due to genetic drift (though he is quick to add that at the level of gross morphology, most evolution appears to be due to natural selection).

I've often said that I could sign the text of what the Discovery Institute offers; as David notes, the form of the words is pretty meaningless. It's the agenda that goes with the signing that is problematic. It all goes toward perpetuating a cycle of ignorance.
Posted by: charlie d on April 22 2008,12:21

David:
if you regret having signed the statement, in retrospect, and wish that your name were not associated with it anymore, you can just ask them to take it off.  They have done it for a few other people who did.  

It's not like circumcision, you can take it back (well, there are ways to go back on circumcision, but I don't encourage anyone to find out how they work, and especially look at the gruesome pics).
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 22 2008,12:26

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,10:08)
Do you want a hug?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Richardthughes on April 22 2008,12:28

IT AM BITING THEY'RE, NOT HUGS!!!!111111one  :angry:
Posted by: dheddle on April 22 2008,12:28

Quote (charlie d @ April 22 2008,12:21)
David:
if you regret having signed the statement, in retrospect, and wish that your name were not associated with it anymore, you can just ask them to take it off.  They have done it for a few other people who did.  

It's not like circumcision, you can take it back (well, there are ways to go back on circumcision, but I don't encourage anyone to find out how they work, and especially look at the gruesome pics).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have thought about that and may do it--but I have to fight the "you made your bed now sleep in it" lesson that my father drilled into me. Or, they may decide to drop my name.

Edit: typo
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 22 2008,12:31

Thunderf00t has Why People Laugh at Creationists No. 23 and it's dedicated to our favorite idiot spokesman:


< Ben Stein! >

How many times have we heard Stein make this idiotic statement:

"Darwinism doesn't explain thermodynamics."

Uh, no, it doesn't, and that's relevant why?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 22 2008,12:34

Quote (dheddle @ April 22 2008,12:28)
Quote (charlie d @ April 22 2008,12:21)
David:
if you regret having signed the statement, in retrospect, and wish that your name were not associated with it anymore, you can just ask them to take it off.  They have done it for a few other people who did.  

It's not like circumcision, you can take it back (well, there are ways to go back on circumcision, but I don't encourage anyone to find out how they work, and especially look at the gruesome pics).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have thought about that and may do it--but I have to fight the "you made your bed now sleep in it" lesson that my father drilled into me. Or, they may decide to drop my name.

Edit: typo
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't really agree. That you did sign it is public record. But people can elect to change (hopefully for the better) at any time (or whatever the Calvinist version is.. ;) ) . You're a real scientist doing real science, don't give them the endorsement you've worked so hard for.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 22 2008,12:40

Come on Heddle!  Do it!  It might make a great story too!

"I Escaped The Clutches of The D.I!"
My Saga About My Sin - And My Redemption

Maybe a movie?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,12:44

I'm with Rich (in a biblical sense).  Having your name removed is not the same as denying you signed it in the first place.

I see nothing dishonorable or disreputable about having your name removed.  (Assuming of course, that they'll actually remove it.  Integrity is not their strong suit.)
Posted by: dheddle on April 22 2008,12:49

Quote (J-Dog @ April 22 2008,12:40)
Come on Heddle!  Do it!  It might make a great story too!

"I Escaped The Clutches of The D.I!"
My Saga About My Sin - And My Redemption

Maybe a movie?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I can only say that when I ponder the possibility I am genuinely conflicted. At the same time, I don’t think about it very much. I don’t consider it to be very important. If I ever asked them to remove my name, I would do it quietly, and would only blog about it if they refused. It would be an admission of my mistake, not their mistake, and I wouldn’t use it for blog fodder.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 22 2008,12:53

Quote (dheddle @ April 22 2008,12:49)
Quote (J-Dog @ April 22 2008,12:40)
Come on Heddle!  Do it!  It might make a great story too!

"I Escaped The Clutches of The D.I!"
My Saga About My Sin - And My Redemption

Maybe a movie?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I can only say that when I ponder the possibility I am genuinely conflicted. At the same time, I don’t think about it very much. I don’t consider it to be very important. If I ever asked them to remove my name, I would do it quietly, and would only blog about it if they refused. It would be an admission of my mistake, not their mistake, and I wouldn’t use it for blog fodder.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't see what's wrong in making something right...?
Posted by: blipey on April 22 2008,12:57

Quote (don_quixote @ April 19 2008,04:55)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
From the DI:

This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I always wondered where former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Comical Ali/Baghdad Bob) ended up working.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< He's a pundit? >
Posted by: stevestory on April 22 2008,14:18

Expelled didn't quite hit $3 million this weekend. $2,970,848.

< http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=expelled.htm >

After fri and sat, it was predicted sun it would make $950,000, but when the actual numbers came in it was only $775,000.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 22 2008,14:45

Quote (CeilingCat @ April 22 2008,06:45)


Even worse, he leaves out the number one cause of murderous anti-semitism, a group that was hating Jews 2000 years ago and which has been slaughtering them in wholesale lots for the last thousand years: Christianity. And not just any old Christians, either.  A few liberal Christians did oppose the Nazis.  Hitler killed about 600 of them.  The Conservative Christians were enthusiastic supporters of the Nazi party.
 
ALL of the top Nazis and all of their minions were Christians.  Hitler only got into power because the Roman Catholic church dismantled the Catholic Zentrum party in return for money and recognition.

See < here > for the gory details of Hitler and Christianity's role in his rise.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gregory S. Paul is the phony who claimed that the more religious a country is, the more societal ills it will suffer from, which has been thoroughly debunked.

The Bible does not call for the persecution of Jews. The Roman Catholic Church and Luther, however, did.

Oh, and a Christian would not say the sort of things Hitler said in his table talk.
Posted by: KimvdLinde on April 22 2008,14:46

Quote (stevestory @ April 22 2008,14:18)
Expelled didn't quite hit $3 million this weekend. $2,970,848.

< http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=expelled.htm >

After fri and sat, it was predicted sun it would make $950,000, but when the actual numbers came in it was only $775,000.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course, Xristans do not go to the movies at Sunday, the day of the Lord, Jezus Christ, when you should be idle and spend the day contemplating about the sins of the week before......

Oeps, did I type that..... :O
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,14:47

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:45)
Oh, and a Christian would not say the sort of things Hitler said in his table talk.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You mean like "Gott mit uns"?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 22 2008,14:49

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,14:45)
Oh, and a Christian would not say the sort of things Hitler said in his table talk.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Whilst I think Hitler was a crappy, well, EVERYTHING, you're playing the 'no true Scotsman' card I think.

There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 22 2008,14:50

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,12:45)
Oh, and a Christian would not say the sort of things Hitler said in his table talk.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 22 2008,14:51

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,14:47)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:45)
Oh, and a Christian would not say the sort of things Hitler said in his table talk.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You mean like "Gott mit uns"?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That only signifies theism. I do not think Hitler was an atheist but neither do I think he was a Christian.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,14:51





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< A little revisionist history >, by seangraham
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 22 2008,14:53

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,14:56

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:53)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[1] And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
[2] And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
[3] And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
[4] And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
[5] And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
[6] And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
[7] And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
[8] And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Revelation, chapter 6
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 22 2008,14:58

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,14:56)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:53)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[1] And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
[2] And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
[3] And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
[4] And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
[5] And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
[6] And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
[7] And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
[8] And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Revelation, chapter 6
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I do not see a call to genocide in your citation.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 22 2008,14:58

Robert, you don't wanna argue scripture with Lou. He went to Bob Jones U.  :O
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,14:59

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:58)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,14:56)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:53)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[1] And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
[2] And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
[3] And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
[4] And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
[5] And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
[6] And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
[7] And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
[8] And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Revelation, chapter 6
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I do not see a call to genocide in your citation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Can you see it better now?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 22 2008,15:02

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,12:53)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So we can throw out Genesis and Leviticus now? Yay!
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 22 2008,15:02

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,14:59)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:58)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,14:56)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:53)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[1] And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
[2] And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
[3] And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
[4] And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
[5] And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
[6] And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
[7] And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
[8] And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Revelation, chapter 6
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I do not see a call to genocide in your citation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Can you see it better now?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No. There is a distinct difference between saying "a lot of bad **** is going to go down" and the Israelites slaughtering the inhabitants of Jericho (for example).
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,15:08

Just for emphasis, the phrase "that they should kill one another" uses a word different from the usual one translated as "murder".

It's more a word used for slaying an animal for sacrifice or butchering an animal for the table.

So it's particularly nasty.  Not just "go out and have a war", but "slaughter each other like animals".

Nice god you got there.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,15:10

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,16:02)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,14:59)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:58)
 
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,14:56)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:53)
   
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[1] And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
[2] And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
[3] And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
[4] And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
[5] And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
[6] And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
[7] And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
[8] And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Revelation, chapter 6
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I do not see a call to genocide in your citation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Can you see it better now?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No. There is a distinct difference between saying "a lot of bad **** is going to go down" and the Israelites slaughtering the inhabitants of Jericho (for example).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, it's a deliberate action of the rider to remove peace specifically so that men can slaughter each other.  It's not a general prediction of "man is bad" it's definitive cause and effect.

Read for comprehension.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,15:12

Let's move this thread back on topic.

This is neither the time nor the place for biblical exegesis.
Posted by: Quidam on April 22 2008,15:16

[quote=Robert O'Brien,April 22 2008,13:51]  
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,14:47)
 
That only signifies theism. I do not think Hitler was an atheist but neither do I think he was a Christian.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just what qualifies one as a 'Christian' anyway? Many fundamentalists will claim that Catholics aren't Christian either.  Catholics of course will disagree.

No one knows exactly what went on in Hitler's mind and what he truly believed.  He consistently claimed to be doing God's (the Almighty Creator) work and upheld Christ as an Aryan (not a jew).

It is of course irrelevent whether Hitler was a Christian or just cynically used Christianity to achieve his ends.  Neither reflects well on the German Christians who actually committed the atrocities and the Churches that promoted anti-semitism from the pulpit.  

The church preached hatred against Jews from pre Augustine times    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"the Church admits and avows the Jewish people to be cursed, because after killing Christ they continue to till the ground of an earthly circumcision, an earthly Sabbath, an earthly passover, while the hidden strength or virtue of making known Christ, which this tilling contains, is not yielded to the Jews while they continue in impiety and unbelief, for it is revealed in the New Testament. While they will not turn to God, the veil which is on their minds in reading the Old Testament is not taken away... the Jewish people, like Cain, continue tilling the ground, in the carnal observance of the law, which does not yield to them its strength, because they do not perceive in it the grace of Christ" St. Augustine
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


through to WWII
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In 1941, Bishop Ivan Saric of Sarajevo appropriates Jewish property for his own use. His diocesan newspaper declares that "Jewish greed increases. The Jews have led Europe and the world towards disaster, moral and economic disaster. Their appetite grows till only domination of the whole world will satisfy it." Bishop Aksamovic of Djakovic teaches that "today it is the sacred duty of every citizen to prove his Aryan origins." Meanwhile, Archbishop Aloys Stepinac of Zagreb preaches in a sermon that "it is forbidden to exterminate Gypsies and Jews because they are said to belong to an inferior race"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It was only until the Second Vatican Council in 1965 that the Church publicly stated that jews should not be blamed for the death of Christ.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"True, authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today... The Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God... The Church decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It all seems a bit silly too in light of Christian theology.  If Jesus hadn't been crucified there would be no blood sacrifice and therefore no salvation
Posted by: didymos on April 22 2008,15:21

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,12:53)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does anyone else see this as just a way of basically saying "No.  It was those bloodthirsty Jews"?  And, don't many Christians take the position that even though, maybe, God no longer mandates that sort of thing, at one time he did, and therefore it was to the good?
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 22 2008,15:29

Quote (didymos @ April 22 2008,15:21)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,12:53)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does anyone else see this as just a way of basically saying "No.  It was those bloodthirsty Jews"?  And, don't many Christians take the position that even though, maybe, God no longer mandates that sort of thing, at one time he did, and therefore it was to the good?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you want to discuss this in another thread I am willing.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 22 2008,17:25



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< He's a pundit? >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[H]e needed to earn more than his $168,000 White House salary. "I ran out of money," said Snow....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


o noes! his harblz iz showin! (Arden, you tewtally RAWK!)

(BTW, Revelation almost didn't make it into the Bible. I can't help thinking the world would have been much better off if it hadn't.)
Posted by: J-Dog on April 22 2008,18:13

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,15:29)
Quote (didymos @ April 22 2008,15:21)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,12:53)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does anyone else see this as just a way of basically saying "No.  It was those bloodthirsty Jews"?  And, don't many Christians take the position that even though, maybe, God no longer mandates that sort of thing, at one time he did, and therefore it was to the good?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you want to discuss this in another thread I am willing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This other thread... it will be like Seinfeld.  A thread about .... nothing!  

All the concepts and arguments about the Little Man That Wasn't There.  Except that people get all worked up about their own LMTWT, vs the other guys LMTWT.

A thread about nothing, really.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,18:44

Quote (J-Dog @ April 22 2008,19:13)
This other thread... it will be like Seinfeld.  A thread about .... nothing!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This other thread is not happening, so we can move on now.
Posted by: didymos on April 22 2008,19:18

Alrighty then.  Moving on....
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,19:21

Quote (didymos @ April 22 2008,20:18)
Alrighty then.  Moving on....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's just not topical for this forum.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 22 2008,20:30

Has the Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Ben Stein been posted yet?  Watch it < here >

Click on the April 21st edisode of Behind the Scenes with Paul Crouch Jr (I guess he's the son of the crazy woman with crazy big hair).
Posted by: didymos on April 22 2008,21:43

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,17:21)
Quote (didymos @ April 22 2008,20:18)
Alrighty then.  Moving on....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's just not topical for this forum.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, I know.  I just though it was amusing that everyone basically collectively agreed to that, and then all conversation ceased.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 22 2008,21:57

Quote (didymos @ April 22 2008,22:43)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,17:21)
Quote (didymos @ April 22 2008,20:18)
Alrighty then.  Moving on....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's just not topical for this forum.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, I know.  I just though it was amusing that everyone basically collectively agreed to that, and then all conversation ceased.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought maybe I'd killed every conversation on the board there...

It really did just suddenly get silent after that.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 22 2008,22:31



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< He's a pundit? >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[H]e needed to earn more than his $168,000 White House salary. "I ran out of money," said Snow....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


o noes! his harblz iz showin! (Arden, you tewtally RAWK!)

(BTW, Revelation almost didn't make it into the Bible. I can't help thinking the world would have been much better off if it hadn't.)
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 22 2008,22:55

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,20:30)
Has the Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Ben Stein been posted yet?  Watch it < here >

Click on the April 21st edisode of Behind the Scenes with Paul Crouch Jr (I guess he's the son of the crazy woman with crazy big hair).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did you guys already know about this interview?  You have to watch it if you haven't.  Ben says they have other projects planned after this one and he says all sorts of other crazy shit.  

He's a lunatic who is out of touch with what comes out of his mouth.  Watch the interview!
Posted by: Quidam on April 22 2008,23:33

Wow.  just watched it.  Ben gives the lie to himself so many times.  

He assures us that Darwin - if he were alive today wold say that we should follow the evidence. Er we have Ben, what we haven't done is follow scrtipture.  And we know that we don't need God to explain the motions of planets (as Ben claims we do).  

Towards the end he forgets he's only supposed to be anti-darwinist and unleashes his  anti-science hatred "the last time a scientist told my people what to do, it was to go to a gas chamber"
Posted by: blipey on April 22 2008,23:38



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
He's a lunatic who is out of touch with what comes out of his mouth.  Watch the interview!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How the planets stay in their orbits???  You can't investigate that?  Or does he mean that angels push them around?

He's qualified to comment on biology because he's an economist and was on the The Wonder Years for 3 years?

The religion of Darwinism???  Can they please some up with something new?  At least a little effort?

"Where science can't touch God"???!!!>!!11!1!!  Do they really want that to happen?  Really?

Darwin was wrong because he thought a cell was tomato soup?

And Evolution = OoL, can I slap someone?

Blabbering from incredulity.

Aliens can't have designed man because it isn't Biblical?
Yet ID isn't religion because Aliens could have designed man?  Jesus!


Ftk, can you actually hear any of this?  Do you listen?  Can you explain?

Since you commented on your children and Aliens, could you comment on the bolded part above?

Also, Ftk, Ben Stein said this movie wasn't very serious or heavy handed.  You thought it was.  What do you think HE was aiming for?
Posted by: CeilingCat on April 23 2008,01:10

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,22:55)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,20:30)
Has the Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Ben Stein been posted yet?  Watch it < here >

Click on the April 21st edisode of Behind the Scenes with Paul Crouch Jr (I guess he's the son of the crazy woman with crazy big hair).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did you guys already know about this interview?  You have to watch it if you haven't.  Ben says they have other projects planned after this one and he says all sorts of other crazy shit.  

He's a lunatic who is out of touch with what comes out of his mouth.  Watch the interview!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think I see their problem.  Somebody stuck an LCD TV screen in front of their lens.  And they're looking at the back end of it.
Posted by: paragwinn on April 23 2008,01:11

Anyone have any good suggestions for dealing with Expelled battle fatigue?  ???
Posted by: didymos on April 23 2008,01:55

I don't know, but does < this > help?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

PannenbergOmega

04/22/2008

6:38 pm

Very cool.

“Compass into a world bustling with riches yet to be discovered.”

Ben Stein said something about your research potentially curing Cancer. I may be mistaken, but if you do, that would make one heck of a story.

Expelled 2: How We Cured Cancer.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I just don't even know what to say to that.
Posted by: Stephen Elliott on April 23 2008,02:00

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,22:55)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,20:30)
Has the Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Ben Stein been posted yet?  Watch it < here >

Click on the April 21st edisode of Behind the Scenes with Paul Crouch Jr (I guess he's the son of the crazy woman with crazy big hair).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did you guys already know about this interview?  You have to watch it if you haven't.  Ben says they have other projects planned after this one and he says all sorts of other crazy shit.  

He's a lunatic who is out of touch with what comes out of his mouth.  Watch the interview!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I can kinda see why he makes those claims. Don't get me wrong here, he is wrong but I can (maybe) understand why he is making his claims.

Many people want absolute answers to things they consider important. They may have an affliction that requires absolute truths. I did.
Posted by: Bob O'H on April 23 2008,02:27

Quote (didymos @ April 23 2008,01:55)
I don't know, but does < this > help?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

PannenbergOmega

04/22/2008

6:38 pm

Very cool.

“Compass into a world bustling with riches yet to be discovered.”

Ben Stein said something about your research potentially curing Cancer. I may be mistaken, but if you do, that would make one heck of a story.

Expelled 2: How We Cured Cancer.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I just don't even know what to say to that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ask "Wool, cotton or artificial fibres?"?
Posted by: CeilingCat on April 23 2008,03:50

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 22 2008,14:53)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 22 2008,14:49)
There is a biblical tradition of God mandated genocide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the Hebrew Scriptures!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Christians usually refer to the "Hebrew Scriptures" as the "Old Testament".  Are you denying Scripture?  On second thought, don't answer that.  Nobody cares.
Posted by: CeilingCat on April 23 2008,03:52

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,20:30)
Has the Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Ben Stein been posted yet?  Watch it < here >

Click on the April 21st edisode of Behind the Scenes with Paul Crouch Jr (I guess he's the son of the crazy woman with crazy big hair).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did anybody else's Gaydar go off as soon as Paul Crouch Jr. started talking?  Mark my words, we're going to hear about this boy someday.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 23 2008,09:33

I'm calling Sal a liar


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Walt Ruloff mentioned that in filming Expelled he observed there is active suppression of the exploration of RNA synthesis at places like the NIH. These discoveries would overturn much of neo-Darwinism but these medical advances can’t be funded because they violate the party line.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Link >
Sal, we know you would say anything to advance your cause, but do you have the slightest bit of evidence to back this up? To me it seems that "expelled" could have focussed on this issue, if true, and had a blockbuster on their hands about how "darwinists" were holding up the cure for cancer.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 23 2008,09:38

Quote (CeilingCat @ April 23 2008,03:52)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,20:30)
Has the Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Ben Stein been posted yet?  Watch it < here >

Click on the April 21st edisode of Behind the Scenes with Paul Crouch Jr (I guess he's the son of the crazy woman with crazy big hair).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did anybody else's Gaydar go off as soon as Paul Crouch Jr. started talking?  Mark my words, we're going to hear about this boy someday.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, the apple wouldn't < have fallen far > from the alleged tree.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,09:48

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 23 2008,10:33)
I'm calling Sal a liar
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm calling the sky blue.
Posted by: charlie d on April 23 2008,10:05

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 23 2008,09:33)
I'm calling Sal a liar
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Walt Ruloff mentioned that in filming Expelled he observed there is active suppression of the exploration of RNA synthesis at places like the NIH. These discoveries would overturn much of neo-Darwinism but these medical advances can’t be funded because they violate the party line.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Link >
Sal, we know you would say anything to advance your cause, but do you have the slightest bit of evidence to back this up? To me it seems that "expelled" could have focussed on this issue, if true, and had a blockbuster on their hands about how "darwinists" were holding up the cure for cancer.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL, sure.  There has been no hype at all in the professional literature about RNA-mediated gene regulation.

And what better and more cunning way for the NIH to suppress the study of the role of miRNAs in cancer than funding grants with titles like:

"Small RNA targeted gene activation for the treatment of prostate cancer"
"Tumor targeted RNAi by novel nanovectors for molecular therapy of prostate cancer"
"PPAR-gamma regulation of micro RNA metabolism in colon cancer"
"Analysis of BRCA1/non-coding RNA interactions"
"Typing the Transcriptome in Cancer Using Splicing Array"
"RNA interference" (NCI-funded)

And these are just the most obviously relevant titles in the first 50 grants (of 1,150 total) retrieved by a search of the < CRISP database > of NIH-funded projects with the terms "Cancer AND RNA".  Outside of the cancer field, "RNAi" retrieves 671 grants, "miRNA" 130, "RNA interference" (phrase) 1318, and I could go on.

The Darwinist orthodoxy cabal is diabolical that way.
Posted by: Kristine on April 23 2008,10:33

So… Does Ben Stein have cancer? Or does someone close to him have it? :O This is beginning to look like a “They’re suppressing alternative cures”/”My kid got autism from mercury in drugs and they’re all covering it up” kind of a phenomenon – a hyperbolic fight extrapolated from a personal tragedy.
Posted by: dogdidit on April 23 2008,10:54

Quote (Kristine @ April 23 2008,10:33)
So… Does Ben Stein have cancer? Or does someone close to him have it? :O This is beginning to look like a “They’re suppressing alternative cures”/”My kid got autism from mercury in drugs and they’re all covering it up” kind of a phenomenon – a hyperbolic fight extrapolated from a personal tragedy.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, I think this particular hobby horse is being ridden by Walt Ruloff, the Executive Producer (i.e. it was his money, not Ben's) and Chief Conspiracy Theorist of Expelled. The suppressed cancer cure story is to scare the rubes.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 23 2008,11:12



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< He's a pundit? >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[H]e needed to earn more than his $168,000 White House salary. "I ran out of money," said Snow....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


o noes! his harblz iz showin! (Arden, you tewtally RAWK!)

(BTW, Revelation almost didn't make it into the Bible. I can't help thinking the world would have been much better off if it hadn't.)
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,11:26

Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 23 2008,12:12)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< He's a pundit? >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
[H]e needed to earn more than his $168,000 White House salary. "I ran out of money," said Snow....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


o noes! his harblz iz showin! (Arden, you tewtally RAWK!)

(BTW, Revelation almost didn't make it into the Bible. I can't help thinking the world would have been much better off if it hadn't.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Deja vu? >
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,11:47

< Good article >.

< Great TARD > in the comments.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,12:12

< Cameron sets us all straight once and for all >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If Evolution were true and ID were not, we wouldn’t even have scientific theories. To have a plausible theory you must first be able to do science. Science requires an observer (who uses the laws of logic). It makes no sense to have a theory which says “people evolved from non-intelligence, to then have intelligence, and happen to come up with theories”.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on April 23 2008,13:46

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,09:47)
< Good article >.

< Great TARD > in the comments.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My favorite part:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

sarah - April 23, 2008:

What’s worse is when you go back further than the monkey…everything came out of slim. So is that how much you are worth….are you worth only slim?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Slim...Shady?  Fast?  Trimspa? What?

There's a good idiom lurking in there, though: "Whatever, man. That shit goes back further than the monkey."
Posted by: didymos on April 23 2008,13:55

[quote=didymos,April 23 2008,11:46][/quote]
Holy crap.  Her blog rules!  It's got a  cover of "Amazing Grace" for theme music, with (apparently) guest star Kenny G, no comments whatsoever, and this < post >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Do You Hate Jesus?  Posted by: sarah-luvvom | June 23, 2007

Click < here > if you hate Jesus.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on April 23 2008,14:04

Slim Pickens...
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 23 2008,14:06

Quote (didymos @ April 23 2008,13:46)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,09:47)
< Good article >.

< Great TARD > in the comments.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My favorite part:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

sarah - April 23, 2008:

What’s worse is when you go back further than the monkey…everything came out of slim. So is that how much you are worth….are you worth only slim?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Slim...Shady?  Fast?  Trimspa? What?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 23 2008,14:08

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,09:47)
< Good article >.

< Great TARD > in the comments.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What about it, Lou? Are you worth only slim? You God-hater, you!
:angry:
Posted by: didymos on April 23 2008,14:08

I stand corrected:  she has 28 comments.
Posted by: paragwinn on April 23 2008,14:12



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"Whatever, man. That shit goes back further than the monkey."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey, that's no way to refer to the Lawgiver. Without him, humans and apes wouldn't be living in peace and harmony.

oh....wait...paging Dr. Zira...
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,14:36

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 23 2008,15:08)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,09:47)
< Good article >.

< Great TARD > in the comments.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What about it, Lou? Are you worth only slim? You God-hater, you!
:angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I must confess, I'm probably worth less than < Slim >, < Slim >, or < Slim >, by a great deal.
Posted by: didymos on April 23 2008,14:37

OK, I'm tenatively calling bullshit on something, but don't know if it really is.  The next-to-latest DI "blog" posting claims that Guillermo Gonzales invented the concept of the Galactic Habitable Zone, as part of their ongoing "he wuz teh ekspelldz.  He can haz tenur?" campaign. As far as I know, he's just a proponent, and maybe introduced the term, as best I can tell, right?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 23 2008,14:45

Tho of course Dembski will say that < this > was all part of their fiendishly clever Master Plan.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 23 2008,14:53

[quote=Lou FCD,April 23 2008,11:26][/quote]
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Deja vu?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Sorry. Stinkin' Verizon choked again!

OK, to atone for my ISP's sins, I'll post something original:

< John says... >. Sorry, I'm new to iB code. When I tried to embed the picture itself, I kept getting errors.


Posted by: carlsonjok on April 23 2008,14:57

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 23 2008,14:45)
Tho of course Dembski will say that < this > was all part of their fiendishly clever Master Plan.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think I found the ID movements playbook.


Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,14:58

There you go.

Just push the "image" button, and paste in the URL.
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 23 2008,15:01

Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 23 2008,14:53)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,11:26)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Deja vu?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





< John says... >. Sorry, I'm new to iB code. When I tried to embed the picture itself, I kept getting errors.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The lawsuit is here!


< Yoko sues! >
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,15:02

Quote (didymos @ April 23 2008,15:37)
OK, I'm tenatively calling bullshit on something, but don't know if it really is.  The next-to-latest DI "blog" posting claims that Guillermo Gonzales invented the concept of the Galactic Habitable Zone, as part of their ongoing "he wuz teh ekspelldz.  He can haz tenur?" campaign. As far as I know, he's just a proponent, and maybe introduced the term, as best I can tell, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This 2006 Paper > On the “Galactic Habitable Zone” by Nikos Prantzos (.pdf) has these references:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
9. Gonzalez, G. (1997), MNRAS, 285:403-412
10. Gonzalez, G. (2005), Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 35:555-606
11. Gonzalez, G., Brownlee, D., Ward, P. (2001), Icarus, 152: 185-200
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That should get you started looking...


Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,15:08

From that .pdf I just linked:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Habitability on a larger scale was considered a few years ago, by Gonzalez et al. (2001) who introduced the concept of Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: dogdidit on April 23 2008,15:22

Quote (Reginald Beasley @ April 23 2008,15:01)
 
The lawsuit is here!

< Yoko sues! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hint: before posting, check upthread to see if Arden Chatfield has < beaten you to it. >
:angry:  :angry:  :angry:
Posted by: Quidam on April 23 2008,15:27

< http://uk.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUKN2320158220080423 >
Yoko sues filmmakers over "Imagine"

Yoko Ono, son, Sean Ono Lennon, and Julian Lennon, John Lennon's son from his first marriage, along with privately held publisher EMI Blackwood Music Inc filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking to bar the filmmakers and their distributors from continuing to use "Imagine" in the movie.

They are also seeking unspecified damages.
Posted by: Quidam on April 23 2008,15:29

Oh whoops - should have refreshed the page before posting.

Mea Tard
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,15:32

Well, it's easy to get excited when you've got what you believe to be a scoop in your hands.

We've all done it, don't sweat it.

You've got to be quick around here.
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 23 2008,15:34

Quote (dogdidit @ April 23 2008,15:22)
Quote (Reginald Beasley @ April 23 2008,15:01)
 
The lawsuit is here!

< Yoko sues! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hint: before posting, check upthread to see if Arden Chatfield has < beaten you to it. >
:angry:  :angry:  :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He should have been more clear about it!  I did a quick search for "Yoko" and "sue" and got all excited.

I still have the first non-subtle scoop of Yoko suing, I still win the 40 dollars :P
Posted by: dogdidit on April 23 2008,15:52

Quote (Reginald Beasley @ April 23 2008,15:34)
         
Quote (dogdidit @ April 23 2008,15:22)
           
Quote (Reginald Beasley @ April 23 2008,15:01)
 
The lawsuit is here!

< Yoko sues! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hint: before posting, check upthread to see if Arden Chatfield has < beaten you to it. >
:angry:  :angry:  :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He should have been more clear about it!  I did a quick search for "Yoko" and "sue" and got all excited.

I still have the first non-subtle scoop of Yoko suing, I still win the 40 dollars :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think it was a bottle of single malt but either way, mazel tov! :)

Tom
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 23 2008,15:54

Quote (Kristine @ April 23 2008,11:33)
So… Does Ben Stein have cancer? Or does someone close to him have it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm thinking Nixon had a cancer on his presidency. And Stein was there too.
Posted by: Kristine on April 23 2008,16:06

Quote (CeilingCat @ April 23 2008,02:52)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,20:30)
Has the Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Ben Stein been posted yet?  Watch it < here >

Click on the April 21st edisode of Behind the Scenes with Paul Crouch Jr (I guess he's the son of the crazy woman with crazy big hair).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did anybody else's Gaydar go off as soon as Paul Crouch Jr. started talking?  Mark my words, we're going to hear about this boy someday.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gaydar, yes, and < something else >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Paul Crouch, Jr. leads Dallas area-based Trinity Broadcasting Network, which televises many leading evangelists. He has written a letter to J. Lee Grady of Charisma magazine, and in it he argues that Sen. Chuck Grassley's probe of six leading ministries, including some of the preaching stars of TBN, is potentially "devastating" to religious freedom.

He also rips Ole Anthony of Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based group that has long been a watchdog of televangelists. Click here for the letter.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
After finally getting over my shock at J. Lee Grady’s editorial blah, blah... I see that Mr. Grady is once again heading into treacherous waters. His recent editorial about U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley’s call for an investigation of the finances of several prominent television ministries is something that could not only harm the church as we know it today, but the body of Christ as a whole. blah blah... Put aside your personal opinions about any of the six ministries being targeted, and forget how you feel about Christian television as a whole. The much bigger questions we should all be asking are: Do we want the government deciding anything when it comes to the faith we all hold dear? Should government be allowed to dictate what kind a car a minister can drive, or how large a house is permissible and even how much a minister may receive as a salary?   Do we want to establish another Church of England, or was that why our forefathers came to this nation in the first place? Separation of church and state is a foundational principle guaranteed in our Constitution, and Mr. Grady’s editorial seems to be ignorant of that fact! [Gee, they want separation now]

Also, let’s look at the “source” of Senator Grassley’s information. blah blah... (Read a book by Wendy Duncan called, I Can’t Hear God Anymore. Enough said….) Why Ole mainly focuses in on “televangelism” is interesting to me, and blah blah...What about the Catholic church, Jewish organizations, or even the Muslims? You get my point, blah, blah...

I leave you with a quote from Martin Niemoeller who was a prominent German pastor put in a concentration camp by the Nazis in 1937: first they came for the blah, blah...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Another Godwin's Law gadfly.
Posted by: don_quixote on April 23 2008,16:37

Chris has finally lost the plot:

< Paranoid delusions at The Intersection >
Posted by: dnmlthr on April 23 2008,16:47

Quote (don_quixote @ April 23 2008,22:37)
Chris has finally lost the plot:

< Paranoid delusions at The Intersection >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sounds like he's taking the ball and going home.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 23 2008,17:00

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,15:08)
From that .pdf I just linked:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Habitability on a larger scale was considered a few years ago, by Gonzalez et al. (2001) who introduced the concept of Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin....9625890 >
Posted by: didymos on April 23 2008,17:11

Quote (dnmlthr @ April 23 2008,14:47)
Quote (don_quixote @ April 23 2008,22:37)
Chris has finally lost the plot:

< Paranoid delusions at The Intersection >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sounds like he's taking the ball and going home.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What, like he's going to be any less mocked  or criticized because he's got a new host?  Unless he starts filtering the comments, I don't know how much it'll matter where he posts, because currently it's working not at all like a charm.
He's still annoying people.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 23 2008,17:14

Quote (CeilingCat @ April 23 2008,01:52)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 22 2008,20:30)
Has the Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Ben Stein been posted yet?  Watch it < here >

Click on the April 21st edisode of Behind the Scenes with Paul Crouch Jr (I guess he's the son of the crazy woman with crazy big hair).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did anybody else's Gaydar go off as soon as Paul Crouch Jr. started talking?  Mark my words, we're going to hear about this boy someday.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


His father has paid out hundreds of thousands in hush money to butt boys.  Maybe there is a gay gene?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,17:21

Quote (midwifetoad @ April 23 2008,18:00)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,15:08)
From that .pdf I just linked:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Habitability on a larger scale was considered a few years ago, by Gonzalez et al. (2001) who introduced the concept of Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin....9625890 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did you read the whole paper I linked, by chance?

Appropriately enough, he's critical of the GHZ idea and the paper sets out to deflate it.

He makes some statements that to my layman's ear sound a lot like "Gonzales pulled that assumption out of his ass, and here's why it's no good."
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,17:37

I've put out an EMail to one of those Astronomological Sciency type guys about the paper.

I'll post whatever I might get back.


Posted by: JLT on April 23 2008,18:36

< The Expelled producers reply: >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Executive Producers of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed Statement on Lawsuit by Yoko Ono

The fair use doctrine is a well established copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism.

We are disappointed therefore that Yoko Ono and others have decided to challenge our free speech right to comment on the song Imagine in our documentary film.

Based on the fair use doctrine, news commentators and film documentarians regularly use material in the same way we do in EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed .

Premise Media acknowledges that Ms. Yoko Ono did not license the song for use in the Film. Instead, a very small portion of the song was used under the fair use doctrine.

Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the Imagine clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry. Unbiased viewers of the film will also understand that the Imagine clip was used to contrast the messages in the Documentary and that the clip was not used as an endorsement within Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In short: OH NOES WE'RE BEING EXPELLED!

They should start immediately with producing a new movie.
Posted by: ERV on April 23 2008,18:43

Fine.  It was fair use.  So why did they ask 'The Killers' and not Yoko Ono?

God they are retarded.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 23 2008,18:51

It seems obvious that they did not wish to enrich the Lennon estate.

They may do so to a far larger extent now by the expedient of hacking off Yoko Ono.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,19:16

A legitimate fear of being
< Expelled >.


< At Science >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Hundreds of scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) say they have personally experienced political interference in their work, according to a survey released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The advocacy group, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, argues that the survey shows a pattern of political misuse of science leading to weaker protections for public health. EPA says that the concerns may largely reflect a misunderstanding of how policy is made.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Among the findings: 889 scientists had "personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the last 5 years." Some 394 of these scientists reported that their own findings had been misrepresented by EPA officials. In addition, 285 noted instances in which data had been selected or omitted to weaken a regulation, and 224 had been ordered to "inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document." Scientists who reported political interference tended to work in offices that write regulations rather than in basic research labs. Hundreds said they feared retaliation by officials if they voiced concerns about EPA regulations.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Reginald Beasley on April 23 2008,20:17

Quote (ERV @ April 23 2008,18:43)
Fine.  It was fair use.  So why did they ask 'The Killers' and not Yoko Ono?

God they are retarded.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This will come up in court.  

For example, if your gas stove stops working in your apartment and you refuse to pay rent and your landlord decides to take you to court, one of the first things the judge says is "Okay, what reasonable measures did you take to alert the landlord of the situation?" and you respond to him, "Well, none your honour." the judge will laugh at you.

It doesnt make it an open-shut case, but it does not bode well for Premise that they never asked for licensing rights.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,20:28

Quote (JLT @ April 23 2008,19:36)
< The Expelled producers reply: >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The fair use doctrine is a well established copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


IANAL, but it sure seems to me like the part I bolded would apply to commentary and criticism of the song.

It doesn't mean you can use "Imagine" to criticize something other than "Imagine".
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 23 2008,20:50

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,17:21)
Quote (midwifetoad @ April 23 2008,18:00)
 
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,15:08)
From that .pdf I just linked:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Habitability on a larger scale was considered a few years ago, by Gonzalez et al. (2001) who introduced the concept of Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin....9625890 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did you read the whole paper I linked, by chance?

Appropriately enough, he's critical of the GHZ idea and the paper sets out to deflate it.

He makes some statements that to my layman's ear sound a lot like "Gonzales pulled that assumption out of his ass, and here's why it's no good."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you suggesting that coining the term Galactic Habitable Zones is equivalent to coining the term Cold Fusion?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 23 2008,21:04

Quote (midwifetoad @ April 23 2008,21:50)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,17:21)
 
Quote (midwifetoad @ April 23 2008,18:00)
 
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,15:08)
From that .pdf I just linked:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Habitability on a larger scale was considered a few years ago, by Gonzalez et al. (2001) who introduced the concept of Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin....9625890 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did you read the whole paper I linked, by chance?

Appropriately enough, he's critical of the GHZ idea and the paper sets out to deflate it.

He makes some statements that to my layman's ear sound a lot like "Gonzales pulled that assumption out of his ass, and here's why it's no good."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you suggesting that coining the term Galactic Habitable Zones is equivalent to coining the term Cold Fusion?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Pending further review, it would appear that way.
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on April 23 2008,21:09

Quote (JLT @ April 23 2008,18:36)
< The Expelled producers reply: >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Executive Producers of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed Statement on Lawsuit by Yoko Ono

The fair use doctrine is a well established copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism.

We are disappointed therefore that Yoko Ono and others have decided to challenge our free speech right to comment on the song Imagine in our documentary film.

Based on the fair use doctrine, news commentators and film documentarians regularly use material in the same way we do in EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed .

Premise Media acknowledges that Ms. Yoko Ono did not license the song for use in the Film. Instead, a very small portion of the song was used under the fair use doctrine.

Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the Imagine clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry. Unbiased viewers of the film will also understand that the Imagine clip was used to contrast the messages in the Documentary and that the clip was not used as an endorsement within Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In short: OH NOES WE'RE BEING EXPELLED!

They should start immediately with producing a new movie.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have some music suggestions:

Poor, poor, pitiful me, by Warren Zevon.

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all, Hee-Haw gang.

Liar, by Henry Rollins.

Wonderful World (don't know much about [Nazi] history, don't know much [evolutionary] biology) , by Sam Cooke
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 23 2008,21:21

I seem to have misplaced the link to the Youtube video that shows Imagine in the Ben Stein pig.  Of course asking someone to post it in this thread would no doubt  break some rule about linking to unauthorized copyright whatever.  

And of course I would never ask someone to pm that link to me either.  No way!

Chris

editz - Never mind I just found it on Wiki.  Stein uses PZ to lead up to the song Imagine where we're treated to visuals of Joseph Stalin.  Ben Stein has no mind.
Posted by: stevestory on April 23 2008,21:41

Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ April 23 2008,22:09)
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


One of my favorite lines ever.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 23 2008,21:50

Cross-posts, originally from Talkorigins:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Here's a case revealing what a lawyer advised one movie producer:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stay Free!: There's a scene where a woman's cell phone rings and she
has the "Rocky" theme ring tone. I noticed that you even cleared that!
I would have thought that could be an example of fair use.


Sewell: I thought so too. It's only six seconds! But our lawyer said
we needed to clear it. So I called Sprint, which owns the ring tone
master rights, and they gave it to me for free because they saw it as
product placement. But then I called EMI, which owns the publishing
rights and they asked for $10,000. I said no way--even the classics
weren't getting that much. Luckily, we were able to get it for less.


Stay Free!: How much did it cost for the average song?


Sewell: It depends on how many entities are attached to it. Our
typical total cost for a classic was about $15,000-20,000, split
between publisher and master rights. With the Rocky theme, the
publishers didn't want to overexpose the song. That was the issue with
Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack" as well.


< http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/06/mad_hot_ballroo.html >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Supposing this lawyer advised correctly, the only other defense that I
could think "Expelled" might have is that this is criticism or parody
of the work "Imagine". Yet I can't see how either of those would fly,
for there is no actual parody (only an attempted contrast between what
Lennon imagined, and what they portray as the reality of irreligion),
nor is it a criticism of the work itself. It criticizes the ideas of
Lennon, but it is not the ideas that are copyrighted, only the form in
which those ideas is presented is copyrighted.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------






---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It criticizes the ideas of Lennon, but it is not the ideas that are copyrighted, only the form in which those ideas are presented is copyrighted.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'd like to add to those comments of mine by saying that only in vaguest sense are they even criticizing Lennon's ideas. Essentially they're just generally disagreeing with his general disparagement of religion, not at all making a direct criticism of even the words he used to formulate those ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen D
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 23 2008,22:56

Sorry if this has already been discussed, I'm behind in the thread but I wanted to say this Chuck Norris article is historical for many reasons.  You have to read it to believe it:

< Win Ben Stein's Monkey - Chuck Norris, Town Hall.com >
Posted by: Quidam on April 23 2008,23:37

If they get away with it anyone could simply play whatever music one wanted by providing an intro commentary like

"Loving children is bad, MKay, Sting thinks the Russians love their children and look what they did"

... believe me when I say to you ...

0yXgLGix6v4
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 24 2008,03:15



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 24 2008,03:17

I'm sure they can use the EF to determine who owes what where when how why and to whom.
Posted by: CeilingCat on April 24 2008,03:36

< Bad news for Expelled >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There is no fixed amount of permitted usage that is set forth in the fair use statute and the cases do not define any fixed amount of usage.  For those who continue to believe in the absolutely false and incorrect belief that there is any fixed amount of usage that will be acceptable under the fair use doctrine (read the numerous articles on my site dealing with fair use but especially “Fair Use: Further, Further Issues.”  Click on “Articles for Writers and Publishers”), a case from the Sixth Circuit should give you nightmares.

       In Bridgeport Music, Inc. et. al. vs. Dimension Films et. al., the Court found that the use of 3 notes, lasting 2 seconds, from a sound recording called “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” (“Get Off” in the opinion) in the track called “100 Miles and Runnin” (“100 Miles” in the opinion) contained in the sound track of a motion picture called “I Got the Hook Up” (“Hook Up” in the opinion) was not fair use.
                    ...
In other words, the appellate Court found that the standard that might otherwise be applied in determining whether a use was a fair use, a standard that looked to the quantity of material taken from the protected work, was not applicable to the taking of material from a protected sound recording.
                    ...
In a footnote, the Court stated:
“In most copyright actions, the issue is whether the infringing work is substantially similar to the original work. . . . The scope of inquiry is much narrower when the work in question is a sound recording. The only issue is whether the actual sound recording has been used without authorization. Substantial similarity is not an issue . . . .” Bradley C. Rosen, Esq., 22 CAUSES OF ACTION § 12 (2d ed. 2003).

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


On the other hand, I remember reading an article on a commercial disk copying program back in the eight bit computer era that opened up with a sample from a Walt Disney pirate song and they apparently got away with it.

Still, my advice is to apologize and settle out of court.  I think Jesus had some similar advice:

Matthew 5:25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.

But What Would Jesus Know about that?
Posted by: CeilingCat on April 24 2008,03:59



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
We are disappointed therefore that Yoko Ono and others have decided to challenge our free speech right to comment on the song Imagine in our documentary film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll bet his iPOD is filled with songs he has a free speech right to comment on.
Posted by: didymos on April 24 2008,04:34

Quote (CeilingCat @ April 24 2008,01:36)
But What Would Jesus Know about that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He who lives by the tard, dies by the tard?
Posted by: dogdidit on April 24 2008,06:27

Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ April 23 2008,21:09)
   
Quote (JLT @ April 23 2008,18:36)
< The Expelled producers reply: >

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Executive Producers of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed Statement on Lawsuit by Yoko Ono

The fair use doctrine is a well established copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism.

We are disappointed therefore that Yoko Ono and others have decided to challenge our free speech right to comment on the song Imagine in our documentary film.

Based on the fair use doctrine, news commentators and film documentarians regularly use material in the same way we do in EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed .

Premise Media acknowledges that Ms. Yoko Ono did not license the song for use in the Film. Instead, a very small portion of the song was used under the fair use doctrine.

Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the Imagine clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry. Unbiased viewers of the film will also understand that the Imagine clip was used to contrast the messages in the Documentary and that the clip was not used as an endorsement within Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In short: OH NOES WE'RE BEING EXPELLED!

They should start immediately with producing a new movie.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have some music suggestions:

Poor, poor, pitiful me, by Warren Zevon.

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all, Hee-Haw gang.

Liar, by Henry Rollins.

Wonderful World (don't know much about [Nazi] history, don't know much [evolutionary] biology) , by Sam Cooke
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Warren Zevon has some advice:

Send lawyers, guns, and money
The shit has hit the fan!!

Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 24 2008,06:32



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Are you suggesting that coining the term Galactic Habitable Zones is equivalent to coining the term Cold Fusion?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Come now; Pons and Fleischman at least had experimental evidence for cold fusion. It was a basically minor effect from a close to irreproducible experiment, but that's got to count for something.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 24 2008,06:35

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 23 2008,19:51)
It seems obvious that they did not wish to enrich the Lennon estate.

They may do so to a far larger extent now by the expedient of hacking off Yoko Ono.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


False WAD was right. Expelled! is looking like a home run:


Posted by: Doc Bill on April 24 2008,07:46

Obviously, the producers are using the Imagine Ploy to garner publicity.

I can prove it!

Google News reports about 60 articles on Expelled the Movie.

Google News reports about 280 articles on Yoko Sues Expelled.

The Expelled producers are vewy, vewy cwafty wabbit hunters!  Shhhhh!
Posted by: Richard Simons on April 24 2008,08:26

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 23 2008,22:56)
Sorry if this has already been discussed, I'm behind in the thread but I wanted to say this Chuck Norris article is historical for many reasons.  You have to read it to believe it:

< Win Ben Stein's Monkey - Chuck Norris, Town Hall.com >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Was it by accident or by design that it has an illustration of a booby alongside it?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 24 2008,09:25

< Make no mistake, Yoko WILL sue your ass. > :angry:
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 24 2008,09:42

I don't know why Yoko's claim is for the profits of the "Expelled" movie. My back of the envelope calculation for statutory damages if she wins indicates that they would owe her close to $4 billion as of today (given 1,052 theaters, $250K/infringement, average of 3 showings per day). Might as well just bankrupt Premise Media entirely.

Somebody should pass along to them that they should look in discovery for who, exactly, suggested using "Imagine" in the way they did. It might have been in house, but it could also be that an outside group might be identified as a collusive infringer and provide another pocketbook to empty. It probably wouldn't go so far as getting directly to Howard Ahmanson, Jr.s really deep pockets, but it might go a step in that direction.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 24 2008,09:52

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 24 2008,09:42)
I don't know why Yoko's claim is for the profits of the "Expelled" movie. My back of the envelope calculation for statutory damages if she wins indicates that they would owe her close to $4 billion as of today (given 1,052 theaters, $250K/infringement, average of 3 showings per day). Might as well just bankrupt Premise Media entirely.

Somebody should pass along to them that they should look in discovery for who, exactly, suggested using "Imagine" in the way they did. It might have been in house, but it could also be that an outside group might be identified as a collusive infringer and provide another pocketbook to empty. It probably wouldn't go so far as getting directly to Howard Ahmanson, Jr.s really deep pockets, but it might go a step in that direction.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*crosses fingers*


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 24 2008,10:29

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko Ono is a crazy bitch.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 24 2008,10:35

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,10:29)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko Ono is a crazy bitch.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Fancy suing someone for stealing something you own!


Posted by: Richardthughes on April 24 2008,10:45

Great YouTube

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v....rl=http >
Posted by: improvius on April 24 2008,10:52

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,11:29)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko Ono is a crazy bitch.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And you'd think that would be a good reason not to steal her stuff.
Posted by: ERV on April 24 2008,11:11

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In addition to Premise, based in Dallas, and Rampant Films, located in Sherman Oaks, Calif., the suit names Salt Lake City-based distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures Inc. Stein, the 63-year-old former speechwriter for President Richard Nixon, isn't named in the suit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Premise Media is not located in Dallas.  It is in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Why is all this Dallas stuff going on?

Is this whole mess one big Dembski spooge?

Edit:
Dallas-- Where the XVIVO 'suit' was filed
Dallas-- EXPELLED premier
Dallas-- This Yoko Ono stuff
Dallas-- Dembski
Dallas-- Institute for Creation Research

?
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 24 2008,11:18



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
4/21/2008: $227 per theater
4/22/2008: $216 per theater
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's a blockbuster, all right!
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 24 2008,11:29

Quote (ERV @ April 24 2008,11:11)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In addition to Premise, based in Dallas, and Rampant Films, located in Sherman Oaks, Calif., the suit names Salt Lake City-based distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures Inc. Stein, the 63-year-old former speechwriter for President Richard Nixon, isn't named in the suit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Premise Media is not located in Dallas.  It is in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Why is all this Dallas stuff going on?

Is this whole mess one big Dembski spooge?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I understand Dallas to be "the place" for legal actions of a particular type due to a certain rule they have.

IANAL so that's about all I know there, but I understand SCO likes Dallas.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 24 2008,11:38

Dallas sure ain't been the same since Debby greased through there a few years back....
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 24 2008,11:38

< http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=expelled.htm >
Posted by: ToSeek on April 24 2008,12:03

Quote (themadlolscientist @ April 24 2008,11:18)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
4/21/2008: $227 per theater
4/22/2008: $216 per theater
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's a blockbuster, all right!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll be very interested in seeing how many theaters keep it over for a second week. Not many at this rate.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 24 2008,12:06

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 24 2008,09:38)
Dallas sure ain't been the same since Debby greased through there a few years back....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The last truly cool person to come from Dallas:


Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 24 2008,12:13

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,08:29)
 
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko Ono is a crazy bitch.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, they use her husband's song without permission and compare him to a Nazi, and 'the bitch' just freaks out! What's up with that?
Posted by: charlie d on April 24 2008,12:36

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 24 2008,12:13)
     
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,08:29)
         
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko Ono is a crazy bitch.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, they use her husband's song without permission and compare him to a Nazi, and 'the bitch' just freaks out! What's up with that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am quite sure O'Brien meant that as a compliment: < "Bitch is the new black." >
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,12:54

A little over the line, Q.

Let's keep this thread from straying too far from
< Expelled >.





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< SL: Virtual Dunny >, by philosophy_rebel
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: jcmacc1 on April 24 2008,13:44

Quote (dnmlthr @ April 23 2008,16:47)
Quote (don_quixote @ April 23 2008,22:37)
Chris has finally lost the plot:

< Paranoid delusions at The Intersection >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sounds like he's taking the ball and going home.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The ball has officially been taken home - comments have been closed on the Expelled-themed posts over at the Intersection and there's a promise that all comments from now will be on moderation.

So Uncommonly Dense can now use Mooney again : "Expelled-loving Darwinist is forced to close blog because of uppity atheists".

What is Mooney's problem with debate? All he really got was a set of questions on why he fell at the feet of Expelled despite *evidence* of its failure as a commercial movie - I'd love to see his reaction to the kind of genuine hatred PZ gets from the fundies over at Pharyngula.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 24 2008,14:20

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 24 2008,12:06)
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 24 2008,09:38)
Dallas sure ain't been the same since Debby greased through there a few years back....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The last truly cool person to come from Dallas:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So...So...You don't think I'm cool?  Sniff.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 24 2008,14:28

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 24 2008,12:13)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,08:29)
   
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko Ono is a crazy bitch.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, they use her husband's song without permission and compare him to a Nazi, and 'the bitch' just freaks out! What's up with that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't think they meant to compare Lennon to a Nazi. Also, using a refrain from a song does not count as stealing in my book, especially since the guy who actually wrote and sang the song is long since dead.
Posted by: AmandaM on April 24 2008,14:32

Hi all, I hope you don't mind me crashing this party, and ordinarily I don't join a board just to make one post, but I wanted to thank the board members for all the great discussion and links. I heard about this movie a couple of days ago and decided to check it out on the internet. I'm AMAZED by what I found-- and not a little ashamed at how much I really didn't know about evolution in general. (I guess I thought evolution meant "origin of life" rather than "explanation for the diversity of animal life.") This has been a really educational (and fascinating) journey for me, and I wanted to thank all the posters for taking the time to post and also to link to blogs and other sites. I finally made it through the whole thread, and I think I'm a better (or at the VERY least, more educated) person because of it. So, Thanks!
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,14:32

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:28)
Also, using a refrain from a song does not count as stealing in my book, especially since the guy who actually wrote and sang the song is long since dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I heard he was buried wearing a really nice watch.

Go for it, let me know how that turns out.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,14:34

Quote (AmandaM @ April 24 2008,15:32)
Hi all, I hope you don't mind me crashing this party, and ordinarily I don't join a board just to make one post, but I wanted to thank the board members for all the great discussion and links. I heard about this movie a couple of days ago and decided to check it out on the internet. I'm AMAZED by what I found-- and not a little ashamed at how much I really didn't know about evolution in general. (I guess I thought evolution meant "origin of life" rather than "explanation for the diversity of animal life.") This has been a really educational (and fascinating) journey for me, and I wanted to thank all the posters for taking the time to post and also to link to blogs and other sites. I finally made it through the whole thread, and I think I'm a better (or at the VERY least, more educated) person because of it. So, Thanks!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm sure I speak for the overwhelming majority of posters here when I say "you're quite welcome".
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 24 2008,14:36

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 24 2008,14:32)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:28)
Also, using a refrain from a song does not count as stealing in my book, especially since the guy who actually wrote and sang the song is long since dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I heard he was buried wearing a really nice watch.

Go for it, let me know how that turns out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll pass. Tomb-robbing is only appropriate in archaeology and Dungeons & Dragons.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 24 2008,14:36

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 24 2008,14:32)
I heard he was buried wearing a really nice watch.

Go for it, let me know how that turns out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But he won't need that watch in Hell!

Silly atheists...
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 24 2008,14:38

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ April 24 2008,14:36)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 24 2008,14:32)
I heard he was buried wearing a really nice watch.

Go for it, let me know how that turns out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But he won't need that watch in Hell!

Silly atheists...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL!
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,14:38

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:36)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 24 2008,14:32)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:28)
Also, using a refrain from a song does not count as stealing in my book, especially since the guy who actually wrote and sang the song is long since dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I heard he was buried wearing a really nice watch.

Go for it, let me know how that turns out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll pass. Tomb-robbing is only appropriate in archaeology and Dungeons & Dragons.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So stealing his watch is wrong, but stealing his song is OK?

What if he wrote the song down, and had the lyrics buried with him?

ETA:  Never mind, I'm sure I don't really want to hear it.


Posted by: Richardthughes on April 24 2008,14:42

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,14:36)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 24 2008,14:32)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:28)
Also, using a refrain from a song does not count as stealing in my book, especially since the guy who actually wrote and sang the song is long since dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I heard he was buried wearing a really nice watch.

Go for it, let me know how that turns out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll pass. Tomb-robbing is only appropriate in archaeology and Dungeons & Dragons.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 24 2008,15:04

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,14:42)
Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A paladin.

Do you have some polyhedral dice (other than the familiar cube) in your attic? :D
Posted by: don_quixote on April 24 2008,15:09

Quote (jcmacc1 @ April 24 2008,13:44)
Quote (dnmlthr @ April 23 2008,16:47)
 
Quote (don_quixote @ April 23 2008,22:37)
Chris has finally lost the plot:

< Paranoid delusions at The Intersection >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sounds like he's taking the ball and going home.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The ball has officially been taken home - comments have been closed on the Expelled-themed posts over at the Intersection and there's a promise that all comments from now will be on moderation.

So Uncommonly Dense can now use Mooney again : "Expelled-loving Darwinist is forced to close blog because of uppity atheists".

What is Mooney's problem with debate? All he really got was a set of questions on why he fell at the feet of Expelled despite *evidence* of its failure as a commercial movie - I'd love to see his reaction to the kind of genuine hatred PZ gets from the fundies over at Pharyngula.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From Chris Mooney's review of Expelled: "Since there are certain things you cannot really say on ScienceBlogs any longer..."

Later... "UPDATE: The Intersection has gone back to moderating all comments."

So, it seems that the "things you cannot really say" are anything that is critical of Chris Mooney's opinions.

It's like he's become possessed by FtK.
Posted by: Kristine on April 24 2008,15:12

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,13:28)
 
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 24 2008,12:13)
   
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,08:29)
       
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko Ono is a crazy bitch.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, they use her husband's song without permission and compare him to a Nazi, and 'the bitch' just freaks out! What's up with that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't think they meant to compare Lennon to a Nazi. Also, using a refrain from a song does not count as stealing in my book, especially since the guy who actually wrote and sang the song is long since dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, they compared him to Josef Stalin. Just before playing the song, Stein wheezes in alarm, "They [Darwinists] want to realize John Lennon's vision!" and then "Imagine" plays over some footage of Stalin delivering some sort of gestural benediction to a Soviet parade.

You know, you don't know a good thing when you see it, Robert. I hope Yoko also yanks any more rights to that song. If I hear that %$#@*& atheist kum-bay-ya anthem one more time I think I'll never stop puking. Jeepers, somebody wanted to use it for bumper music for our radio show. NOOOOOOOOOO! :O Bleeeechhhhh!

BTW, Walt Disney is long since dead. Try stealing Mickey Mouse and see what happens.

I have a unique take on this because frankly, I think that copyright is held up too long and that fair use should be more widely allowed, no matter who the filmmakers are. People should be able to steal Mickey Mouse in my opinion. But technically, Yoko has a very strong case (and I'm not too fond of Yoko myself). (It's a sure thing that nobody wants to steal her "songs.")

("I'm just talking to the universe!" Yes, you go right ahead, Yoko.)

(Just do me a favor and talk to the universe out in the universe, because in space no one can hear you scream.) :p
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,15:18

< 'nuther Entertainment Weekly review >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I saw it, so you don't have to: Ben Stein's 'Expelled'

Apr 23, 2008, 03:28 PM | by Simon Vozick-Levinson

In retrospect, I really shoulda known better. I'd clicked through the bottom-of-the-barrel Rotten Tomatoes rating, the various erudite bloggers slamming it, and, of course, my esteemed cubicle-neighbor Adam Markovitz's scathing D-grade review. But still, it had Ben Stein! He was funny in Ferris Bueller! And me, I have a slight glutton-for-punishment streak. So I succumbed to the relentless TV ad campaign earlier this week and went to see a matinee showing of the anti-evolution documentary Expelled. Worst decision ever.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's all down-hill from there.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 24 2008,15:23

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:04)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,14:42)
Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A paladin.

Do you have some polyhedral dice (other than the familiar cube) in your attic? :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sir Bob Lv 19 Paladin (Lv 3 vs Scientists)!

Wand of design detection
Soap Box of Evangelism (Cursed)
Armour of incredulity (+3 / +99 vs facts)

*wink*

Sounds you don't believe in the concept of inheritance, Bob?
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,15:25

There are a few new reviews at < Rotten Tomatoes >.

< AV Club >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled stacks the deck in favor of intelligent design, interviewing the most rational-seeming and articulate proponents, and the crustiest, most arrogant critics, but that's to be expected from a hot-button documentary in the post-Moore era. But when Stein—whose disingenuous babe-in-the-woods routine grows more grating with every wronged talking head he pretends to be shocked over—walks through Dachau's Nazi death camp and wonders whether "survival of the fittest" thinking could lead to future atrocities at the hands of sociopathic Darwinists, he strides proudly over the last line of decency in contemporary documentary filmmaking. Surely there's a more nuanced argument to be made in favor of ID than pinning the old "bad as Hitler" canard on pro-evolution scientists? Perhaps what Bruce Chapman of ID advocacy group The Discovery Institute says about Darwinists applies best to Expelled: "People who don't have an argument are reduced to throwing sand in your eyes." If only this movie could be washed away as easily.

A.V. Club Rating: F

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,15:28

< Asheville Mountain Express >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Junk science meets even junkier filmmaking in Nathan Frankowski’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—a no more shameless, stupid and loathsome piece of propaganda has ever skulked its way into the theater. Frankowski really should have chosen a different subtitle for the film (my vote is for Win Ben Stein’s Brain Cell), since he seems to have succumbed to the “no intelligence allowed” credo in attempting to make his point.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ETA:  This one's pretty brutal, in case you hadn't figured that out.


Posted by: BWE on April 24 2008,15:31

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,14:42)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,14:36)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 24 2008,14:32)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:28)
Also, using a refrain from a song does not count as stealing in my book, especially since the guy who actually wrote and sang the song is long since dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I heard he was buried wearing a really nice watch.

Go for it, let me know how that turns out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll pass. Tomb-robbing is only appropriate in archaeology and Dungeons & Dragons.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Roland is fierce and Oliver is wise.

There is a lot of understanding in literature.

I'm sure Bob was a Paladin.
Posted by: BWE on April 24 2008,15:32

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:04)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,14:42)
Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A paladin.

Do you have some polyhedral dice (other than the familiar cube) in your attic? :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course it would be the next post.

Onward Frankish So-oldiers!
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 24 2008,15:37

Quote (BWE @ April 24 2008,15:32)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:04)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,14:42)
Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A paladin.

Do you have some polyhedral dice (other than the familiar cube) in your attic? :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course it would be the next post.

Onward Frankish So-oldiers!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This was his campaign*:

< http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/cannibalism.html >

*teasing.
Posted by: JLT on April 24 2008,15:43

< I'm a prophet! > (and I didn't even know it.)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Yoko Ono and others have now filed lawsuits challenging the film's use and critique of John Lennon's song Imagine. One of the suits seeks to ban free speech through preliminary injunctive relief which essentially means that they are trying to expel EXPELLED as it is now being shown in theaters.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Source >
Posted by: charlie d on April 24 2008,16:00

Quote (JLT @ April 24 2008,15:43)
< I'm a prophet! > (and I didn't even know it.)
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Yoko Ono and others have now filed lawsuits challenging the film's use and critique of John Lennon's song Imagine. One of the suits seeks to ban free speech through preliminary injunctive relief which essentially means that they are trying to expel EXPELLED as it is now being shown in theaters.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Source >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is even better:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"If you really listen to the lyrics of Imagine then you realize that it represents everything that the Neo-Darwinists want. 'Imagine there's no Heaven...No hell below us...Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too...'  [...] said Walt Ruloff Executive Producer and CEO of Premise Media.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Really?  Because you just spent a few million bucks making a movie that tries to convince the audience that Darwinists say it's OK to kill people - you moron.


Posted by: ERV on April 24 2008,16:04

After the Premise-XVIVO press release came out last week, I emailed them back and asked when theft was a protected form of free speech.

They never wrote me back.

:(
Posted by: Quidam on April 24 2008,16:06



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Opponents of the film have attacked everyone and everything in it. They have attacked the producers, the star, the music, and film itself. They have even attacked those who have seen it. Now they want to change the Constitution.

Yoko Ono and others have now filed lawsuits challenging the film's use and critique of John Lennon's song Imagine. One of the suits seeks to ban free speech through preliminary injunctive relief which essentially means that they are trying to expel EXPELLED as it is now being shown in theaters.
...
But the irony of this lawsuit was not lost on the film's star Ben Stein, "So Yoko Ono is suing over the brief Constitutionally protected use of a song that wants us to 'Imagine no possessions'?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Free speech means that you are FREE to make YOUR OWN SPEECH.   Not that you have the right to steal the speech of others.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 24 2008,16:14

Speaking of this lawsuit...Who would have guessed Yoko Ono might one day win Ben Stein's Money?
Posted by: improvius on April 24 2008,16:15

Quote (ERV @ April 24 2008,17:04)
After the Premise-XVIVO press release came out last week, I emailed them back and asked when theft was a protected form of free speech.

They never wrote me back.

:(
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Didn't they say they were screening the pre-showings because they were afraid someone would try to record it and put it on youtube?

More hypocrisy from Mathis and company - imagine our surprise.




Posted by: Quidam on April 24 2008,16:37

< http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2008....rs.html >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
March 28, 2008 3:45 am: Re the new level of caution around the screenings of Expelled (the documentary about the suppression of scientists whose research shows that there is design in the universe), line producer Mark Mathis writes back to say, "Yes, that's the concern, that illegal recording will occur with the intent to damage the film."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

But... but...  I have a constitutional right to free speech so I can copy the film so that I can make a critique of it.
Posted by: Quidam on April 24 2008,16:45

< http://www.realdetroitweekly.com/article_4101.shtml >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mark Mathis, one of the producers of Expelled, wants the “theory” of Intelligent Design (ID) taught in science classrooms alongside evolution.  Proponents of ID are fond of saying that it's not the same as creationism (read: creationism sans the talking snake and the magic rib).  But if ID isn't creationism, then oral sex isn't sexual relations.  Beyond semantic nuances, the underlying argument of creationism and ID is the same: If there is any phenomenon that science has yet to provide an explanation for, there clearly is no scientific explanation—God did it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

:p
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 24 2008,16:51

There is the ID undercurrent of "Please, stop looking! We want it to be God, and you're going to spoil it!"
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 24 2008,17:25

It could be interesting, that discovery stuff in the Ono or XVIVO cases... were there actual lawyers in good standing telling Premise Media *not* to license copyrighted material? Could a lawyer out there explain how an officer of the court could do such a thing and not be subject to discipline for it?
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 24 2008,17:30

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 24 2008,17:25)
It could be interesting, that discovery stuff in the Ono or XVIVO cases... were there actual lawyers in good standing telling Premise Media *not* to license copyrighted material? Could a lawyer out there explain how an officer of the court could do such a thing and not be subject to discipline for it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My lawyer (and wife) isn't available at the moment, so I could be wrong here, but the first question is whether it is even possible to find out.  Such communications between attorney and client are usually considered privileged and not subject to discovery.   I'll ask She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed when she gets home later.

Hey, where has Stevie Pinhead been? He is a lawyer.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 24 2008,17:33

I wasn't so much thinking of the lawyers on retainer, but rather any old lawyers who might have been participating in the discussion due to being IDC advocates in general.
Posted by: didymos on April 24 2008,17:35

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,09:29)
IANAL so that's about all I know there, but I understand SCO likes Dallas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, and that worked out great for them.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 24 2008,17:39

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 24 2008,17:33)
I wasn't so much thinking of the lawyers on retainer, but rather any old lawyers who might have been participating in the discussion due to being IDC advocates in general.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good point.  A good lawyer would know better to give advice off hand, but to do it in such a way that it is considered work product (if I remember the term correctly).  Particularly on a subject that has a decent chance of becoming a subject of litigation. But, since you may be thinking about Casey Luskin, we shouldn't make that assumption.

I'll ask what the limits of privilege are.
Posted by: khan on April 24 2008,18:22

Aren't right-wingers (free enterprise fundies) usually really big on property rights and ownership and such?
Posted by: Occam's Aftershave on April 24 2008,18:28

Quote (khan @ April 24 2008,18:22)
Aren't right-wingers (free enterprise fundies) usually really big on property rights and ownership and such?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Depends on if they're the stealer or the stealee.
Posted by: charlie d on April 24 2008,18:33

Quote (khan @ April 24 2008,18:22)
Aren't right-wingers (free enterprise fundies) usually really big on property rights and ownership and such?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


According to the Motive Entertainment press release today, Ben Stein's defense in court will be that it's actually OK to steal, provided that the victim is a communist.
Posted by: didymos on April 24 2008,18:36

Here's a short but sweet < review > from Real Detroit Weekly (my favorite bits bolded):
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

< Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed >
Starring Ben Stein. Written by Kevin Miller, Walt Ruloff and Ben Stein. Directed by Nathan Frankowski. Rated PG. Now playing.

Those who think that evolution is “just a theory” will probably revel in < Expelled >, a film in which a mountain of evidence garnered by decades of rigorous empirical study is challenged by the stuffy economics teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

In addition to the standard creationist claptrap, Ben Stein argues that there is a link between acceptance of evolution and Nazism.  To be fair, this would explain why so many of the world's leading evolutionary biologists have a penchant for slaughtering scores of Jews.  Thankfully for Stein, the name of God has never been used as a justification for heinous acts—otherwise his argument would seem laughably inconsistent and intellectually dishonest.

Since this movie is more chuck-full of errors than Kim Jong Il's Ethics final, I'll direct those who are interested to < www.expelledexposed.com >.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is also where the tardtastic Mathis interview  PZ < wrote > about may be found.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 24 2008,18:36

Quote (Quidam @ April 24 2008,16:45)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But if ID isn't creationism, then oral sex isn't sexual relations.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And of course we all remember how far Bill Clinton got with that argument........  :p


Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 24 2008,18:39

:angry: Bleepin' iB code! Why won't they just let us use html? GRRRRRRRRR!  :angry:
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 24 2008,18:47

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,12:28)
I don't think they meant to compare Lennon to a Nazi.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You're right, they compared him to Stalin.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Also, using a refrain from a song does not count as stealing in my book, especially since the guy who actually wrote and sang the song is long since dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Robert O'Brien, amateur intellectual property lawyer. Go get 'em, tiger!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 24 2008,18:53

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 24 2008,12:20)
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 24 2008,12:06)
 
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 24 2008,09:38)
Dallas sure ain't been the same since Debby greased through there a few years back....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The last truly cool person to come from Dallas:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So...So...You don't think I'm cool?  Sniff.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Christopher, you and I both know full well you (& I) are not as cool as Jack Ruby.  :angry:
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,20:15

Miserable failure of a hockey joke can be found on the BW.





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< IMG_2057 >, by josephH
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 24 2008,20:32

Yet again, I'm going to be a horrible tease. I don't know what the rest of you folks did today, but I set in motion something that, if things go well, should provide a pretty good Friday meltdown within a couple of weeks.

Of course, I've got something going that started in early 2006. I got word today that it took one more step. Patience is a frustrating virtue.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,20:38

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 24 2008,21:32)
Yet again, I'm going to be a horrible tease. I don't know what the rest of you folks did today, but I set in motion something that, if things go well, should provide a pretty good Friday meltdown within a couple of weeks.

Of course, I've got something going that started in early 2006. I got word today that it took one more step. Patience is a frustrating virtue.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




You sir, are a professional tease, I think.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< IMG_6444 >, by morgpet
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



HARHAR THIS IS WESLEY:





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Jessica >, by Tuff ariman
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: TheMissingLink on April 24 2008,20:48

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,10:29)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 24 2008,03:15)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ono is seeking Premise's profit from the documentary, as well as at least $75,000 in damages and a ban on the 1971 song's use in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All the profit - potentially gone!
< http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273188,00.html >

EDIT: And if it makes a loss? Does Yoko owe them money? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko Ono is a crazy bitch.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think it was Christopher Hitchens who recently pointed out the the title of the best selling christian 'self-help' book, "A Purpose Driven Life", is trademarked. Seems ironic.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 24 2008,21:10

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 24 2008,17:39)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 24 2008,17:33)
I wasn't so much thinking of the lawyers on retainer, but rather any old lawyers who might have been participating in the discussion due to being IDC advocates in general.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good point.  A good lawyer would know better to give advice off hand, but to do it in such a way that it is considered work product (if I remember the term correctly).  Particularly on a subject that has a decent chance of becoming a subject of litigation. But, since you may be thinking about Casey Luskin, we shouldn't make that assumption.

I'll ask what the limits of privilege are.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


FWIW, Wesley, you are correct. There needs to be an attorney-client relationship for legal advise to be privileged.  "Dinner party" legal advise is not privileged.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 24 2008,21:16

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 24 2008,20:32)
Yet again, I'm going to be a horrible tease. I don't know what the rest of you folks did today, but I set in motion something that, if things go well, should provide a pretty good Friday meltdown within a couple of weeks.

Of course, I've got something going that started in early 2006. I got word today that it took one more step. Patience is a frustrating virtue.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My guess:

You got somebody that we know a temporary pass, good on Fridays only, to the Baylor Cafeteria Fish Fry.

When the somebody goes to use it though, alarms will go off, and he will get expelled.

Hilarity Ensues!
Posted by: didymos on April 24 2008,21:50

Self-delusion knows no < bounds >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Upright BiPed

04/24/2008

3:43 pm

Well, well… Expelled in now projected to do $3.8 mil in its first full week (Fri-Thu)…..not bad at all.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Actually, that sucks.  Especially next to all the other stuff < Expelled > was "projected" to do.  And, so far, hasn't.
Posted by: Kristine on April 24 2008,22:05

< Someone named BigPapaSmurf > quotes a $9 million budget for Expelled. I don't know where he's getting his information, though, so I can't corroborate it.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 24 2008,22:09

On the upside:



< Expelled > < Exposed > is climbing the google ladder.
Posted by: didymos on April 24 2008,22:26

Quote (Kristine @ April 24 2008,20:05)
< Someone named BigPapaSmurf > quotes a $9 million budget for Expelled. I don't know where he's getting his information, though, so I can't corroborate it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There's this:

< http://scienceblogs.com/dispatc....ice.php >

which is a little more concrete.  I'd say the 9 Mbuck figure is an "at least" number.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 25 2008,00:51

All right........ Let's see if I can get it right this time!


Posted by: Bob O'H on April 25 2008,01:11

Wes, you didn't get a bit tipsy, and email "Hahaha! not even the < Biologic Institute > wants you!" to Dembski, did you?
Posted by: BWE on April 25 2008,01:34

I think it's time to bring this one back up:
< First, here's the link. >

Before you read the post, I want you to note the fine craftsmanship and technique in creating one of the most rare and beautiful forms of tard, the irony layer cake. The systematic dexterity with which the author chooses precisely the predictive statements that, after the event, will illustrate the exact nature of the tard memepool that spawned it. The irony that becomes even more ironic after each phrase, the irony building on itself until it reaches a magnificent crescendo of tard all Wagnerian cymbal crashing like, leaving the reader spent, exhausted from the dizzying tightening of the wingnut of tard.

This is why Dave is the masterTard. He admits to no parallel among the wingnuttosphere:


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/16/2008

11:32 am

This is getting funny. Not long ago the chance worshippers were wondering if Expelled had a big enough budget to licence teh Bad To The Bone music.

Now it’s looking more like a documentary category killer.

In other words it’s all like “we own the space”.

I wonder when it’ll make it to HBO and after that probably FOX broadcasting.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Friends, this is history in the making.

Note the date of the first post. Now note the date of the second:
< link >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/18/2008

2:27 am

A legal beagle somewhere (I forget where) pointed out that there have been fewer than 10 cases of copyright infringement brought against documentary films and of those only 3 were successful for the complainant. Documentary films evidently have far greater immunity in copyright claims.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



then just a touch farther down the same page:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/18/2008

8:56 am

“Imagine no possessions” is something that Yoko Ono doesn’t seem to agree with. She possesses all of Lennon’s music and milks it for every dime she can get out of it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



followed by:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/20/2008

2:52 pm

Typically, lifetime box office receipts are 10 times the opening weekend receipts.

I have no idea what it will earn from cable and broadcast (HBO/FOX perhaps), DVD sales, and branded memorabilia.

It certainly looks like the cost will be recouped many times over before all is said and done.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

< link >
Posted by: Amadan on April 25 2008,03:16

< This > was so good I had to link to it here.

A very persuasive argument that ID most strongly supports our charitable friends in the Unification Church.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 25 2008,03:20





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< How Wagnerian >, by brilliam
---------------------QUOTE-------------------







---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< What's Opera, Doc? >, by roadkillbuddha
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on April 25 2008,03:26

Quote (Amadan @ April 25 2008,04:16)
< This > was so good I had to link to it here.

A very persuasive argument that ID most strongly supports our charitable friends in the Unification Church.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Moon has been quoted as saying that it’s OK to lie to help improve people and that even God lies for that reason.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ironically honest, or honestly ironic?


...or just TARDy?
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on April 25 2008,04:10

Finnish newspapers are printing the news of Yoko suing the producers and distributors of Expelled!: No copyrights allowed. The short text doesn't say what kind of a movie Expelled is.

Trans: "The producers informed in their press release that they are disappointed in the actions Yoko Ono has taken."

Trans: "Moan, cry, whimper"
Posted by: Louis on April 25 2008,05:21

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 25 2008,02:38)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 24 2008,21:32)
Yet again, I'm going to be a horrible tease. I don't know what the rest of you folks did today, but I set in motion something that, if things go well, should provide a pretty good Friday meltdown within a couple of weeks.

Of course, I've got something going that started in early 2006. I got word today that it took one more step. Patience is a frustrating virtue.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




You sir, are a professional tease, I think.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< IMG_6444 >, by morgpet
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



HARHAR THIS IS WESLEY:





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Jessica >, by Tuff ariman
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If that is Wesley then I would like to invite him her for a drink and a quiet chat about this idea I have. {cough}

Sadly, based on the available evidence, I think that it isn't Wesley, who, though not unattractive I'm sure, is not my type. The falconry is very alluring but the beard and general maleness leave much to be desired. I'm not Arden Chatfield after all!

Louis
Posted by: BWE on April 25 2008,05:41

Hear that Wes? Shave your beard and put on a bit of mascara and you've got Louis. Bring along a falcon or 2 and he'd be positively swooning.

Off-topic:
I've got a pair of Kestrels nesting close by my house and I get to see them pretty much every day. Are they used in falconry or are they too little?

I found this:

THe first time the girl (to use the scientifical term) landed on my fence, she looked like a mini peregrine (we have several peregrines in the area). It's pretty cool when you realize how intelligent design made them so damn similar. They almost look related. The one in that picture looks more brown than the ones that live by me.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 25 2008,05:55

Kestrels are used in falconry, yes. They are commonly used as birds for apprentices, though I'll note that keeping kestrels healthy is far more challenging than doing so for red-tails. Some falconers prefer to use kestrels for urban and suburban hawking, since they will take the introduced "English sparrow". The other bird of choice for that kind of falconry is the sharp-shinned hawk.
Posted by: BWE on April 25 2008,06:03

They don't fly like sharp shinned at all though. They actually remind me of a scrub jay or something like it when they fly- low, straight and fast. It's common to see them cross our yard at about 8' in the air going balls to the wall, like downhill skiers except with wings. Er... I mean, they are gliding, not usually flapping.

I don't know about english sparrows but I saw one of them pick a winter wren off a low bush that way. Just lowered the grappling hooks and bang. Now you see it now you don't.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 25 2008,09:46

Quote (Louis @ April 25 2008,03:21)
The falconry is very alluring but the beard and general maleness leave much to be desired. I'm not Arden Chatfield after all!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Indeed. Just last night your wife was very grateful that you're not me. :)
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 25 2008,09:55


Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 25 2008,10:01

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 25 2008,03:55)
Some falconers prefer to use kestrels for urban and suburban hawking, since they will take the introduced "English sparrow".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do other raptors refuse to eat something as lowly as House Sparrows?

Last summer I got to watch a Cooper's Hawk spend half an hour 'processing' a chickadee right in front of my house. I was first alerted to it by this steady stream of tiny little feathers wafting down from the elm tree. She spent the first 10 minutes plucking it, then the rest of the time was spent ripping it apart. At one point she must have gulped down too big a piece of chickadee meat 'cause she sort of gagged for a few seconds, but soon enough she was back on the job. I never saw any leftovers except feathers.
Posted by: k.e.. on April 25 2008,10:08

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 25 2008,17:46)
Quote (Louis @ April 25 2008,03:21)
The falconry is very alluring but the beard and general maleness leave much to be desired. I'm not Arden Chatfield after all!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Indeed. Just last night your wife was very grateful that you're not me. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Make that a charismatic teasing peregrine with a beard and I'm glad I'm not you and so is my wife, if I had one, fortunately my live in lover of 24 years is not married especially to me. Which means if I ever do get married I'll make sure I'll be long gone before Arden gets wind of it. Louis on the otherhand.....well he should rest one.
Posted by: k.e.. on April 25 2008,10:28

Quote (BWE @ April 25 2008,09:34)
I think it's time to bring this one back up:
< First, here's the link. >

Before you read the post, I want you to note the fine craftsmanship and technique in creating one of the most rare and beautiful forms of tard, the irony layer cake. The systematic dexterity with which the author chooses precisely the predictive statements that, after the event, will illustrate the exact nature of the tard memepool that spawned it. The irony that becomes even more ironic after each phrase, the irony building on itself until it reaches a magnificent crescendo of tard all Wagnerian cymbal crashing like, leaving the reader spent, exhausted from the dizzying tightening of the wingnut of tard.

This is why Dave is the masterTard. He admits to no parallel among the wingnuttosphere:


     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/16/2008

11:32 am

This is getting funny. Not long ago the chance worshippers were wondering if Expelled had a big enough budget to licence teh Bad To The Bone music.

Now it’s looking more like a documentary category killer.

In other words it’s all like “we own the space”.

I wonder when it’ll make it to HBO and after that probably FOX broadcasting.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Friends, this is history in the making.

Note the date of the first post. Now note the date of the second:
< link >

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/18/2008

2:27 am

A legal beagle somewhere (I forget where) pointed out that there have been fewer than 10 cases of copyright infringement brought against documentary films and of those only 3 were successful for the complainant. Documentary films evidently have far greater immunity in copyright claims.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



then just a touch farther down the same page:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/18/2008

8:56 am

“Imagine no possessions” is something that Yoko Ono doesn’t seem to agree with. She possesses all of Lennon’s music and milks it for every dime she can get out of it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



followed by:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/20/2008

2:52 pm

Typically, lifetime box office receipts are 10 times the opening weekend receipts.

I have no idea what it will earn from cable and broadcast (HBO/FOX perhaps), DVD sales, and branded memorabilia.

It certainly looks like the cost will be recouped many times over before all is said and done.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

< link >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OH NICE WORK HOMO!

THAT IS A TYPICAL DARWINIST TECHNIQUE.

USE OUR QUOTES OUT OF CONTEXT CONTACT WITH REALITY TO SHOW YOUR POINT.

DON'T YOU GET IT?

WHEN WE DECLARE WATERLOO WE MEAN YOKO DOVER.

IT'S ALL PART OF THE PLAN.

YOU FALL INTO OUR CLEVER TRAP.

YOU MAKE SENSE BUT WE MAKE MARTYRS.

OUR MARTYRS DRIVE ID INTO THE REAL WORLD OF MONEY LAW AND FACTS WITH TARD BELTS STRAPPED TO THEIR CHESTS.

LOOK AT OUR OTHER SUCCESSES……..

.....OK THEN, LOOK AT ME ......I PREDICTED "LIKE WE OWN A SPACE BROOM CLOSET IN BAYLOR" AND WE ALMOST DID IT


SO THERE HOMOS dt
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 25 2008,10:36

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 24 2008,20:38)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 24 2008,21:32)
Patience is a frustrating virtue.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You know what they say:

Virtue is its own punishment.  :D
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 25 2008,10:38

Here's the clever plan:

Make a movie
Steal peoples work
Make money
Get sued by Yoko Ono
Increases media frenzy
More people see it
So we make MORE money
(that we give to Yoko Ono)


GENIUS!
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 25 2008,10:42

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,10:38)
Here's the clever plan:

Make a movie
Steal peoples work
Make money
Get sued by Yoko Ono
Increases media frenzy
More people see it
So we make MORE money
(that we give to Yoko Ono)


GENIUS!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, they are graduates of the < Underpants Gnomes School of Business >.
Posted by: BWE on April 25 2008,10:55

Quote (k.e.. @ April 25 2008,10:28)
Quote (BWE @ April 25 2008,09:34)
I think it's time to bring this one back up:
< First, here's the link. >

Before you read the post, I want you to note the fine craftsmanship and technique in creating one of the most rare and beautiful forms of tard, the irony layer cake. The systematic dexterity with which the author chooses precisely the predictive statements that, after the event, will illustrate the exact nature of the tard memepool that spawned it. The irony that becomes even more ironic after each phrase, the irony building on itself until it reaches a magnificent crescendo of tard all Wagnerian cymbal crashing like, leaving the reader spent, exhausted from the dizzying tightening of the wingnut of tard.

This is why Dave is the masterTard. He admits to no parallel among the wingnuttosphere:


       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/16/2008

11:32 am

This is getting funny. Not long ago the chance worshippers were wondering if Expelled had a big enough budget to licence teh Bad To The Bone music.

Now it’s looking more like a documentary category killer.

In other words it’s all like “we own the space”.

I wonder when it’ll make it to HBO and after that probably FOX broadcasting.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Friends, this is history in the making.

Note the date of the first post. Now note the date of the second:
< link >

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/18/2008

2:27 am

A legal beagle somewhere (I forget where) pointed out that there have been fewer than 10 cases of copyright infringement brought against documentary films and of those only 3 were successful for the complainant. Documentary films evidently have far greater immunity in copyright claims.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



then just a touch farther down the same page:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/18/2008

8:56 am

“Imagine no possessions” is something that Yoko Ono doesn’t seem to agree with. She possesses all of Lennon’s music and milks it for every dime she can get out of it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



followed by:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
DaveScot

04/20/2008

2:52 pm

Typically, lifetime box office receipts are 10 times the opening weekend receipts.

I have no idea what it will earn from cable and broadcast (HBO/FOX perhaps), DVD sales, and branded memorabilia.

It certainly looks like the cost will be recouped many times over before all is said and done.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

< link >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OH NICE WORK HOMO!

THAT IS A TYPICAL DARWINIST TECHNIQUE.

USE OUR QUOTES OUT OF CONTEXT CONTACT WITH REALITY TO SHOW YOUR POINT.

DON'T YOU GET IT?

WHEN WE DECLARE WATERLOO WE MEAN YOKO DOVER.

IT'S ALL PART OF THE PLAN.

YOU FALL INTO OUR CLEVER TRAP.

YOU MAKE SENSE BUT WE MAKE MARTYRS.

OUR MARTYRS DRIVE ID INTO THE REAL WORLD OF MONEY LAW AND FACTS WITH TARD BELTS STRAPPED TO THEIR CHESTS.

LOOK AT OUR OTHER SUCCESSES……..

.....OK THEN, LOOK AT ME ......I PREDICTED "LIKE WE OWN A SPACE BROOM CLOSET IN BAYLOR" AND WE ALMOST DID IT


SO THERE HOMOS dt
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Damn. I had to contain myself from rubbing my hands, um, together, yeah, together, and laughing my diabolical laugh, "HAHAHAHAHA HAHA HA HA!! And then we can throw the creationists into the tank! The tank is full of man eating sharks with lasers on their heads1!!"


But you'll find out eventually.

:O
Posted by: k.e.. on April 25 2008,10:59

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 25 2008,18:42)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,10:38)
Here's the clever plan:

Make a movie
Steal peoples work
Make money
Get sued by Yoko Ono
Increases media frenzy
More people see it
So we make MORE money
(that we give to Yoko Ono)


GENIUS!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, they are graduates of the < Underpants Gnomes School of Business >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The funny thing about that clip is that they look almost as daggy as Bill's sweeter...no wonder he can't get no Angel action.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 25 2008,12:03

Doing some basic arithmetic for Expelled's first week, it appears that a bit more than half a million people have paid to see it. That seems like a lot, but it represents 550 tickets per theater, or 80 tickets per day per theater.

If we assume five showings a day, that's a bit more than 15 tickets per showing. If we assume two showings a day, it's still 40 tickets per showing.

Looking at weekdays, we have about 35 tickets per theater per day. I suspect most theaters are having only one or two showings per day during the week.

I'm predicting the total box office will not reach ten million. The first week gets four million, and the second might get half that. After that, the number of theaters will plummet. We could see it max out at six or seven million.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 25 2008,12:58

< OH NOOESSS!!!!!!11111!!!! NOW SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM IS REALY DOOMED!!!11!!! >
Posted by: ERV on April 25 2008,14:23

Just read the complaint against Premise by Yoko.

Its beautiful.

Did you all know EMI is in on the suit too?

I didnt know that.

*wipes away tears of joy*
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 25 2008,14:30

Quote (ERV @ April 25 2008,14:23)
Just read the complaint against Premise by Yoko.

Its beautiful.

Did you all know EMI is in on the suit too?

I didnt know that.

*wipes away tears of joy*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Has your blog been delisted from Google?
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 25 2008,14:33

< http://www.cinemablend.com/new....28.html >
Posted by: Venus Mousetrap on April 25 2008,14:37

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,14:30)
Quote (ERV @ April 25 2008,14:23)
Just read the complaint against Premise by Yoko.

Its beautiful.

Did you all know EMI is in on the suit too?

I didnt know that.

*wipes away tears of joy*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Has your blog been delisted from Google?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I noticed that too. I search for ERV on Google because it's easier than typing in the url, but it's gone again.
Posted by: didymos on April 25 2008,15:22

Kevin Miller is starting to get a bit < miffed >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Hey Dominion: Before you trolls came along, this blog was about my personal life and writing projects, and that's what it's still about. Do you want me to brag about how we're still number nine at the box office? One step higher than we were last weekend? Do you want me to go on about how much money the film is making or all the positive reviews it's generating from our exit polls at the theaters? I could, but unlike some of you, I do have a life beyond this film and the topics it covers.

So if you don't like what I'm writing about, why don't you just leave? Run over to your little pals at Pharyngula or Panda's thumb and carp about how dishonest and stupid I am. That's what passive agressive little people like you who hide behind pseudonyms while committing character assassination do best, right?


Posted by: Kevin Miller | April 25, 2008 at 09:45 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Why would we want you to brag, Kevvy?  You just did that.  Of course, Kevin is an upstanding guy who takes full credit for his character assasination.  Also, you know, going onto someone's blog and posting, oh say, < this >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Kevin (waving arms wildly about) "Hey, look over here. OVER HERE! You don't need to pay attention to that train wreck of a movie that -I- wrote. You know, the one with all the lousy reviews that I simply will not comment on...(and so on and so forth until we all puke for joy)".

Come on Kev? Don't you have anything to say about the wonderful feelings your movie has provoked in the souls of critics around the country? You were pretty quick to share the two or three positive reviews....

Posted by: Dominion | April 25, 2008 at 06:17 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



is pretty much just being straight-up aggressive.  'Course, despite being a writer, Kev seems to have trouble using words properly.  Like "suppression", "Darwinist", "deny", or "truth".
Posted by: Annyday on April 25 2008,15:24

Quote (Venus Mousetrap @ April 25 2008,14:37)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,14:30)
Quote (ERV @ April 25 2008,14:23)
Just read the complaint against Premise by Yoko.

Its beautiful.

Did you all know EMI is in on the suit too?

I didnt know that.

*wipes away tears of joy*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Has your blog been delisted from Google?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I noticed that too. I search for ERV on Google because it's easier than typing in the url, but it's gone again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I do all my browsing that way, and yes, it does appear ERVs blog has been delisted again.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 25 2008,15:37

Has a copy of the Yoko lawsuit shown up online yet?  I'm waiting for the smoking gun or someone to publish it.  I see people quoting/summarizing it but I have yet to see a copy online.
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 25 2008,16:06

Quote (Venus Mousetrap @ April 25 2008,14:37)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,14:30)
Quote (ERV @ April 25 2008,14:23)
Just read the complaint against Premise by Yoko.

Its beautiful.

Did you all know EMI is in on the suit too?

I didnt know that.

*wipes away tears of joy*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Has your blog been delisted from Google?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I noticed that too. I search for ERV on Google because it's easier than typing in the url, but it's gone again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just happened today. Really annoying.
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 25 2008,16:07

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 25 2008,15:37)
Has a copy of the Yoko lawsuit shown up online yet?  I'm waiting for the smoking gun or someone to publish it.  I see people quoting/summarizing it but I have yet to see a copy online.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It can be found embedded < here >.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 25 2008,16:28

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,15:37)
Quote (BWE @ April 24 2008,15:32)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,15:04)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,14:42)
Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A paladin.

Do you have some polyhedral dice (other than the familiar cube) in your attic? :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course it would be the next post.

Onward Frankish So-oldiers!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This was his campaign*:

< http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/cannibalism.html >

*teasing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No. This was my campaign:

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7iH_83ovWs >

I am the one who corrects the leader's math and says, "Let us taunt it!  It may become so cross that it will make a mistake."
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 25 2008,16:36

Quote (BWE @ April 24 2008,15:31)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,14:42)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,14:36)
 
I'll pass. Tomb-robbing is only appropriate in archaeology and Dungeons & Dragons.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Roland is fierce and Oliver is wise.

There is a lot of understanding in literature.

I'm sure Bob was a Paladin.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am impressed. The Song of Roland is one of my favorites. The Moors were the "Darwinists" of the Medieval Iberia. :D

(Actually, I am part Portuguese and thus part Moor myself.)
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 25 2008,16:37

Bob, it is with great sadness that I must point you to this:

< http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp >
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 25 2008,16:39

The Moor, the merrier, Bob.
Posted by: Quidam on April 25 2008,16:41

<a href="www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X8aifay678" target="_blank"></a>

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X8aifay678
Posted by: BCtheEra on April 25 2008,16:51

Being a Darwinian elitist, which, of course, extends to my taste in music, I read < Pitchfork >.  They have a news item up about < Expelled > and it appears that they're attempting to undermine the efforts to drive up the Google ranking of < Expelled Exposed > as is evident in the following excerpt:
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Thou shalt not incite the wrath of < Yoko Ono > and her lawyers. The folks behind anti-evolution film < Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed > are learning this the hard way, as they're now the subject of a lawsuit filed by Ono and the sons of John Lennon-- Julian and Sean-- according to a Reuters report.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Link >
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 25 2008,16:53

Quidam - WTF? Angels pushing the planets around?! you tewtally RAWK! :D
Posted by: TheMissingLink on April 25 2008,17:06

Quote (ERV @ April 25 2008,14:23)
Just read the complaint against Premise by Yoko.

Its beautiful.

Did you all know EMI is in on the suit too?

I didnt know that.

*wipes away tears of joy*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Link, anyone?
Posted by: VoteEarlyAndOften on April 25 2008,17:09

Nobody click < this link >, ok? Especially not multiple times...

And you definitely wouldn't want to put it in an image tag on a frequently loaded webpage...

See < here > if you're confused.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 25 2008,17:11

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,16:37)
Bob, it is with great sadness that I must point you to this:

< http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That is a classic Chick tract with a truly worthy < spoof >.

Another great Chick spoof is < Who Will Be Eaten First >?
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 25 2008,17:14

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,16:39)
The Moor, the merrier, Bob.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Didn't DaveScot argue that it was the Moops who invaded Spain?
Posted by: don_quixote on April 25 2008,17:43

Quote (Annyday @ April 25 2008,15:24)
Quote (Venus Mousetrap @ April 25 2008,14:37)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,14:30)
 
Quote (ERV @ April 25 2008,14:23)
Just read the complaint against Premise by Yoko.

Its beautiful.

Did you all know EMI is in on the suit too?

I didnt know that.

*wipes away tears of joy*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Has your blog been delisted from Google?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I noticed that too. I search for ERV on Google because it's easier than typing in the url, but it's gone again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I do all my browsing that way, and yes, it does appear ERVs blog has been delisted again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, me too. What do you think is going on?
Posted by: didymos on April 25 2008,17:54

Quote (don_quixote @ April 25 2008,15:43)
Yeah, me too. What do you think is going on?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


She's been < expelled >?  

For God's sake, will somebody alert the Discovery Institute?
Posted by: carlsonjok on April 25 2008,18:22

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 25 2008,17:14)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,16:39)
The Moor, the merrier, Bob.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Didn't DaveScot argue that it was the Moops who invaded Spain?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No. It was this fellow.


Posted by: BWE on April 25 2008,21:54

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 25 2008,16:36)
Quote (BWE @ April 24 2008,15:31)
Quote (Richardthughes @ April 24 2008,14:42)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 24 2008,14:36)
 
I'll pass. Tomb-robbing is only appropriate in archaeology and Dungeons & Dragons.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Were you a cleric or a paladin, Rob?

enquiring minds want to know!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Roland is fierce and Oliver is wise.

There is a lot of understanding in literature.

I'm sure Bob was a Paladin.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am impressed. The Song of Roland is one of my favorites. The Moors were the "Darwinists" of the Medieval Iberia. :D

(Actually, I am part Portuguese and thus part Moor myself.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Funny, I always thought the moors were muslims. And we all know that darwinism can only be adopted by atheists and Hitler.

I'm impressed you recognized the reference. Being a darwinist, I didn't expect that much.

:)

And song of Roland is one of my favorites too. It's like Achilles and Odysseus only from a feudal/ heroic point of view.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 25 2008,22:40

Quote (carlsonjok @ April 25 2008,16:07)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 25 2008,15:37)
Has a copy of the Yoko lawsuit shown up online yet?  I'm waiting for the smoking gun or someone to publish it.  I see people quoting/summarizing it but I have yet to see a copy online.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It can be found embedded < here >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thank you!
Posted by: didymos on April 26 2008,00:31

Dembski's trying to be funny again.  Or maybe not.  It's hard to tell sometimes.  Here ya < go >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Yoko Ono, as many readers of this blog by now know, is suing the producers of EXPELLED for using a brief clip of John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” One of the stanzas of the song reads:

   Imagine no possessions
   I wonder if you can
   No need for greed or hunger
   A brotherhood of man
   Imagine all the people
   Sharing all the world

Is it possible to copyright a song that disavows possessions (copyright being a form of possession)? Once Ono realizes the self-referential incoherence of her suit, I trust she’ll drop it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Just in case,  I'll address a couple points:

Possible:  Yep.
Trusting in the mercy of Ono:  not a good bet.
Posted by: stevestory on April 26 2008,00:48

Quote (didymos @ April 25 2008,16:22)
Also, you know, going onto someone's blog and posting, oh say, < this >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Kevin (waving arms wildly about) "Hey, look over here. OVER HERE! You don't need to pay attention to that train wreck of a movie that -I- wrote. You know, the one with all the lousy reviews that I simply will not comment on...(and so on and so forth until we all puke for joy)".

Come on Kev? Don't you have anything to say about the wonderful feelings your movie has provoked in the souls of critics around the country? You were pretty quick to share the two or three positive reviews....

Posted by: Dominion | April 25, 2008 at 06:17 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



is pretty much just being straight-up aggressive.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Passive aggressive? LOL. Kevin Miller can't get anything right.
Posted by: didymos on April 26 2008,00:54

Quote (stevestory @ April 25 2008,22:48)
Passive aggressive? LOL. Kevin Miller can't get anything right.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, like I said, for someone whose profession is writing, he seems to have not had much experience with dictionaries.
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on April 26 2008,02:21

Mark Mathis has < a guest column > in today's TC Palm:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Florida Board of Education recently voted to revamp its standards for teaching science in public schools. Educators are now required to teach evolution as “the fundamental concept underlying all biology ... supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence.” While supporters cited the need to improve failing science programs in the state, the decision is likely to have the opposite effect.

In a last-minute compromise, the board voted 4-3, requiring educators to teach the “scientific theory of evolution,” but balked at an “academic freedom” proposal which would allow teachers “to engage students in a critical analysis of that evidence.” In essence, teachers are now required to spend more time teaching only one of two possible theories about the origination and development of life, while forbidding this theory from being properly scrutinized, let alone allowing it to face competition from the competing hypothesis of Intelligent Design.

Hello? Has a majority of the Florida Board of Education ever heard of something called the scientific method? You know, where theories must be thoroughly examined, warts and all?

You might be surprised to hear this, but the brand of evolution taught in schools today (Neo-Darwinism, the idea that all of life is the result of random mutation and natural selection with no need for a designer or God) is no closer to being established as a fact than it was when Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species in 1859. In fact, new technologies are casting more doubt on Darwin’s theory.

It might also surprise you that in the Board of Education’s mandate to use the word “evolution” it did not actually define the word. Seems odd, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s not. Darwinists avoid specifically defining evolution because doing so would reveal that they are actually teaching an atheistic form of the theory. This point cannot be overstated. Florida is mandating the teaching of a state-sponsored, taxpayer-funded theory that is directly linked to atheistic naturalism without allowing the weaknesses of the theory to be discussed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 26 2008,03:37

I'm not sure what this means but there appears to be a further development
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
A tipster wrote in informing OTCS that a Naxos/Pre-72 case (i.e., state common law copyright infringement of sound recording) HAD been filed against the Expelled defendants (see today's earlier posts). After a little research, OTCS reports the following:

EMI Records Limited; Capitol Records LLC v. Premise Media Corporation LP; C & S Production LP dba Rampant Films; Premise Media Distribution LP; Rocky Mountain Pictures Inc.. Filed 4/22/2008; No. 08-601209.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It appears to be separate from the Yoko lawsuit. But IANAL so whatdoIknow? :)
< http://onthecoversongs.blogspot.com/2008....on.html >
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 26 2008,03:46

Some interesting stuff coming out over at Kevin Millers blog:
Nullifidian says:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If you knew that I was lying about having attended an October screening because you didn't start screening it until December, then the people at "Expelled" were (and are) lying about screenings that never happened, exactly what I wanted to confirm at the outset. And there's only one reason for them to be doing that that I can see, and that's to defraud the theatre chains into thinking that there's been much more of a grassroots buzz for "Expelled" than there really was.

Now all of you are reaping the rewards of that deception. You got your +1,000 screen opening, the widest of any documentary and your film is tanking.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....2271862 >

So If some of the screenings never happened somebody was lying! I wonder if this will have relevance to the lawsuits :)
Posted by: Reed on April 26 2008,04:04

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ April 26 2008,00:21)
Mark Mathis has < a guest column > in today's TC Palm:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wherein he repeats some old familiar lies:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Professor Caroline Crocker simply mentions Intelligent Design in her cell biology class and she is expelled from George Mason University. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez — author of 68 peer-reviewed papers and whose work has been used to discover planets — is denied tenure at Iowa State for writing a book on his own time that suggests the universe may be intelligently designed. Richard Sternberg lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution for allowing a paper on ID to be peer reviewed and published. The list goes on and on.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Also amusing:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Mathis is a former TV news journalist and president of Mathis Media, LLC, a media-consulting firm.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No mention of his recent box office hit.
Posted by: didymos on April 26 2008,04:17

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 26 2008,01:46)
Some interesting stuff coming out over at Kevin Millers blog:
Nullifidian says:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If you knew that I was lying about having attended an October screening because you didn't start screening it until December, then the people at "Expelled" were (and are) lying about screenings that never happened, exactly what I wanted to confirm at the outset. And there's only one reason for them to be doing that that I can see, and that's to defraud the theatre chains into thinking that there's been much more of a grassroots buzz for "Expelled" than there really was.

Now all of you are reaping the rewards of that deception. You got your +1,000 screen opening, the widest of any documentary and your film is tanking.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....2271862 >

So If some of the screenings never happened somebody was lying! I wonder if this will have relevance to the lawsuits :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin sucks. I < pointed > that same discrepancy out to him after he accused someone of lying about having attended a screening.  Then, I < asked > him straight out to talk to someone and find out why the Expelled website was claiming there were screenings last October. It's been a month and he never has bothered to respond.
Posted by: didymos on April 26 2008,04:21

OK, the links to individual comments on Kevin's blog don't work.  But, in the interest of non-pseudonymous character assassination, I hereby declare my legal name to be Thomas S. Howard and that I posted under that name.  So yeah.
Posted by: didymos on April 26 2008,04:28

Ah, and now I see Kevin got tricked by the one accused.  Nice.
Posted by: themadlolscientist on April 26 2008,04:51

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ April 26 2008,02:21)
Mark Mathis has < a guest column > in today's TC Palm:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
(Neo-Darwinism, the idea that all of life is the result of random mutation and natural selection with no need for a designer or God)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So much for "intelligent" design being a purely "scientific" thang. Bah. Humbug.  :p  :p  :p  :p  :p
Posted by: didymos on April 26 2008,04:57

Ouch.  Expelled has to date made only $3,902,920, for a $220 per theatre average according to < The Numbers >.

Going by < Brayton >, they spent approximately $3,500,000 on the actual film.  So, even if all that money went directly into their hands, which it didn't, they'd still have only made $402,920 of profit over the seven day period, divided amongst all the various profit partners.  Now, add in the gobs of cash blown on busing people to shows, free-to-the-public-yet-invitation-only screenings, the various "we'll reimburse your tickets" schemes, ad time on multiple cable networks, whatever "Beware the Believers" cost them, all the web design and hosting fees, billboards, giant red tour bus, and who knows what else and it pretty much adds up to "Oh fuck, Yoko Ono is officially going to own our children."
Posted by: dhogaza on April 26 2008,14:03

Well, better yet, as one would expect its second Friday has brought in much less than its opening friday.  Only $450,000 (estimated) at Box Office Mojo, and down to #13.

It's not going to hold on to those 1000 screens much longer, I don't think.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 26 2008,14:22

Quote (dhogaza @ April 26 2008,15:03)
Well, better yet, as one would expect its second Friday has brought in much less than its opening friday.  Only $450,000 (estimated) at Box Office Mojo, and down to #13.

It's not going to hold on to those 1000 screens much longer, I don't think.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The Numbers has it at a $505,000 for Friday (and also at #13).
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on April 26 2008,14:34

I always took it for granted that Disco Institute was funding Expelled!. Are they really denying that their fingers were/are in this pie? Really?
Posted by: midwifetoad on April 26 2008,14:49

Looking at some popular movies, most take in about 40 percent of their total box office the first week. That's assuming a long run.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 26 2008,14:52

I'm not sure what the theater criteria are for keeping a movie playing. "Leatherheads" is still being shown, and pulling in a whopping $75/theater mid-week.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 26 2008,15:44

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 26 2008,14:52)
I'm not sure what the theater criteria are for keeping a movie playing. "Leatherheads" is still being shown, and pulling in a whopping $75/theater mid-week.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Depends what you can displace it with?
Posted by: didymos on April 26 2008,19:09

Well, Kev is < trotting > out Dembski's little opinion < piece > in the Baptist Press, so I felt obligated to point a couple things out to Mr. Miller:

First comment I left
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

OK, one thing about Dembski's piece. Notice how he says the Village Voice considers Constantine's Sword to be "cutting-edge cultural commentary"? So, it's a paraphrase from the review, right? Nope, he made it up and attributes it to them by way of implication. Nowhere in the review is anything remotely like that actually said about the movie. Here's an interesting and real quote though:

"But if [Constantine's Sword] is more provocative personal inquiry than reportorial knockout punch, it still pokes needed holes in the concept of papal infallibility and provides historical context for the dangers of linking the church and military."

Now compare that to the positive Expelled review you just quoted from in another entry:

"Watching Stein at Dachau, head in hand, comparing Darwin to Hitler, you understand that the man's on a personal crusade."

This isn't the first time Dembski has been less than honest, but even if it was, he has clearly been dishonest in that piece (most of the other claims in the piece have already been well-debunked) and so any conclusions he draws from that Village Voice review are worthless, based as they are on counterfactual "evidence". Here's the real review for those who prefer to check their facts:

< http://www.villagevoice.com/film....20.html >

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | April 26, 2008 at 04:46 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




And the second

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Oh, and let it be noted as well that Dembski imputes Carroll's conclusions to the Village Voice, when in fact, the majority of the review is a summary of the film's argument. But, per Dembski:

"So, for our culture's secular elite, a film that shows how Christianity 'culminated in the Holocaust' constitutes cutting-edge cultural commentary."

Let's actually see what follows that snippet:

"So argues James Carroll in his 2001 book Constantine's Sword and in this searching, intellectually lively documentary."

So argues James Carroll.

Not the Village Voice, who, by the way, can hardly be considered a valid stand-in for the entire "culture's secular elite", whatever that is actually supposed to mean.

It's clear that while the Voice's reviewer did like the film, he didn't consider Carroll's case a slam-dunk, but it was interesting and well enough done that it was worth seeing and raised some valid points. Yeah, I paraphrase, but here's the thing: I do so accurately.

That's multiple instances of clear dishonesty in a single sentence. But, hey, Dembski's one of the good guys, right?

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | April 26, 2008 at 04:57 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin really does appear to have a severe allergy to fact-checking.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 26 2008,19:18

< Moon Language Tard > pays a visit < to JanieBelle's > post about < Expelled >.

I'm a little tied up, so have at it.  I'll try to get first time commenters approved any time I'm online.  After the first one, they should go right through.
Posted by: ERV on April 26 2008,20:02

Quote (didymos @ April 26 2008,19:09)
But, per Dembski:

"So, for our culture's secular elite, a film that shows how Christianity 'culminated in the Holocaust' constitutes cutting-edge cultural commentary."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I *love* it when WAD talks about The Elite.

He has the velvety smooth, lily white hands of a mathematician.

But he doesnt actually *work*--Hasnt published shit in math, and boy teaches *one* night class a week in 'theology' or something stupid like that.

But boy gets paid just short of $10,000 to blither on about biology for an hour.

'Secular' elite?

*rolleyes*
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 26 2008,20:05

According to BOM, "Expelled" is now playing in 1041 theaters, a drop of 11 theaters from the opening. However, I've heard that the distributors were making two-week contracts with theaters, so I suspect that only a minor fraction of theaters had one-week contracts, and probably only were able to swing that by dint of having a market monopoly in their area.

We'll need to wait till next Friday to see the choice effect of theater owners in full play.
Posted by: khan on April 26 2008,20:18

Quote (ERV @ April 26 2008,21:02)
Quote (didymos @ April 26 2008,19:09)
But, per Dembski:

"So, for our culture's secular elite, a film that shows how Christianity 'culminated in the Holocaust' constitutes cutting-edge cultural commentary."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I *love* it when WAD talks about The Elite.

He has the velvety smooth, lily white hands of a mathematician.

But he doesnt actually *work*--Hasnt published shit in math, and boy teaches *one* night class a week in 'theology' or something stupid like that.

But boy gets paid just short of $10,000 to blither on about biology for an hour.

'Secular' elite?

*rolleyes*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice work if you can get it.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on April 26 2008,21:38

Quote (ERV @ April 26 2008,20:02)
But [William Dembski] doesnt actually *work*--Hasnt published shit in math...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am disappointed in Bill. He could contribute to mathematics but he does not. It is a waste of God-given talent.
Posted by: Doc Bill on April 26 2008,21:57

I hope this is not a trend (!) but I agree with BobOB on this one.

Yeah, I think Dembski has potential and is a bright, creative guy, but ID snuffed the life out of him.  And the others.

Gonzalez is a good example.  Once he got involved with ID his scientific contributions flatlined.  Same for Behe, and the rest.

I'll be interested in a train wreck sort of way to watch Robert Marks' career terminate as a creationist crank.  I think he's well on his way.

ID is like an addiction.  The more you do it, the more you are compelled to do it and it leads nowhere.

Back to Dembski, if you chart his career since college it's been like a Slinky on stairs and we all know what happens when the Slinky gets past  the last step;  potential energy is zero.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 26 2008,23:16

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ April 26 2008,19:38)
     
Quote (ERV @ April 26 2008,20:02)
But [William Dembski] doesnt actually *work*--Hasnt published shit in math...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am disappointed in Bill. He could contribute to mathematics but he does not. It is a waste of God-given talent.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My take on WAD's career decisions is that he had the choice of being a solid, reputable mathematician, albeit one that no one had ever heard of, but that choice just wasn't sexy enough. He saw himself as being on the cutting edge of this new revolutionary type of science that would replace everything else, and HE would be in on the ground floor!

The problem with revolutions are (a) you have to be sure the side you choose isn't full of shit, and (b) history is usually rather rough on people who pick the losing side. Bill was dumb enough to believe the publicity ID was putting out, and he staked his whole career on it. Now ID is tanking and it's taking his reputation with it, and he's obviously very pissed off and bitter. At this point it'd be hard for him just to go back to being a mathematician, plus after convincing himself he was about to Overthrow Materialism and Make History any minute now, I doubt his ego could take it.

'Course, nothing all that bad has happened to him, really. Cushy job at a jerkwater Bible college, lotsa fawning dummies on his blog, and he grinds out another book for the rubes every 2-3 years. Not what he imagined happening, tho.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Gonzalez is a good example.  Once he got involved with ID his scientific contributions flatlined.  Same for Behe, and the rest.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Gee, who'da thought that "quit looking, 'God did it' is the only possible answer" would be such a research killer?
Posted by: UnMark on April 26 2008,23:41

Is there any evidence to support the hypothesis that Gonzales' decline was a result of losing his comfortable post-doc peer group coupled with a lack of creativity, not his association with ID?  For some reason I see him as antisocial, and, once out on his own, having a "deer in the headlights" problem and not having the wherewithal to get past it.  In walks ID, which he latches onto out of religious comfort.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 27 2008,05:37



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

and he grinds out another book for the rubes every 2-3 years

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I think you mean "grinds out another title". What's in between the covers is recycled.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 27 2008,07:00

< Expelled > is < Still sporting double goose eggs among top critics at Rotten Tomatoes >.
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on April 27 2008,07:17

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 26 2008,19:18)
< Moon Language Tard > pays a visit < to JanieBelle's > post about < Expelled >.

I'm a little tied up, so have at it.  I'll try to get first time commenters approved any time I'm online.  After the first one, they should go right through.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh my! Pauli Ojala is one of the handful of Finnish creationists who dares to venture into Intertubes. He is the bat77 equivalent on moonspeak-forums.

I'm terribly sorry that we allowed him to expand on to English forums.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 27 2008,10:15

We should get the dreaded Finnnish Green Berets after him immediately!




Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on April 27 2008,13:53

< The Numbers > estimates that Expelled! will have grossed a total of $5,281,787 after this weekend, dropping to number 13. It experienced the largest percentage drop in revenues weekend to weekend of any of the films currently in the top 15.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 27 2008,14:37

It's nice of the producers of < Expelled! > to create a vehicle that will take Fundie's hard earned discretionary income and give it to prominent peace activist and atheist Yoko Ono. Hopefully she'll donate a slice to the Open Society Institute. Finally, some church outings that were worthwhile!
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 28 2008,07:12

ERV

If you are reading this, can you tell us what happened to your blog? Did you get < expelled >? I tried to check in there this morning, and found this.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Sorry, the blog at endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: midwifetoad on April 28 2008,08:18

Time to start asking some questions of Google in public.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on April 28 2008,09:05

Loopy Catholic reviewer Ernie Grimm contributes the latest < invidious comparison >.

Of course, I'm probably just slacking off and have tens to hundreds more entries if I go look for them.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 28 2008,09:12

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 28 2008,09:05)
Loopy Catholic reviewer Ernie Grimm contributes the latest < invidious comparison >.

Of course, I'm probably just slacking off and have tens to hundreds more entries if I go look for them.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This comment made the click-through worth while:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ed Saturday, April 26, 2008 12:55 AM By Pierre JC
If this is what passes for critical thinking among believers, then no wonder you indulge in infantile fantasies about magical, invisible friends. Anyone who cannot distinguish between biological evolution and social Darwinism should go back to the fifth grade (and actually listen this time). "The Darwinists have their own Gestapo." You obviously mean to imply that supporters of evolution use violence and torture. This is a disgusting lie. You must be confusing supporters of evolution with the Catholic Church, which did, in fact, torture people most horribly. You people are a disgrace to honesty and reason; you really should be ashamed of yourselves. Repent!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 28 2008,09:21

Quote (didymos @ April 26 2008,04:57)
Ouch.  Expelled has to date made only $3,902,920, for a $220 per theatre average according to < The Numbers >.

Going by < Brayton >, they spent approximately $3,500,000 on the actual film.  So, even if all that money went directly into their hands, which it didn't, they'd still have only made $402,920 of profit over the seven day period, divided amongst all the various profit partners.  Now, add in the gobs of cash blown on busing people to shows, free-to-the-public-yet-invitation-only screenings, the various "we'll reimburse your tickets" schemes, ad time on multiple cable networks, whatever "Beware the Believers" cost them, all the web design and hosting fees, billboards, giant red tour bus, and who knows what else and it pretty much adds up to "Oh fuck, Yoko Ono is officially going to own our children."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There was an article in the business section of the Dallas Morning News on Sunday the 28th.  I think they interviewed Logan Craft or one of the other tards who said it cost them 3.5 M or so to produce the film and "multiples of that" to promote it.
Posted by: olegt on April 28 2008,09:25

Excerpt from < Intelligent design documentary creates stir > in Dallas News:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Nearly $4 million was spent on producing the movie and "a multiple of that" in distribution and marketing so far, Mr. Craft says.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on April 28 2008,09:27

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 28 2008,09:21)
Quote (didymos @ April 26 2008,04:57)
Ouch.  Expelled has to date made only $3,902,920, for a $220 per theatre average according to < The Numbers >.

Going by < Brayton >, they spent approximately $3,500,000 on the actual film.  So, even if all that money went directly into their hands, which it didn't, they'd still have only made $402,920 of profit over the seven day period, divided amongst all the various profit partners.  Now, add in the gobs of cash blown on busing people to shows, free-to-the-public-yet-invitation-only screenings, the various "we'll reimburse your tickets" schemes, ad time on multiple cable networks, whatever "Beware the Believers" cost them, all the web design and hosting fees, billboards, giant red tour bus, and who knows what else and it pretty much adds up to "Oh fuck, Yoko Ono is officially going to own our children."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There was an article in the business section of the Dallas Morning News on Sunday the 28th.  I think they interviewed Logan Craft or one of the other tards who said it cost them 3.5 M or so to produce the film and "multiples of that" to promote it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=81572732 >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The producers felt it was important that the film not be perceived as a Christian flick.

Nearly $4 million was spent on producing the movie and "a multiple of that" in distribution and marketing so far, Mr. Craft says.

To make a profit, Expelled needs strong enough attendance to land an all-important DVD deal. Mr. Craft says six companies have approached Premise so far.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 28 2008,09:51

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 28 2008,09:27)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 28 2008,09:21)
 
Quote (didymos @ April 26 2008,04:57)
Ouch.  Expelled has to date made only $3,902,920, for a $220 per theatre average according to < The Numbers >.

Going by < Brayton >, they spent approximately $3,500,000 on the actual film.  So, even if all that money went directly into their hands, which it didn't, they'd still have only made $402,920 of profit over the seven day period, divided amongst all the various profit partners.  Now, add in the gobs of cash blown on busing people to shows, free-to-the-public-yet-invitation-only screenings, the various "we'll reimburse your tickets" schemes, ad time on multiple cable networks, whatever "Beware the Believers" cost them, all the web design and hosting fees, billboards, giant red tour bus, and who knows what else and it pretty much adds up to "Oh fuck, Yoko Ono is officially going to own our children."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There was an article in the business section of the Dallas Morning News on Sunday the 28th.  I think they interviewed Logan Craft or one of the other tards who said it cost them 3.5 M or so to produce the film and "multiples of that" to promote it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=81572732 >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The producers felt it was important that the film not be perceived as a Christian flick.

Nearly $4 million was spent on producing the movie and "a multiple of that" in distribution and marketing so far, Mr. Craft says.

To make a profit, Expelled needs strong enough attendance to land an all-important DVD deal. Mr. Craft says six companies have approached Premise so far.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


GAYEST 4500TH POST EVAR
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 28 2008,09:54

You'll be getting it in my 5k Tardologue.

*glares*
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 28 2008,17:45

< Actor Ben Stein dissed on House floor >

< Students don't like how Ben is "shoving ID down their throats" >

Public backlash brewing?
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 28 2008,19:10

Quote (olegt @ April 28 2008,09:25)
Excerpt from < Intelligent design documentary creates stir > in Dallas News:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Nearly $4 million was spent on producing the movie and "a multiple of that" in distribution and marketing so far, Mr. Craft says.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey the print version of this article used the term creationism in it.  I read it Sunday morning with my coffee.  Interesting that they changed the name for the online version.  I also wrote the author.  Weird.
Posted by: cogzoid on April 28 2008,19:22

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 28 2008,19:10)
Quote (olegt @ April 28 2008,09:25)
Excerpt from < Intelligent design documentary creates stir > in Dallas News:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Nearly $4 million was spent on producing the movie and "a multiple of that" in distribution and marketing so far, Mr. Craft says.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey the print version of this article used the term creationism in it.  I read it Sunday morning with my coffee.  Interesting that they changed the name for the online version.  I also wrote the author.  Weird.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Don't worry, they're interchangeable.  Even the ID proponents have stopped pretending.  When is the last time they tried to say ID is not creationism?
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on April 28 2008,20:10

If you haven't read John Derbsyshire's review in the National Review Online, you need to go there. Here is but one gem from that basket.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism. (A thing that cannot be said of Darwin. See Chapter X of Voyage of the Beagle.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And this is from a conservative publication.

Put down the koolaid, step away from the dembski, please.

< Link. >
Posted by: J-Dog on April 28 2008,20:35

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ April 28 2008,20:10)
If you haven't read John Derbsyshire's review in the National Review Online, you need to go there. Here is but one gem from that basket.  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism. (A thing that cannot be said of Darwin. See Chapter X of Voyage of the Beagle.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And this is from a conservative publication.

Put down the koolaid, step away from the dembski, please.

< Link. >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice line!  Can I use this in my Sig Line?

Put down the koolaid, step away from the dembski, please.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 28 2008,21:19

I don't like it.  There is no reason to slur Apaches by comparing them to those mendacious intellectual pornographers.
Posted by: Dr.GH on April 28 2008,21:39

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 28 2008,19:19)
I don't like it.  There is no reason to slur Apaches by comparing them to those mendacious intellectual pornographers.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I agree.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 28 2008,23:14

Would this make a great signature or what:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
My own theory is that the creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are.  What they are, as is amply documented, is a pressure group for religious teaching in public schools.
- John Derbyshire - < A Blood Libel on Our Civilization Can I expell Expelled?
>
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I treasure my Dembski one too much to change it.  I'm sporting mine until Dembski admits the bible code is a hoax.  Hmmm...
Posted by: charlie d on April 29 2008,10:04

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ April 27 2008,13:53)
< The Numbers > estimates that Expelled! will have grossed a total of $5,281,787 after this weekend, dropping to number 13. It experienced the largest percentage drop in revenues weekend to weekend of any of the films currently in the top 15.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is kind of fishy: Boxofficemojo still lists < last weekend's numbers > for Expelled as "estimates".  The Numbers has the amounts for < Friday >, (oddly, in a different color than the rest), and doesn't even list Expelled among the movies for either < Saturday > or < Sunday >.  

It almost looks as if someone is being unusually coy regarding the smashing success of their ground-breaking documentary.
Posted by: Kristine on April 29 2008,11:09

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ April 28 2008,16:45)
< Actor Ben Stein dissed on House floor >
< Students don't like how Ben is "shoving ID down their throats" >
Public backlash brewing?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
When asked how he could say "with a straight face" that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory, Stein responded that Darwinism could not account for large-scale evolution, only microevolution.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And this, even if it were true, has what to do with whether or not intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein finished his talk touching on the importance of community and education. He said that the only way to turn the economy around is "not about taxing millionaires, but keeping families together."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe it would help if Stein didn't < throw himself > at his female contestants.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
My girlfriend was a contestant on his "Win Ben Stein's money" show. During the break, off-camera, he hit on her in the most creepy way. She left the whole experience feeling dirty about it. Relevant? It goes to his character.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ish. Sounds like he's trying to piously overcompensate now for his apparent lack of integrity/success as a playboy (you need to first look the part, Ben).


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein criticized educational systems, but put the blame largely on students for not having the kind of "mental discipline" necessary to perform well on testing.

He also joked about the lack of educational standards, "What do you get after driving around the UCLA campus in a red BMW for four years?" Stein said, "a degree."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What an asshole. When I was in college I drove a '76 Buick (in the mid-1980s) back and forth to my job as a waitress. I worked 50-60 hours a week, Ben Stein. I'll bet your parents put you through college, and bought you a car besides.
Posted by: caerbannog on April 29 2008,11:39



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Stein criticized educational systems, but put the blame largely on students for not having the kind of "mental discipline" necessary to perform well on testing.

He also joked about the lack of educational standards, "What do you get after driving around the UCLA campus in a red BMW for four years?" Stein said, "a degree."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



When I was at UCLA, my primary vehicle was a Continental.  A *Schwinn* Continental.  And I'll bet I studied a lot harder during my time at UCLA than Stein did when he was in college.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 29 2008,11:55

Quote (caerbannog @ April 29 2008,09:39)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Stein criticized educational systems, but put the blame largely on students for not having the kind of "mental discipline" necessary to perform well on testing.

He also joked about the lack of educational standards, "What do you get after driving around the UCLA campus in a red BMW for four years?" Stein said, "a degree."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



When I was at UCLA, my primary vehicle was a Continental.  A *Schwinn* Continental.  And I'll bet I studied a lot harder during my time at UCLA than Stein did when he was in college.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


At my time at UCLA my primary vehicle was the Santa Monica City Bus #3, and almost none of my friends owned cars. Ben Stein can go fuck himself.
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on April 29 2008,11:58

Quote (charlie d @ April 29 2008,10:04)
Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ April 27 2008,13:53)
< The Numbers > estimates that Expelled! will have grossed a total of $5,281,787 after this weekend, dropping to number 13. It experienced the largest percentage drop in revenues weekend to weekend of any of the films currently in the top 15.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is kind of fishy: Boxofficemojo still lists < last weekend's numbers > for Expelled as "estimates".  The Numbers has the amounts for < Friday >, (oddly, in a different color than the rest), and doesn't even list Expelled among the movies for either < Saturday > or < Sunday >.  

It almost looks as if someone is being unusually coy regarding the smashing success of their ground-breaking documentary.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Time for Dembski to make a wind-breaking documentary!  :D
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 29 2008,11:59

i went without a car for about five years during college and grad school.  ben stein can go get fucked by a wildebeest.
Posted by: Kristine on April 29 2008,12:06

Turns out that the Yoko thingie isn’t < isn't even Stein's first lawsuit >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein has long made up the truth, much as God conjured up Ben Stein as part of some twisted plan for life on Earth. Read on for one of the disturbed journalist's greatest acts of journalistic creation, when he pretended he sat shiva with Rivers when he'd never even met her, and then defended hearsay as a practice sanctified by the Watergate investigators. (By the way, could somebody please explain how Stein still has his column in the New York Times' Sunday Business section?)

Stein achieved fame, but not fortune, in December of 1987, when he published a column in GQ under the pseudonym of "Bert Hacker." The author—who began his piece with the line "I have known Joan Rivers for more than twenty years"—wrote that he'd had dinner with the comedienne ten days before the suicide of her husband, Edgar Rosenberg. Later, he said, he went to her home to sit shiva for Rosenberg.

There were problems with this piece, all of the hallucinatory nature. Stein had never met Joan Rivers, much less been invited to her home to grieve with her. But now it appeared they would meet, in court—Rivers filed a $50 million libel suit against Stein and Condé Nast Publications.

With that, Rivers says, Stein's lawyer contacted her to deliver a threat: If she didn't withdraw the suit, the world would soon know she was a lesbian who gave her husband the pills he used to kill himself. Rivers says she challenged Stein's attorney to go public—and told him how much she was looking forward to announcing that it was Stein's wife who lured her out of the closet.

Stein had no comment until his appearance on the CBS This Morning show in February of 1988, when Kathleeen Sullivan suggested his reporting techniques leaned heavily on hearsay. Not at all, Stein said—his reporting methods were the norm. "The entire Watergate coverage was based on hearsay, and they gave the people who wrote that the Pulitzer Prize," he told his astonished interviewer. "If you look at any day's front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post, the huge majority of what is reported is hearsay."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The lawsuit was settled out of court.

Ben wails about < "the Gestapo in Texas" >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The state of Texas has not found one single crime against these children yet. Even if they do find one or two, how can that be a reason for taking dozens, maybe hundreds of children away from their mothers [and father]?

The kids are the victims here ...Look, I am a huge fan of Texas.... This is an Orwellian nightmare... For no reason except what looks like a crank call, the lives of these children have been turned upside down and into a screaming horror movie.

Can't someone say the obvious here? That in this case, it's not the Mormons who are the criminals, it's the government of Texas.

Governor Perry, wake up and give those kids back to their mothers until you have some compelling, proven reason to do otherwise. What your state is doing here is Gestapo tactics pure and simple.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I guess since Ben Stein likes to hit on young women he doesn't seen pregnant children as any kind of crime.

Honestly, what a freak. How long before this man does a Britney Spears?
Posted by: J-Dog on April 29 2008,12:19

Quote (Kristine @ April 29 2008,12:06)
Turns out that the Yoko thingie isn’t < isn't even Stein's first lawsuit >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein has long made up the truth, much as God conjured up Ben Stein as part of some twisted plan for life on Earth. Read on for one of the disturbed journalist's greatest acts of journalistic creation, when he pretended he sat shiva with Rivers when he'd never even met her, and then defended hearsay as a practice sanctified by the Watergate investigators. (By the way, could somebody please explain how Stein still has his column in the New York Times' Sunday Business section?)

Stein achieved fame, but not fortune, in December of 1987, when he published a column in GQ under the pseudonym of "Bert Hacker." The author—who began his piece with the line "I have known Joan Rivers for more than twenty years"—wrote that he'd had dinner with the comedienne ten days before the suicide of her husband, Edgar Rosenberg. Later, he said, he went to her home to sit shiva for Rosenberg.

There were problems with this piece, all of the hallucinatory nature. Stein had never met Joan Rivers, much less been invited to her home to grieve with her. But now it appeared they would meet, in court—Rivers filed a $50 million libel suit against Stein and Condé Nast Publications.

With that, Rivers says, Stein's lawyer contacted her to deliver a threat: If she didn't withdraw the suit, the world would soon know she was a lesbian who gave her husband the pills he used to kill himself. Rivers says she challenged Stein's attorney to go public—and told him how much she was looking forward to announcing that it was Stein's wife who lured her out of the closet.

Stein had no comment until his appearance on the CBS This Morning show in February of 1988, when Kathleeen Sullivan suggested his reporting techniques leaned heavily on hearsay. Not at all, Stein said—his reporting methods were the norm. "The entire Watergate coverage was based on hearsay, and they gave the people who wrote that the Pulitzer Prize," he told his astonished interviewer. "If you look at any day's front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post, the huge majority of what is reported is hearsay."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The lawsuit was settled out of court.

Ben wails about < "the Gestapo in Texas" >.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The state of Texas has not found one single crime against these children yet. Even if they do find one or two, how can that be a reason for taking dozens, maybe hundreds of children away from their mothers [and father]?

The kids are the victims here ...Look, I am a huge fan of Texas.... This is an Orwellian nightmare... For no reason except what looks like a crank call, the lives of these children have been turned upside down and into a screaming horror movie.

Can't someone say the obvious here? That in this case, it's not the Mormons who are the criminals, it's the government of Texas.

Governor Perry, wake up and give those kids back to their mothers until you have some compelling, proven reason to do otherwise. What your state is doing here is Gestapo tactics pure and simple.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I guess since Ben Stein likes to hit on young women he doesn't seen pregnant children as any kind of crime.

Honestly, what a freak. How long before this man does a Britney Spears?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks a lot Kristine...I don't think I want to see NeinStein with a bald head and a bald.... uh.. without underwear...

Or are you alluding to the rumors of him and K-Fed?
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 29 2008,12:21



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
How long before this man does Britney Spears?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ooooh that's hot.  and something that both Tarden and k.e.e. cummings can appreciate.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 29 2008,12:33

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 29 2008,10:21)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
How long before this man does Britney Spears?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ooooh that's hot.  and something that both Tarden and k.e.e. cummings can appreciate.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think Quidam's talents are called for here.
Posted by: Kristine on April 29 2008,12:43

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 29 2008,11:21)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
How long before this man does Britney Spears?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ooooh that's hot.  and something that both Tarden and k.e.e. cummings can appreciate.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I meant does a Britney Spears, i.e., go really nuts. (I wouldn't expect Dr. Phil to interject himself into Stein's situation, but it would be his just desserts. Uh, Dr. Phil's too.)
Posted by: factician on April 29 2008,12:48

Quote (caerbannog @ April 29 2008,12:39)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Stein criticized educational systems, but put the blame largely on students for not having the kind of "mental discipline" necessary to perform well on testing.

He also joked about the lack of educational standards, "What do you get after driving around the UCLA campus in a red BMW for four years?" Stein said, "a degree."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



When I was at UCLA, my primary vehicle was a Continental.  A *Schwinn* Continental.  And I'll bet I studied a lot harder during my time at UCLA than Stein did when he was in college.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yep, my first car was purchased towards the end of graduate school.  I spent $1800 on it.

7 years later, and nearing the end of my post-doctoral work, I'm still driving that car.

Ben Stein's impression of education is quite different than mine.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on April 29 2008,12:59

Quote (factician @ April 29 2008,10:48)
Quote (caerbannog @ April 29 2008,12:39)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Stein criticized educational systems, but put the blame largely on students for not having the kind of "mental discipline" necessary to perform well on testing.

He also joked about the lack of educational standards, "What do you get after driving around the UCLA campus in a red BMW for four years?" Stein said, "a degree."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



When I was at UCLA, my primary vehicle was a Continental.  A *Schwinn* Continental.  And I'll bet I studied a lot harder during my time at UCLA than Stein did when he was in college.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yep, my first car was purchased towards the end of graduate school.  I spent $1800 on it.

7 years later, and nearing the end of my post-doctoral work, I'm still driving that car.

Ben Stein's impression of education is quite different than mine.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben Stein's impression of education is pretty much the same as a virgin's impressions of sex.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 29 2008,13:20

YEAH, ITS NAAAAAAAAAAAAASTY!!!!

arden you would know about the virgins impression.
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on April 29 2008,15:37

InternetMovieDataBase ranks Expelled! at 3,7/10 points.

< http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1091617/ >

Not at the very bottom of documentaries, but way, way, way far away from the top.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on April 29 2008,16:10

The ADL finally condemns Expelled's exploitation of the Holocaust.  Cross-post from Pharyngula:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
OT, news:

Here is the ADL's statement on Expelled:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust


New York, NY, April 29, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement regarding the controversial film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.


The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

< http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Did Mathis and Ruloff really think they could insulate their exploitation of the Holocaust with Stein, Berlinski, and other Jewish shills for rubbish?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen Davidson
Posted by: BWE on April 29 2008,16:18

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 29 2008,13:20)
YEAH, ITS NAAAAAAAAAAAAASTY!!!!

arden you would know about the virgins impression.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Only with women.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 29 2008,16:21

Quote (BWE @ April 29 2008,16:18)
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 29 2008,13:20)
YEAH, ITS NAAAAAAAAAAAAASTY!!!!

arden you would know about the virgins impression.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Only with women.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


zzzzzzzzzzzzzah!

Isn't it funny that we have finally found this one thing that evolutionary theory cannot explain, and these fucksticks want to run around trying to make it explain it.  there is a crossed wire in'ar sommers.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 29 2008,16:44

Quote (Glen Davidson @ April 29 2008,16:10)
The ADL finally condemns Expelled's exploitation of the Holocaust.  Cross-post from Pharyngula:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
OT, news:

Here is the ADL's statement on Expelled:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust


New York, NY, April 29, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement regarding the controversial film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.


The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

< http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Did Mathis and Ruloff really think they could insulate their exploitation of the Holocaust with Stein, Berlinski, and other Jewish shills for rubbish?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Glen Davidson
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've been wondering what was taking them so long.  They made a similar statement about the Coral Rodge Ministry tardumentary that portrayed Darwinsim as the cause for Hitler.  

This is sweet!
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 29 2008,18:45

Christian review, from the land of Denyse...

< http://www.canadianchristianity.com/bc/bccn/0508/23expelled.html >
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 29 2008,18:53

From the comment:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I agree with Tyrone on this one. I'm a Christian losing my
faith entirely because of how ignorant my church is. It sounds unbelievable I guess, but the actual institution of Christianity (I still believe in some sort of God) really seems evil to me now. Everybody I know is so self-righteous and only hear what they want to hear, and this movie scared me, it really is scare tactics and propaganda. My parents and friends have no idea yet how I feel, they loved this movie and I think Tyrone is right about the "worldview". This site is reassuring that religious doesn't need to mean ignorant though.
#3 Nate - 04/29/2008 - 07:19
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Good work, IDists! He'll be an atheist soon.
Posted by: keiths on April 29 2008,19:49

< Opinion:  Science Swiftboated in 'Expelled' >
Posted by: godsilove on April 29 2008,22:06

Ben Stein at it again:
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PFrGCkU0D4& >
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on April 30 2008,02:59

Sunday 27th (Estimate) $414,000
Monday 28th (Not an estimate) $157,191

OUCH!

OK, more people go on a Sunday but....

< mojo >
Posted by: charlie d on April 30 2008,07:53

Quote (godsilove @ April 29 2008,22:06)
Ben Stein at it again:
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PFrGCkU0D4& >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, it looks like Glenn Beck was right about one thing: judging from the habitual contents and tenor of his show, Ben Stein probably is the smartest guy he knows.
Posted by: charlie d on April 30 2008,07:59

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 30 2008,02:59)
Sunday 27th (Estimate) $414,000
Monday 28th (Not an estimate) $157,191

OUCH!

OK, more people go on a Sunday but....

< mojo >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think that kind of drop is fairly normal for a Monday.  

Still, however, they have not released < their actual numbers > for the weekend.  The only movie in the top tier that has not done so, as far as I can see.


Posted by: Doc Bill on April 30 2008,08:29

The smartest thing Ben Stein has done is to only be interviewed by very, very ignorant people.  With them Stein comes off well.

I'd like to see Stein interviewed by Thunderf00t, or anyone who could call bullshit on Stein's every point.

"Darwinism doesn't explain thermodynamics."  We could start there.

What a moron.
Posted by: Kristine on April 30 2008,12:01

< Just can't get enough >!

This is the most brutal review yet.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The reality is that the film is as phony as Stein’s “just folks” posturing. This is nothing but stacked-deck religious-right propaganda palmed off as a serious debate on intelligent design—a concept that the film itself never actually explains. There’s a good reason for that, since any explanation of the concept immediately proves that intelligent design isn’t science, but a philosophical or religious proposition, the very basis of which rests on the existence of a supreme being. As a friend of mine noted, intelligent design isn’t anything but creationism “in a cheap tuxedo.” Frankowski and Stein both realize this, and rather than deal with the issue, they trot out the smoke-and-mirrors legacy handed down to them by Spiro Agnew with his “liberal media” and the standard right-wing outcry of oppression. (Anyone care to explain how it’s possible to be the “silent majority” and an oppressed minority at the same time?)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And then, a swipe at Berlinski, who in the film calls Dawkins "reptilian."
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But really what’s so base and corrupt about the film lies in its dazzling intellectual leaps. These start with linking the scientific community and the media to Stalin and Khrushchev—insert stock footage and create unfounded, historically spurious connection. A little more stock footage of bullies and some shots of the Berlin Wall represents the scientific community of Darwinists keeping out (or in) those freedom-loving intelligent-design folks—more guilt by filmmaking association. (The irony is that this is all grounded in Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage.) This sort of thing is interspersed with interview footage of intelligent-design martyrs—whose martyrdom becomes sketchier and sketchier the more you check into their actual histories. (I never really did figure out the identity of the über-effete—think Rex Reed times 10—expert in Paris who spent most of his interview reclining.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Man, that's cold. :)

< Farewell to Ben Stein >. (This one's about his "I know traders... I know traders as ancient as the world and corrupt as an ant-cake," etc. column in the NY Times. My apologies to Langston Hughes.) :D
Posted by: Annyday on April 30 2008,12:32

Quote (factician @ April 29 2008,12:48)
Quote (caerbannog @ April 29 2008,12:39)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Stein criticized educational systems, but put the blame largely on students for not having the kind of "mental discipline" necessary to perform well on testing.

He also joked about the lack of educational standards, "What do you get after driving around the UCLA campus in a red BMW for four years?" Stein said, "a degree."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



When I was at UCLA, my primary vehicle was a Continental.  A *Schwinn* Continental.  And I'll bet I studied a lot harder during my time at UCLA than Stein did when he was in college.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yep, my first car was purchased towards the end of graduate school.  I spent $1800 on it.

7 years later, and nearing the end of my post-doctoral work, I'm still driving that car.

Ben Stein's impression of education is quite different than mine.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Spendthrift. Almost everyone I know walks.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 30 2008,13:04

Quote (Annyday @ April 30 2008,12:32)
Quote (factician @ April 29 2008,12:48)
Quote (caerbannog @ April 29 2008,12:39)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Stein criticized educational systems, but put the blame largely on students for not having the kind of "mental discipline" necessary to perform well on testing.

He also joked about the lack of educational standards, "What do you get after driving around the UCLA campus in a red BMW for four years?" Stein said, "a degree."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



When I was at UCLA, my primary vehicle was a Continental.  A *Schwinn* Continental.  And I'll bet I studied a lot harder during my time at UCLA than Stein did when he was in college.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yep, my first car was purchased towards the end of graduate school.  I spent $1800 on it.

7 years later, and nearing the end of my post-doctoral work, I'm still driving that car.

Ben Stein's impression of education is quite different than mine.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Spendthrift. Almost everyone I know walks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In my day by god we pulled ourselves to our destination with our teeth, and we fought against it at the same time by digging in our toenails.

Yah, you little young bastards sure do have it easy.
Posted by: didymos on April 30 2008,14:01

You forgot to add that it was uphill both ways, in the snow.
Posted by: Kristine on April 30 2008,15:37

Quote (didymos @ April 30 2008,13:01)
You forgot to add that it was uphill both ways, in the snow.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Speaking of walking across the road to join the National Guard -  ;)

You know, being that he didn't serve in the military, he's the < perfect candidate for President >.


(This is a joke, right? Because if it isn't, it still is. I hope it's NOT A JOKE! Because he could always double has Henry Kissinger in his own cabinet. The possibilities are endless!;) :p



< Sex (I mean Six) Things in Expelled that Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know >.
Posted by: charlie d on April 30 2008,15:42

Quote (Kristine @ April 30 2008,15:37)
Quote (didymos @ April 30 2008,13:01)
You forgot to add that it was uphill both ways, in the snow.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Speaking of walking across the road to join the National Guard -  ;)

You know, being that he didn't serve in the military, he's the < perfect candidate for President >.


(This is a joke, right? Because if it isn't, it still is. I hope it's NOT A JOKE! Because he could always double has Henry Kissinger in his own cabinet. The possibilities are endless!) :p



< Sex (I mean Six) Things in Expelled that Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yikes, look at the freepers' responses.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on April 30 2008,16:06

Quote (Kristine @ April 30 2008,12:01)
< Just can't get enough >!

This is the most brutal review yet.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The reality is that the film is as phony as Stein’s “just folks” posturing. This is nothing but stacked-deck religious-right propaganda palmed off as a serious debate on intelligent design—a concept that the film itself never actually explains. There’s a good reason for that, since any explanation of the concept immediately proves that intelligent design isn’t science, but a philosophical or religious proposition, the very basis of which rests on the existence of a supreme being. As a friend of mine noted, intelligent design isn’t anything but creationism “in a cheap tuxedo.” Frankowski and Stein both realize this, and rather than deal with the issue, they trot out the smoke-and-mirrors legacy handed down to them by Spiro Agnew with his “liberal media” and the standard right-wing outcry of oppression. (Anyone care to explain how it’s possible to be the “silent majority” and an oppressed minority at the same time?)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And then, a swipe at Berlinski, who in the film calls Dawkins "reptilian."
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But really what’s so base and corrupt about the film lies in its dazzling intellectual leaps. These start with linking the scientific community and the media to Stalin and Khrushchev—insert stock footage and create unfounded, historically spurious connection. A little more stock footage of bullies and some shots of the Berlin Wall represents the scientific community of Darwinists keeping out (or in) those freedom-loving intelligent-design folks—more guilt by filmmaking association. (The irony is that this is all grounded in Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage.) This sort of thing is interspersed with interview footage of intelligent-design martyrs—whose martyrdom becomes sketchier and sketchier the more you check into their actual histories. (I never really did figure out the identity of the über-effete—think Rex Reed times 10—expert in Paris who spent most of his interview reclining.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Man, that's cold. :)

< Farewell to Ben Stein >. (This one's about his "I know traders... I know traders as ancient as the world and corrupt as an ant-cake," etc. column in the NY Times. My apologies to Langston Hughes.) :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Golden!  Thanks Kristine for the fantastic links!  Looks like the backlash is not limited to the science world, the financial world is realizing Ben is not playing with a full deck.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 30 2008,18:32

Quote (didymos @ April 30 2008,15:01)
You forgot to add that it was uphill both ways, in the snow.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


With a pack of hungry wolves chasing you for your lunch money.
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 30 2008,18:34

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 30 2008,18:32)
Quote (didymos @ April 30 2008,15:01)
You forgot to add that it was uphill both ways, in the snow.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


With a pack of hungry wolves chasing you for your lunch money.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


PhhhHhhhh!!!

YOU were lucky.... We had to work 27 hours a day, and I had to take the bus 72 miles...on my shoulders...
Posted by: bystander on April 30 2008,18:37

The last time that ID made the major Australian media was during the Dover trial. Here is an article in the Australian:

< Ferris Bueller's way off as creationist damns Dawkins >

I actually had to read a  fair way into the article before I realised that they were dissing the movie. The Australian is a conservative broadsheet.



Looking around at the reviews, I am seeing quite a few that should be sympathetic that are panning the film. Ben Stein and company can easily dismiss most of the criticism as liberal slant, but when the target market starts to move away from the movie they should start to get worried.


I think that they have jumped the shark with this movie. Note that even Davetard disagreed with the Nazi connection. I think that in 6 months time the movie will be buried as an embarrassing mistake and there will be few if any DVDs sold in Church basements.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 30 2008,18:45

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 30 2008,19:34)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 30 2008,18:32)
Quote (didymos @ April 30 2008,15:01)
You forgot to add that it was uphill both ways, in the snow.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


With a pack of hungry wolves chasing you for your lunch money.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


PhhhHhhhh!!!

YOU were lucky.... We had to work 27 hours a day, and I had to take the bus 72 miles...on my shoulders...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Eight days a week.

(...and thus we return to the Beatles...)
Posted by: Richardthughes on April 30 2008,18:59

Takes forever to load..

< http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article....op >
Posted by: Kristine on April 30 2008,20:30

< Ben Stein comes clean > (and I don't mean by fighting a blind girl in the shower). :)
Posted by: stevestory on April 30 2008,22:27

Quote (Richardthughes @ April 30 2008,19:59)
Takes forever to load..

< http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article....op >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Even little green footballs doesn't fall for that christian propaganda?

Holy $#@&.
Posted by: Annyday on April 30 2008,23:46

Quote (Kristine @ April 30 2008,20:30)
< Ben Stein comes clean > (and I don't mean by fighting a blind girl in the shower). :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Vandal. It's going to take days to clean up my mind.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 01 2008,11:15

Based on the numbers seen < here > and assuming the movie is being shown 4 times a day at each theater, and an avg ticket cost of $7, each weekday Expelled viewing this week is attracting about 5 people.  Unless my maths is bad.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 01 2008,11:38

Has anyone seen any non-estimate numbers for last weekend?

What are they afraid of, I wonder?
Posted by: J-Dog on May 01 2008,11:46

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ May 01 2008,11:38)
Has anyone seen any non-estimate numbers for last weekend?

What are they afraid of, I wonder?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OMG!  I didn't know this was gonna be on the test??!!!

Dear Dr. Ellsbery,

Please excuse my not answering this question.  I had all the answers, but Louis stole my homework, and then I couldn't do it over, cuz Richard was "visiting" with my Mom.

Plus, there is not really room in the Blue Book to list all the things that IDists are afraid of, but you can be sure that "their own shadows" and "rotting in hell for all eternity" are on it.
Posted by: charlie d on May 01 2008,11:57

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ May 01 2008,11:38)
Has anyone seen any non-estimate numbers for last weekend?

What are they afraid of, I wonder?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There is nothing out, as far as I can tell.  < The Numbers completely and inexplicably skips 2 days of revenue. >

Hollywood Reporter also has numbers, but they are not freely accessible: does anyone have a subscription? No?!  Bunch of geeks!

The other alternative would be getting in touch with the people at the Numbers and/or Boxofficemojo to see if they can figure this out.  

(That said, revenues for Monday and Tuesday are not bad, and would be in line with the estimates shown, so maybe there are no major surprises and it's just a glitch.)
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on May 01 2008,11:58

I wonder what the number of screens, currently at 1,041, will drop to after the initial 2 week commitments are up?
Posted by: Louis on May 01 2008,12:00

Quote (J-Dog @ May 01 2008,17:46)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ May 01 2008,11:38)
Has anyone seen any non-estimate numbers for last weekend?

What are they afraid of, I wonder?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OMG!  I didn't know this was gonna be on the test??!!!

Dear Dr. Ellsbery,

Please excuse my not answering this question.  I had all the answers, but Louis stole my homework, and then I couldn't do it over, cuz Richard was "visiting" with my Mom.

Plus, there is not really room in the Blue Book to list all the things that IDists are afraid of, but you can be sure that "their own shadows" and "rotting in hell for all eternity" are on it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey I get the blame for everything. I never stole your homework. I *might* have burned it slightly, completely by accident of course, in some freakishly over zealous attempt to make your bedroom one large thermite reaction.

Richard visits your Mum too? Maybe you and Arden could form some kind of support group. Carlson and Erasmus will join I'm sure.

Back on topic: Expurgated: No Anything Allowed Unless We Say So DAMMIT, WAAAH NAZIS! has been reviewed by the Onion < AV Club >. The news isn't good for Matyhis et al, it got an F and was described as a "classic bait and switch" that failed to answer the "serious" questions about IDC. What I find immensely amusing is that myriad different groups from the ADL to the AV Club find this "movie" to be an abhorrent piece of crap. With the box office receipts seeming to be in the "poor" category by all reports, this "movie" can be said to have been an abundant failure. Again.

This piece of crap surely cannot be moving fence sitters, surely even the dimmest of bulb can see that the "Darwin-Hitler" thing is a red herring at least, even if they know bugger all about the facts. This is just yet another rube-fleecing exercise by the IDCist "elite" (see what I did there? Ha ha I kill me sometimes etc) and their ever lunatic shills.

I wonder what FruiTcaKe thinks of the movie? Actually, no I don't.

Louis
Posted by: charlie d on May 01 2008,12:11

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 01 2008,11:58)
I wonder what the number of screens, currently at 1,041, will drop to after the initial 2 week commitments are up?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Where I live, a Tinseltown theater has dropped it as of tomorrow, but the fundie-owned Regals will keep it.
Posted by: Kristine on May 01 2008,12:34

Quote (Louis @ May 01 2008,11:00)
   
Quote (J-Dog @ May 01 2008,17:46)
   
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ May 01 2008,11:38)
Has anyone seen any non-estimate numbers for last weekend?

What are they afraid of, I wonder?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OMG!  I didn't know this was gonna be on the test??!!!

Dear Dr. Ellsbery,

Please excuse my not answering this question.  I had all the answers, but Louis stole my homework, and then I couldn't do it over, cuz Richard was "visiting" with my Mom.

Plus, there is not really room in the Blue Book to list all the things that IDists are afraid of, but you can be sure that "their own shadows" and "rotting in hell for all eternity" are on it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey I get the blame for everything. I never stole your homework. I *might* have burned it slightly, completely by accident of course, in some freakishly over zealous attempt to make your bedroom one large thermite reaction.

Richard visits your Mum too? Maybe you and Arden could form some kind of support group. Carlson and Erasmus will join I'm sure.

Back on topic: Expurgated: No Anything Allowed Unless We Say So DAMMIT, WAAAH NAZIS! has been reviewed by the Onion < AV Club >. The news isn't good for Matyhis et al, it got an F and was described as a "classic bait and switch" that failed to answer the "serious" questions about IDC. What I find immensely amusing is that myriad different groups from the ADL to the AV Club find this "movie" to be an abhorrent piece of crap. With the box office receipts seeming to be in the "poor" category by all reports, this "movie" can be said to have been an abundant failure. Again. *snip*

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The comments rock! :D

Urtext expresses my sentiments exactly.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Why have soft-headed pseudo-scientific documentaries become so hateful? I long for the good old days, when the wackos just made films like "Chariots of the Gods". Ben, dear, why don't you do us all a favour and go down to Nazca or Easter Island?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Everyone, we have to create our own woo these days. Let's make up some positive woo (but no more of this #%$&* about Bigfoot being an alien, puh-leeze!;), but something really stupid and fun, like < rods >. Sell a lotta books, we'll be RICH!

In the meantime, I just saw Waiting for Guffman and I've got one hell of an idea for a movie... ;)
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 01 2008,12:51



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
we'll be RICH!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Two questions:

Do we get a cool tard cap like the one he wears?

Does Rich mind if we become him?  Do we need his permission?  Is "Rich" copyrighted?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 01 2008,12:56

BTW, does anyone here actually live near enough to Dallas to take a weekday field trip there? PM me if so.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 01 2008,13:37

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 01 2008,12:51)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
we'll be RICH!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Two questions:

Do we get a cool tard cap like the one he wears?

Does Rich mind if we become him?  Do we need his permission?  Is "Rich" copyrighted?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's over-rated. It didn't come with an Aston Martin as I was lead to believe...

But...!

< http://www.cafepress.com/aus_ed.166208132 >
Posted by: carlsonjok on May 01 2008,14:04

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 01 2008,12:51)
Does Rich mind if we become him?  Do we need his permission?  Is "Rich" copyrighted?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not possible.  Rich is a pants-load of irreformable complexity.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on May 01 2008,14:06

They're still gaming the movie rating systems, even after the "Expelled Challenge" has expired.  See here:

< Beyond Expelled, click to find coupon >

I can't link to the page with the coupon on it, but you can get to there by clicking on the page above.  It's six dollars with the coupon, and, by all appearances, this is something being sent to churches by the "Expelled" marketing program.

Glen Davidson
Posted by: Benny H on May 01 2008,14:24

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 01 2008,11:58)
I wonder what the number of screens, currently at 1,041, will drop to after the initial 2 week commitments are up?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


655, according to boxofficemojo.com/counts.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on May 01 2008,14:29

Quote (Benny H @ May 01 2008,14:24)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 01 2008,11:58)
I wonder what the number of screens, currently at 1,041, will drop to after the initial 2 week commitments are up?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


655, according to boxofficemojo.com/counts.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey Benny, welcome!

Cheers for the info, most amusing.

I wonder if it'll half again next week :)
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 01 2008,14:31

Quote (Benny H @ May 01 2008,15:24)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 01 2008,11:58)
I wonder what the number of screens, currently at 1,041, will drop to after the initial 2 week commitments are up?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


655, according to boxofficemojo.com/counts.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Welcome Benny.

I'd have pissed myself laughing had it been 666...
Posted by: Quidam on May 01 2008,14:59

We will wait to see if the pent up hordes of waiting viewers will make the pilgrimage to the remaining cinemas
Posted by: Kristine on May 01 2008,17:07

Quote (Quidam @ May 01 2008,13:59)
We will wait to see if the pent up hordes of waiting viewers will make the pilgrimage to the remaining cinemas
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They showing it for free now.

< Beyond Expelled Event in Niceville > on May 8.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
NICEVILLE (FBW)—Beyond Expelled, a presentation geared towards exploring the influence of non-theistic, anti-Christian worldviews in society is scheduled 6:30 p.m., May 8, at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center at Okaloosa-Walton College Main Campus in Niceville.

The event is a follow-up to the recent documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

The presentation, hosted by Westminster Presbyterian Church in Ft. Walton Beach, features speaker Nancy Pearcey, author of the book, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, and scholar for worldview studies at Philadelphia Biblical University.

The free event is open to the public.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Expelled Correct on Darwin Christian Group Says >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Jerry Newcombe, co-producer of the film, said “Expelled” brought up a fresh examination of the facts – namely that Darwinism, and later, through its racially charged forms of social Darwinism advocating the extermination of “inferior” races, provided Hitler with the springs to launch the most horrific genocide known to man.

“The ideas of Charles Darwin helped fuel the Nazi killing machine, which took the lives of some 10-15 million people,” he said in a statement.

“Among German historians, there’s really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist. He clearly was drawing on Darwinian ideas. It drove pretty much everything that he did. It was not just a peripheral part of his ideology,” commented Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler and a featured guest on the Coral Ridge Ministries’ television special.

Weikart added that Darwinism was extremely influential throughout German academia during the period and Hitler drew “on what many other scholars, biologists, and geneticists in Germany were preaching and teaching in the early twentieth century.”

Coral Ridge Ministries also cited the words of their late founder and host of “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy,” Dr. D. James Kennedy, to illustrate their point about the enduring connection between Hitler and Darwinism.

“We have had nearly 150 years of the theory of Darwinian evolution. And what has it brought us – whether Darwin intended it or not? Millions of deaths, the destruction of those deemed ‘inferior,’ the devaluing of human life, and increasing hopelessness. Darwin’s legacy has been deadly indeed,” Kennedy said in 2006.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And now, get this:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Since its release on April 18, the film has generated over $5.6 million, placing it among the most successful documentary films of all time.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Pfffttt-BWA-HA-HA! :D Where "among"?

These people kill me! :)
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on May 01 2008,17:08

Larry farawayman solves the puzzle!


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I am beginning to suspect that clever Ben Stein arranged this whole affair in advance with Yoko Ono and is cutting her in on the profits. That is the only reasonable explanation — I cannot “imagine” anyone suing over the fair use of a few seconds of a song.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Link >

And we know Larry is nothing but reasonable.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 01 2008,17:10

Quote (Kristine @ May 01 2008,17:07)
Quote (Quidam @ May 01 2008,13:59)
We will wait to see if the pent up hordes of waiting viewers will make the pilgrimage to the remaining cinemas
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They showing it for free now.

< Beyond Expelled Event in Niceville > on May 8.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
NICEVILLE (FBW)—Beyond Expelled, a presentation geared towards exploring the influence of non-theistic, anti-Christian worldviews in society is scheduled 6:30 p.m., May 8, at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center at Okaloosa-Walton College Main Campus in Niceville.

The event is a follow-up to the recent documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

The presentation, hosted by Westminster Presbyterian Church in Ft. Walton Beach, features speaker Nancy Pearcey, author of the book, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, and scholar for worldview studies at Philadelphia Biblical University.

The free event is open to the public.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Expelled Correct on Darwin Christian Group Says >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Jerry Newcombe, co-producer of the film, said “Expelled” brought up a fresh examination of the facts – namely that Darwinism, and later, through its racially charged forms of social Darwinism advocating the extermination of “inferior” races, provided Hitler with the springs to launch the most horrific genocide known to man.

“The ideas of Charles Darwin helped fuel the Nazi killing machine, which took the lives of some 10-15 million people,” he said in a statement.

“Among German historians, there’s really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist. He clearly was drawing on Darwinian ideas. It drove pretty much everything that he did. It was not just a peripheral part of his ideology,” commented Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler and a featured guest on the Coral Ridge Ministries’ television special.

Weikart added that Darwinism was extremely influential throughout German academia during the period and Hitler drew “on what many other scholars, biologists, and geneticists in Germany were preaching and teaching in the early twentieth century.”

Coral Ridge Ministries also cited the words of their late founder and host of “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy,” Dr. D. James Kennedy, to illustrate their point about the enduring connection between Hitler and Darwinism.

“We have had nearly 150 years of the theory of Darwinian evolution. And what has it brought us – whether Darwin intended it or not? Millions of deaths, the destruction of those deemed ‘inferior,’ the devaluing of human life, and increasing hopelessness. Darwin’s legacy has been deadly indeed,” Kennedy said in 2006.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And now, get this:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Since its release on April 18, the film has generated over $5.6 million, placing it among the most successful documentary films of all time.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Pfffttt-BWA-HA-HA! :D Where "among"?

These people kill me! :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard Weikart....




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Weikart is best known for his 2004 book From Darwin to Hitler, Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany.[2][3] This is controversial because of his association with the Discovery Institute that partly funded his research. Political Science professor Larry Arnhart states that "Weikart's book was financed by the Discovery Institute as part of their 'wedge strategy' for attacking Darwinian science as morally corrupting in its atheism."[4] This strategy aims to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."[5]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



from

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Weikart >
Posted by: Kristine on May 01 2008,17:12

One more, right in Dembski's back yard.

< Religion in Fake Mustache >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Intelligent design, a philosophical construct that imputes the role of a creator in all things, is most legitimate fodder for philosophy class.

Some of the thinkers who carry its banner scrupulously avoid the use of the word “God” to convey that they are academicians and not theologians.

It doesn’t take long, however, for intelligent design’s promoters to shed the pretenses and start flipping through the Old Testament.

The movie Expelled is billed as an exposé of higher education. Humorist Ben Stein is supposed to give the documentary pop-culture street cred. The problem: Expelled can’t just make the case for the legitimacy of intelligent design without a religious perspective. It tries to broad-brush pro-evolution scientists as anti-God.

Breathe in, breathe out

In other words, like a lot of people driven by zeal, Expelled is a little breathless. Science does not hyperventilate. You may interpret science and hyperventilate when you see what’s happening to polar ice. But science is dispassionate. At least that’s what we should hope.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:) Ben Stein < kills me >.
Posted by: didymos on May 01 2008,17:53

Ooh, in the < Stanford Fair Use > entry, we've got a self-congratulatory twofer from DT and Dr. Dr..  It < rocks > and < rules >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
9

DaveScot

05/01/2008

2:17 pm

Imagine free publicity

The positive atheists still haven’t learned the first lesson of holes:

When you’ve dug yourself into a hole the first thing to do is stop digging.

10

William Dembski

05/01/2008

2:25 pm

DaveScot: Perhaps the positive atheists are attempting to dig through to the other side of the earth. This would be in keeping with their ideas about freedom and liberation.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's like a well-ahem-oiled vaudeville act.
Posted by: Kristine on May 01 2008,18:56

Hey, did I not say that copyright laws are outrageous in this country?

I guess that makes me a negative atheist. :p
Posted by: bfish on May 01 2008,19:52

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 01 2008,12:29)
Quote (Benny H @ May 01 2008,14:24)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 01 2008,11:58)
I wonder what the number of screens, currently at 1,041, will drop to after the initial 2 week commitments are up?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


655, according to boxofficemojo.com/counts.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey Benny, welcome!

Cheers for the info, most amusing.

I wonder if it'll half again next week :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My own local theater finally put up the listings for tomorrow, and Expelled has expired. Never did manage to walk down there.
Posted by: stevestory on May 01 2008,22:04

Quote (Kristine @ May 01 2008,18:07)
And now, get this:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Since its release on April 18, the film has generated over $5.6 million, placing it among the most successful documentary films of all time.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Pfffttt-BWA-HA-HA! :D Where "among"?

These people kill me! :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


$220,000,000 Fahrenheit 9/11
$77,000,000 March of the Penguins
$49,047,567 An Inconvenient Truth
...
...
...
$14,375,181 Ishtar
$5,600,000 Expelled
$3,484,331 Heaven's Gate
Posted by: JAM on May 01 2008,22:24

Quote (bfish @ May 01 2008,19:52)
[quote=oldmanintheskydidntdoit,May 01 2008,12:29]
My own local theater finally put up the listings for tomorrow, and Expelled has expired. Never did manage to walk down there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's expiring at my local Carmike theaters, too.
Posted by: didymos on May 01 2008,22:44

Maybe this belongs solely over in the UD thread, but since it's explicitly about < Expelled > I shall risk the double post:  

I think we may be looking at a third Dembski banning in the offing.  He can't be pleased about < this >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



29

thogan

05/01/2008

10:25 pm

I saw “Expelled” again tonight. I was more aware of the emotion-affecting use of sound to make points and manipulate emotions. I was looking at this cinematographically and comparing it with “Inherit the Wind” and “Birth of a Nation.” In some ways the propaganda was smoother than in ITW, though ITW did a better job of using entertainment to hide the propaganda. Expelled did a better job than BOAN of letting its opponents hang themselves, though it took a bit of thought to see some of the ways that happened.

I also was struck with how rich “Expelled” was in its idea content. There was a basic theme that it stuck to, yet there were other themes woven into it. For example, the scientism in Myers and Dawkins was very much on display and showed their intellectual shallowness, though they are certainly clever. The utter sadness of the case of Will Provine also struck me as well as the thesis that Darwinism has been responsible for a loss of faith in the case of virtually every opponent who was interviewed.

I am more aware of how scientism has thoroughly infected people who ostensibly are aware of it and on guard against it, as in the case of Myers and Dawkins. I wonder how subtly we might be infected with it as well since we try to ride the coattails of science like the Darwinists do. Both ID and scientific creationism do this. Have we bowed the knee to science?

I await the release of the CD with anticipation.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Bolding mine.
Posted by: Benny H on May 02 2008,02:01

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 01 2008,14:29)
Quote (Benny H @ May 01 2008,14:24)
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 01 2008,11:58)
I wonder what the number of screens, currently at 1,041, will drop to after the initial 2 week commitments are up?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


655, according to boxofficemojo.com/counts.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey Benny, welcome!

Cheers for the info, most amusing.

I wonder if it'll half again next week :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hi!
Probably. If you were a theatre owner, which would you rather show, "Expelled" or "Speed Racer"? :)
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 02 2008,07:18

Jacksonville Carmike gave it the axe as well.
Posted by: BCtheEra on May 02 2008,08:09

I'm ashamed to say that it is still playing at the Celebration!!11!one Cinema in Lansing, Michigan.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 02 2008,08:33

But that means I don't have to drive halfway across the state to see this movie now. I'll wait for a mid-week matinee next week.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 02 2008,09:13

It is on the schedule for our local Carmike crap cinema through at least next Thursday. There is only one show per day, however.  There must be at least a few nutters viewing it here still...
Posted by: J-Dog on May 02 2008,09:15

In the Chicago Suburbs - "Nomad's Theater" (where he was "pre-viewed and pre-saved by Expelled):

Fri     10:00    12:20  2:45
Sat    10:00    12:20  2:45
Sun    10:00    12:20  2:45
Mon                          2:35
Tue                          2:35
Wed                         2:35
Th IRONMAN! --------------------
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 02 2008,14:48

I've been so strung out on Ben Stein tard lately and now today there's hardly anything new going on.  Reading a couple of new reviews that say the same thing that was said previously is not cutting it.

I'm sick like a junkie and there's no more dope to roll.  

This is bad, bad, bad.  Stein do an interview!  Mathis put something new on the Expell-tardo-blog - do something quick!  

Maybe I'll snort some antihistamines or something to hold me over...


edit/update - I took a hit of < Phyllis Schlafly > at the wingnut daily and it seems to have stopped the sweating and shakes for now.  This tidbit stood out:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein's critics fail to refute effectively anything in "Expelled"; they just use epithets to ridicule it and hope they can make it go away
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's a small dose of tard but I'm feeling a little bit better.  At least for now.

edit/update II:

This was pretty good:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein interviewed Dr. Richard Sternberg, a biologist who lost his position at the prestigious Smithsonian Institution after he published a peer-reviewed article that mentioned intelligent design. Other academics who said they were victims of the anti-intelligent design campus police included astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, denied tenure at Iowa State University, and Caroline Crocker, who lost her professorship at George Mason University.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And don't even say it...I have already faced it - I'm addicted to tard.
Posted by: didymos on May 02 2008,15:09

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 02 2008,12:48)
And don't even say it...I have already faced it - I'm addicted to tard.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OK, where's Quidam?  Hey, Quidam.  We need you to get a good screencap of the Robert Palmer video, replace his face with Stein's and then replace all the background chicks' faces with O'Leary's.  Stat.
Posted by: Kristine on May 02 2008,16:02

Okay, this may be taking the Ben Stein crapfest into the area of pure rumor, but I hate to see Mr. Christopher suffer so.

I may not be surprising anyone with this, but I’m convinced that on “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” Stein memorized all of the questions with the answers.

My only “proof,” which is scant, is the “Spider!” incident* and a friend who knew someone who worked on the show, or claimed to have worked on the show (my friend worked in Hollywood at the time) who told him that the “spider” incident was staged by a producer who was so fed up with Stein matching his memorization skills against contestants’ wits that he switched the order of the questions on the poor announcer, who was subsequently chewed out by a livid Stein after the take.

I have no proof of this, but I wouldn’t put it past Ben Stein at all.

*The “Spider!” incident: At one point when Stein was in that hot seat where each contestant is asked the same list of rapid-fire questions, he blurted out “Spider!” to a question, and the announcer replied, “No, actually, the answer is Brussels.” (I remember “Brussels” - < someone else > remembers “Mount Everest.”) Then the next question required an answer of “spider” to which Ben blurted out (while nodding his head as if to say, “Yes, I remember now,”) the answer “Spider!” I thought, “What a %#&@ phony!” :)

I couldn't watch the show after that. Besides, he was starting to grate.
Posted by: Kristine on May 02 2008,17:01

Well, < this WBS$ contestant > completely contradicts my suspicions about fraud on the show (there are plenty of people in the entertainment business who tell tall tales just to impress others), but it's a delightful read nevertheless. (I'm pretty sure I remember this particular episode as well - mostly due to Stein's reaction at losing, and then his fighting about the actual date of the millennium. Pisser just can't be wrong about anything.) :)
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 02 2008,17:50

Thanks for thinking of me Kristine.  I actually had a double of Mark Mathis at the Baptist Press where he said something to the effect of no one can claim anything in the movie is not true.  Something super-zilla tardish like that.  Anyhow, after I read the whole article my fever was gone and the shakes had stopped.  I'm full on tard now and I should be good for another day or so.

I'll see if I can find that BP article again and I'll link to it in case any others here are also going through tard withdrawl.

Man oh man I wish Ben would do another Christian fundy television interview.  I was buzzed on that for days.

edit:

Found it!

< 'Expelled' producer happy with box office >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mathis also noted "Expelled" targeted conservative religious people
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There is not anything in the film that you can point to and say, 'This is dishonest. This is manipulation
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Amazingly the Baptist press quotes the NY Times and another source that slammed Expelled.  I thought that was cool.

Anyhow, enjoy your shot of Mathis tard for the day!
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on May 02 2008,20:42

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 02 2008,17:50)
Thanks for thinking of me Kristine.  I actually had a double of Mark Mathis at the Baptist Press where he said something to the effect of no one can claim anything in the movie is not true.  Something super-zilla tardish like that.  Anyhow, after I read the whole article my fever was gone and the shakes had stopped.  I'm full on tard now and I should be good for another day or so.

I'll see if I can find that BP article again and I'll link to it in case any others here are also going through tard withdrawl.

Man oh man I wish Ben would do another Christian fundy television interview.  I was buzzed on that for days.

edit:

Found it!

< 'Expelled' producer happy with box office >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mathis also noted "Expelled" targeted conservative religious people
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There is not anything in the film that you can point to and say, 'This is dishonest. This is manipulation
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Amazingly the Baptist press quotes the NY Times and another source that slammed Expelled.  I thought that was cool.

Anyhow, enjoy your shot of Mathis tard for the day!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There is nothing in Michael Moore's documentaries that is dishonest or manipulative.  Just ask him!  :p
Posted by: October Mermaid on May 02 2008,21:04

Quote (Kristine @ May 01 2008,12:34)
Everyone, we have to create our own woo these days. Let's make up some positive woo (but no more of this #%$&* about Bigfoot being an alien, puh-leeze!), but something really stupid and fun, like < rods >. Sell a lotta books, we'll be RICH!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nono, you're not supposed to call them rods!  They're < Skyfish! >

Er, uh...

Anyway, new here, thought I'd join.  Unfortunately, I'm no scientist and as far as intellect goes, I'm outclassed.

But I'm also not really a dick, so I can't join Uncommon Descent.

Hello!
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 02 2008,21:24

Howdy.

I watched a short part of an interview Stein did this afternoon on CNN Headline News talking head Glenn Beck. I got dizzy and had purple spots in front of my eyes.  Stein was explaining that even today German doctors pass out pills to kill people.  Maybe I hallucinated.  No... he actually said that.
Posted by: October Mermaid on May 02 2008,21:54

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 02 2008,21:24)
Howdy.

I watched a short part of an interview Stein did this afternoon on CNN Headline News talking head Glenn Beck. I got dizzy and had purple spots in front of my eyes.  Stein was explaining that even today German doctors pass out pills to kill people.  Maybe I hallucinated.  No... he actually said that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But how can we be sure that they're not handing out death pills?  Were you in Germany?  I know I wasn't.

The only one who was in Germany was God, so God is the one we will trust!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 02 2008,23:42

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 02 2008,19:24)
Howdy.

I watched a short part of an interview Stein did this afternoon on CNN Headline News talking head Glenn Beck. I got dizzy and had purple spots in front of my eyes.  Stein was explaining that even today German doctors pass out pills to kill people.  Maybe I hallucinated.  No... he actually said that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Seriously, is Stein undergoing some kind of early-onset dementia thing, perhaps peculiar to Jews, where he starts thinking Hitler is everywhere? The man seems to be completely obsessed with Nazis. Listening to him, you could totally forget that the Third Reich collapsed 63 years ago.
Posted by: Quidam on May 03 2008,00:53

Quote (didymos @ May 02 2008,14:09)
We need you to get a good screencap of the Robert Palmer video, replace his face with Stein's and then replace all the background chicks' faces with O'Leary's.  Stat.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


something like...

Posted by: didymos on May 03 2008,01:26

Quote (Quidam @ May 02 2008,22:53)
 
Quote (didymos @ May 02 2008,14:09)
We need you to get a good screencap of the Robert Palmer video, replace his face with Stein's and then replace all the background chicks' faces with O'Leary's.  Stat.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


something like...

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Excellent....




You're a goddamn graphical ninja.

(edited 11/4/2008: New Image Host)
Posted by: stevestory on May 03 2008,02:11

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 02 2008,22:24)
Howdy.

I watched a short part of an interview Stein did this afternoon on CNN Headline News talking head Glenn Beck. I got dizzy and had purple spots in front of my eyes.  Stein was explaining that even today German doctors pass out pills to kill people.  Maybe I hallucinated.  No... he actually said that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I was hanging out with my friend Andy tonight, drinking Red Hook ESB and Sierra Nevada. Flipping through the channels I encountered Ben Stein and saw he was being interviewed by Glenn Beck. I quickly changed the channel. I don't think I could have withstood even a minute of that Tardpocalypse.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 03 2008,05:41

Thread hijacking is no more welcome here than at PT. Stuff moved to the Bathroom Wall.

Also, attention should be paid to the rules on discussion of moderation issues.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on May 03 2008,06:08

Quote (didymos @ May 02 2008,16:09)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 02 2008,12:48)
And don't even say it...I have already faced it - I'm addicted to tard.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OK, where's Quidam?  Hey, Quidam.  We need you to get a good screencap of the Robert Palmer video, replace his face with Stein's and then replace all the background chicks' faces with O'Leary's.  Stat.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Newbies. *snort*

Read your Santayana.



(Uncommonly Dense thread May '07)
Posted by: RupertG on May 03 2008,12:36

Don't think we've had this one yet – an < editorial > from the New Jersey Jewish News on the subject of our favourite movie. Some good stuff there..

“Stein joins an odd political/religious coalition in taking the measure of the 21st century and deciding that our biggest problem is that we have too much science and too little religion. As American children fall further behind in the classroom, and the United States relinquishes its reputation for technological innovation, perhaps only an economist like Stein can explain how it is in our country’s benefit to mock the fundamental biology upon which our understanding of the natural world relies.”

and

“Expelled draws a direct line between Darwin and Hitler, between natural selection and the Selektions of the Holocaust. It’s like blaming Shakespeare for the English major who committed the Virginia Tech massacre.”

R
Posted by: Quidam on May 03 2008,14:15

Expelled is at #14 for documentaries

< http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=documentary.htm >

But look a few lines below and you find



---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------
14 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed RM $5,934,952 1,052 $2,970,848 1,052 4/18/08
21 Imagine: John Lennon                 WB $3,753,977   561 $1,412,213   561 10/7/88
---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------



Now take $3,753,977 in 1988 dollars,
< adjust for CPI inflation > and in 2004 dollars that's $5,995,101

The < CPI inflation calculator > only goes to 2004, so in 2008 dollars it's closer to $6,500,000.

Expelled is losing to Imagine!

(And likely not for the last time either.)
Posted by: Quidam on May 03 2008,14:50

I found a more current < CPI calculator >

In 2008 dollars, Imagine: John Lennon grossed: $6,841,567
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 03 2008,15:23

< Expelled Enjoined >
Posted by: didymos on May 03 2008,16:15

I find it interesting that the DI has still issued no formal press release or "blog" posting in response to the ADL's condemnation of < Expelled >.  So far, it's just evasive smarm from Klinghoffer in a personal < email > to John Kwok. As far as I know, Stein has been uncharacteristically mum on the subject as well. I haven't seen anything from the Premise people either. Kevin Miller certainly hasn't thought it worthy of blogging about, and refused to respond to a < comment > about it:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

And now even the ADL has chimed in and said Stein, Mathis and Miller's argument about Darwin being responsible for Hitler is outrageous and trivializing.

Add that to the other problems of the film, not the least of which is Kevin's quote-mining of -Origin- for dramatic effect, and you've got a wretched, unethical and downright offensive mess all the way around.

Posted by: Jody | April 30, 2008 at 03:44 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Kev < responded > with:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I repeat my question to you, Jody. How is your point relevant to this thread?

Posted by: Kevin Miller | April 30, 2008 at 03:51 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's a smart move, PR wise, to not be seen arguing publicly with pissed-off Jews about the Holocaust, but it's just so craven.
Posted by: Quidam on May 03 2008,17:43

I'd like to officially call for a SteinMine. Rather like the TalkOrigins Quote Mine project - a place where we can place Steinisms for easy reference.  

The quotes have to be referenced to the primary source.

This will be very useful for rebutting The Expelled Dupes in the months to come.
Posted by: Doc Bill on May 03 2008,23:13

They were quick off the mark.

Hit number 2 in theaters soon!

I give you < Expelled II > - No Intelligence.
Posted by: didymos on May 04 2008,07:12

I just tried posting this to Kevin Miller's blog, but it got flagged as potential spam and held for his review.  Just in case it fails to appear, I'm reproducing it here:

Here's something interesting:

Expelled is being shown in venues operated by Regal Entertainment Group:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regal_Entertainment_Group >

It's the largest theater chain in North America, and its majority owner is Phillip Anschutz:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Anschutz >

Phillip is one of the funders of the Discovery Institute:

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/ >

Its fellows and general weltaunschaung are of course heavily featured in Expelled. Ben even takes a little field trip there.  The DI, of course, has heavily promoted Expelled in numerous "blog" postings/screeds.

Now, Expelled has been promoted by Motive Marketing:

< http://moviemarketing.biz/index.html >

They also handled The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, a film produced by Walden Media:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Media >

As it happens, Walden Media is a subsidiary of the Anschutz Film Group, which is itself an "affiliate" of AEG:

< http://www.aegworldwide.com/05_affiliates/afg.html >

Another "affiliate" is the aforementioned Regal Entertainment Group

AEG is in turn a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Anschutz Company:

< http://www.aegworldwide.com/08_corporate/about_us.html >

And, yes, the Anschutz Company is of course named after Phillip Anschutz.

Suddenly, it doesn't seem so strange that Expelled has managed to hold on to 1041 of an original 1052 theaters despite performing so poorly.
Posted by: didymos on May 04 2008,07:35

Ah, looks like Anschutz may not have been so sanguine about the film after all, despite his ideological sympathies.  Guess it's profit that really matters:

< Is "Expelled" going to show up in any theaters on April 18? >

Good stuff here. Still, the incestuous interrelations are interesting in their own right.
Posted by: J-Dog on May 04 2008,07:53

Quote (didymos @ May 04 2008,07:12)
Suddenly, it doesn't seem so strange that Expelled has managed to hold on to 1041 of an original 1052 theaters despite performing so poorly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good research.  I didn't realize the Anshutz influence and fingerprints all over Expelled.  

It looks like the DI has taken a page from the Good Old Bible, and believes that Incest Is Best.
Posted by: Coyote on May 04 2008,14:00

Appropriate to the discussion of Darwin=Hitler from Expelled, here is a blog from DarwinCentral.org that may be of interest.

I can't  guarantee its accuracy but, well... take a look.


< http://blog.darwincentral.org/2008....dy-hope >
Posted by: ERV on May 04 2008,17:17

No more updates on Box Office Mojo?

Is there another source for the EXPELLED $$$ numbers?
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 04 2008,17:50

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,16:02)
   
Quote (didymos @ April 23 2008,15:37)
OK, I'm tenatively calling bullshit on something, but don't know if it really is.  The next-to-latest DI "blog" posting claims that Guillermo Gonzales invented the concept of the Galactic Habitable Zone, as part of their ongoing "he wuz teh ekspelldz.  He can haz tenur?" campaign. As far as I know, he's just a proponent, and maybe introduced the term, as best I can tell, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This 2006 Paper > On the “Galactic Habitable Zone” by Nikos Prantzos (.pdf) has these references:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
9. Gonzalez, G. (1997), MNRAS, 285:403-412
10. Gonzalez, G. (2005), Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 35:555-606
11. Gonzalez, G., Brownlee, D., Ward, P. (2001), Icarus, 152: 185-200
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That should get you started looking...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Dr. Phil Plait of < BadAstronomy > has a weekly live video chat and I JanieBelle asked what he thought of Gonzalez' "Galactic Habitable Zone" and < Prantzos' 2006 challenge > of it.  (I had previously emailed him links to the papers in question.)

"Destroyed" is his word of choice.

He also was very explicit that he sees no problem at all with denying tenure to Gonzalez based solely on his creationism.

Rough quote to the best of my memory:

 
Quote (Dr. Phil Plait @ about an hour ago)
If you think the universe is 6000 years old, you shouldn't be teaching science.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Amen.

So let's review the Iowa State tenure decision:

Creationist.
No appreciable funding in the form of grants.
Little in the way of publications.
No grads.
and now Sole claim to scientific "fame" debunked within a very few years.

Any questions?

Edited for a format issue.


Posted by: didymos on May 04 2008,18:18

Quote (ERV @ May 04 2008,15:17)
No more updates on Box Office Mojo?

Is there another source for the EXPELLED $$$ numbers?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, there is: < The Numbers >

It only shows up to 5/1 as well for daily take.  Interestingly, it and Mojo disagree on the estimated gross:

Box Office Mojo:  $6,619,000
The Numbers: $6,618,504

Not a large discrepancy, but the thing is, The Numbers is awfully precise with its total, and in fact does not even have the "estimate" disclaimer at all. Also, The Numbers has this weekend's take as well.  Strangely, they too are missing a few days, but don't provide estimates for them like Mojo does.  One big difference:  Numbers provides a figure for 4/25, and Mojo has only an estimate.

Here's the comparison:

                       Numbers        Mojo
Daily
4/18/2008       $1,208,748    same
4/19/2008       $996,244       same
4/20/2008       $765,856       same
4/21/2008       $238,804       same
4/22/2008       $227,232       same
4/23/2008       $234,596       same
4/24/2008       $231,440       same
4/25/2008       $505,000       $452,000 (est.)
4/26/2008       n/a                $529,000 (est.)
4/27/2008       n/a                $414,000 (est.)
4/28/2008       $157,191       same
4/29/2008       $162,396       same
4/30/2008       $159,273       same
5/1/2008         $158,232       same

Weekend
4/18/2008      $2,970,848     same
4/25/2008      $1,394,940     same
5/2/2008        $683,552       $684,000 (est.)
Posted by: Reed on May 04 2008,18:53

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 04 2008,15:50)
Rough quote to the best of my memory:
     
Quote (Dr. Phil Plait @ about an hour ago)
If you think the universe is 6000 years old, you shouldn't be teaching science.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I agree with the sentiment, but...
Did Gonzales actually ever express support for YEC views ? My impression was that he was into some kind of cosmological fine tuning flavor of id. While that might not be defensible as science, it's a heck of a lot less batshit crazy than YEC. I'd have serious concern about a YEC actually being able to teach science, but I don't think holding  some vague "god set it all up just right" view would be a problem.

IMO,
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

No appreciable funding in the form of grants.
Little in the way of publications.
No grads.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is plenty. No need to bring his religious views into it.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 04 2008,20:08



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

No need to bring his religious views into it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Is it a religious view, per se, to be part of an advocacy campaign to encourage other people to inject their religious views into public school science classrooms? I think that promoting unconstitutional behavior inimical to the common weal deserves consideration in any professional evaluation.
Posted by: Ptaylor on May 04 2008,20:40

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 02 2008,21:24)
Howdy.

I watched a short part of an interview Stein did this afternoon on CNN Headline News talking head Glenn Beck. I got dizzy and had purple spots in front of my eyes.  Stein was explaining that even today German doctors pass out pills to kill people.  Maybe I hallucinated.  No... he actually said that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's the transcript:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
BECK: It`s exactly what happened in Germany. And what happened in Germany, when you couple it with this kind of thinking that you see in the movie, bad things happen.

STEIN: Yeah, it`s interesting. I wrote about this already, that if you -- what`s going to happen, if you marry up eugenics and limited access to universal health care, it`s going to be you just go die, you just go off and die. Already in Germany I`m told people are given this little pill when they get old and sick and they take the pill and go to sleep and don`t wake up.

BECK: No.

STEIN: Yes, yes, that`s happening a lot in Germany.

BECK: What`s the name of the pill? That`s being prescribed by doctors?

STEIN: Apparently it`s a super powerful barbiturate. And people take it and that`s it for them.

BECK: You say we`re never going to forget -- what the .

STEIN: The problem with that of course is what if you`re just in a bad mood for a couple of hours and you take it and then you`re gone for good. You can`t change your mind.

BECK: I don`t know if that`s the -- I mean .

STEIN: That`s one of the problems.

BECK: That`s one of the problems. The other problem, I see it, doctors are prescribing -- are killing people in Germany.

STEIN: Well, again you might say. Again. Yeah, again. We showed this -- we documented in the movie that they`ve been doing this for a while.

BECK: You know what, let me go to this because you went to the Hatimar (ph) Clinic which is a death clinic where the German doctors, took two of them, had to sign a form say, yeah, we`ve got to kill this person. Watch this.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Source >
Scroll about 1/5 of the way down, or Find the string 'pill'.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 04 2008,20:47

Quote (Reed @ May 04 2008,19:53)
I agree with the sentiment, but...
Did Gonzales actually ever express support for YEC views ? My impression was that he was into some kind of cosmological fine tuning flavor of id. While that might not be defensible as science, it's a heck of a lot less batshit crazy than YEC. I'd have serious concern about a YEC actually being able to teach science, but I don't think holding  some vague "god set it all up just right" view would be a problem.

(snip for the moment, I want to address this part separately)

No need to bring his religious views into it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




I actually don't know, and the conversation went on sort of a gradient from the specific to the general, so it's entirely possible that he was beyond Gonzalez specifically at that point and I simply misunderstood his statement to apply directly to Gonzalez.

I have to agree with Wesley however, that whether he himself is specifically a YEC is irrelevant to the point that he's colluding with people whose entire goal is to supplant science with religion.  Further, it's a very specific sect of religion that despite public protestations to the contrary is overwhelmingly YEC.

In that sense, Gonzalez has allied himself with anti-science crusaders, and to either expect or demand that the Science department at a reputable institution of higher education simply overlook such an association is blockheaded.  It requires the institution to devour its own entrails from the inside out.

Quote (Reed @ May 04 2008,19:53)
IMO,
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

No appreciable funding in the form of grants.
Little in the way of publications.
No grads.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is plenty.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I would also concur with that.  If a staff member is doing nothing for the university, I see no reason why the university should be obligated to grant tenure to the staff member.

Edited to separate thoughts.


Posted by: didymos on May 04 2008,21:38

Quote (Ptaylor @ May 04 2008,18:40)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

STEIN: Yeah, it`s interesting. I wrote about this already, that if you -- what`s going to happen, if you marry up eugenics and limited access to universal health care, it`s going to be you just go die, you just go off and die. Already in Germany I`m told people are given this little pill when they get old and sick and they take the pill and go to sleep and don`t wake up.

BECK: No.

STEIN: Yes, yes, that`s happening a lot in Germany.

BECK: What`s the name of the pill? That`s being prescribed by doctors?

STEIN: Apparently it`s a super powerful barbiturate. And people take it and that`s it for them.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, Ben, I think I recall something about that too. But, I think it was actually the UK. And it's called, like, "Quietus" or something.  Lemme see, where was it I saw that?  Oh, yeah:



That's right:  Children of Men

Pretty good flick.  Hey, didn't they use some Lennon tune too?

(edited 11/4/2008: New Image Host)
Posted by: Reed on May 04 2008,23:11

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ May 04 2008,18:08)

Is it a religious view, per se, to be part of an advocacy campaign to encourage other people to inject their religious views into public school science classrooms? I think that promoting unconstitutional behavior inimical to the common weal deserves consideration in any professional evaluation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that Gonzales ID views and activities shouldn't have been considered, only that even if you ignore them completely his rejection appears justified.

IMO, there is large a muddy line between discrimination based on a persons views (and extracurricular activities), and legitimate judgment of how those reflect their suitability for a position.

I admit that I don't know enough about Gonzales activities prior to the tenure to dispute to have an opinion of where he fell on that line.
Posted by: didymos on May 04 2008,23:47

Quote (Reed @ May 04 2008,21:11)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ May 04 2008,18:08)

Is it a religious view, per se, to be part of an advocacy campaign to encourage other people to inject their religious views into public school science classrooms? I think that promoting unconstitutional behavior inimical to the common weal deserves consideration in any professional evaluation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that Gonzales ID views and activities shouldn't have been considered, only that even if you ignore them completely his rejection appears justified.

IMO, there is large a muddy line between discrimination based on a persons views (and extracurricular activities), and legitimate judgment of how those reflect their suitability for a position.

I admit that I don't know enough about Gonzales activities prior to the tenure to dispute to have an opinion of where he fell on that line.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Well, for one thing, he sought and got funding for his ID pet-project:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Gonzalez brought in, at most, $200,000 during the same amount of time, $64,000 of which was used to pay a doctoral student at a different university and $58,000 of which was for his intelligent design book The Privileged Planet.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



and then he used it in his tenure application:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Gonzales submitted his book The Privileged Planet as part of his tenure materials: he obviously intended that his colleagues should consider his intelligent design work part of his scholarly productivity.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



My bolding.  Both excerpts from here:

< Expelled Exposed: Guillermo Gonzalez >

So, it's his own damn fault because he made it curricular.
Posted by: didymos on May 05 2008,01:12

Quote (didymos @ May 04 2008,05:12)
I just tried posting this to Kevin Miller's blog, but it got flagged as potential spam and held for his review.  Just in case it fails to appear, I'm reproducing it here:

Here's something interesting:

Expelled is being shown in venues operated by Regal Entertainment Group:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regal_Entertainment_Group >

It's the largest theater chain in North America, and its majority owner is Phillip Anschutz:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Anschutz >

Phillip is one of the funders of the Discovery Institute:

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/ >

Its fellows and general weltaunschaung are of course heavily featured in Expelled. Ben even takes a little field trip there.  The DI, of course, has heavily promoted Expelled in numerous "blog" postings/screeds.

Now, Expelled has been promoted by Motive Marketing:

< http://moviemarketing.biz/index.html >

They also handled The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, a film produced by Walden Media:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Media >

As it happens, Walden Media is a subsidiary of the Anschutz Film Group, which is itself an "affiliate" of AEG:

< http://www.aegworldwide.com/05_affiliates/afg.html >

Another "affiliate" is the aforementioned Regal Entertainment Group

AEG is in turn a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Anschutz Company:

< http://www.aegworldwide.com/08_corporate/about_us.html >

And, yes, the Anschutz Company is of course named after Phillip Anschutz.

Suddenly, it doesn't seem so strange that Expelled has managed to hold on to 1041 of an original 1052 theaters despite performing so poorly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Update:  Kevin, for unknown reasons, decided he was not going to allow the above comment through.  I don't want to go all "conspiracy theory", but that bothers me.  Everything in it is accurate, though.  The weak part is the speculation on < Expelled > retaining theaters as a result of seeming ID nepotism, and I appear to have been off the mark there, based on < this comment >:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Chez Jake said...

   Hi Jim,

   I just did a little research on how much Anschutz is pushing Expelled! As of Sunday night, he only has it booked in 141 of those 529 theaters. We'll be generous and call that 27% confidence in the film.
   March 29, 2008 9:00 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

from here: < Is "Expelled" going to show up in any theaters on April 18? >

I'm still not so sure, as that figure is unsourced, but better not to commit either way without more to go on.  I suspect the guy may have just grovelled through theater locator stuff and correlated it with venues owned
by Regal Entertainment Group.  I'd really rather not do that myself, but will if I have to.  If anyone has better methods for tracking this sort of stuff down, I'd appreciate some tips.  Trawling through theater listings now is kind of a bummer too, since the film just got knocked out of a whole lot of venues.  It's also worth noting that that 141 of 529 figure leaves out how many screens REG gave the flick.  Those 529 venues add up to 6,423 screens in total, so 141 may underestimate their support for the film, depending on how the screens are distributed amongst theaters.

Still, assuming for argument's sake it's completely worthless speculation, Kevin should've taken the opportunity to nail me to a cross for it instead of consigning the comment to oblivion.  He lets a large amount of nonsense through, so why not this one, if it qualifies as such?
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,01:20

Quote (didymos @ May 05 2008,01:12)
Quote (didymos @ May 04 2008,05:12)
I just tried posting this to Kevin Miller's blog, but it got flagged as potential spam and held for his review.  Just in case it fails to appear, I'm reproducing it here:

Here's something interesting:

Expelled is being shown in venues operated by Regal Entertainment Group:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regal_Entertainment_Group >

It's the largest theater chain in North America, and its majority owner is Phillip Anschutz:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Anschutz >

Phillip is one of the funders of the Discovery Institute:

< http://www.evolutionnews.org/ >

Its fellows and general weltaunschaung are of course heavily featured in Expelled. Ben even takes a little field trip there.  The DI, of course, has heavily promoted Expelled in numerous "blog" postings/screeds.

Now, Expelled has been promoted by Motive Marketing:

< http://moviemarketing.biz/index.html >

They also handled The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, a film produced by Walden Media:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Media >

As it happens, Walden Media is a subsidiary of the Anschutz Film Group, which is itself an "affiliate" of AEG:

< http://www.aegworldwide.com/05_affiliates/afg.html >

Another "affiliate" is the aforementioned Regal Entertainment Group

AEG is in turn a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Anschutz Company:

< http://www.aegworldwide.com/08_corporate/about_us.html >

And, yes, the Anschutz Company is of course named after Phillip Anschutz.

Suddenly, it doesn't seem so strange that Expelled has managed to hold on to 1041 of an original 1052 theaters despite performing so poorly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Update:  Kevin, for unknown reasons, decided he was not going to allow the above comment through.  I don't want to go all "conspiracy theory", but that bothers me.  Everything in it is accurate, though.  The weak part is the speculation on < Expelled > retaining theaters as a result of seeming ID nepotism, and I appear to have been off the mark there, based on < this comment >:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Chez Jake said...

   Hi Jim,

   I just did a little research on how much Anschutz is pushing Expelled! As of Sunday night, he only has it booked in 141 of those 529 theaters. We'll be generous and call that 27% confidence in the film.
   March 29, 2008 9:00 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

from here: < Is "Expelled" going to show up in any theaters on April 18? >

I'm still not so sure, as that figure is unsourced, but better not to commit either way without more to go on.  I suspect the guy may have just grovelled through theater locator stuff and correlated it with venues owned
by Regal Entertainment Group.  I'd really rather not do that myself, but will if I have to.  If anyone has better methods for tracking this sort of stuff down, I'd appreciate some tips.  Trawling through theater listings now is kind of a bummer too, since the film just got knocked out of a whole lot of venues.  It's also worth noting that that 141 of 529 figure leaves out how many screens REG gave the flick.  Those 529 venues add up to 6,423 screens in total, so 141 may underestimate their support for the film, depending on how the screens are distributed amongst theaters.

Still, assuming for argument's sake it's completely worthless speculation, Kevin should've taken the opportunity to nail me to a cross for it instead of consigning the comment to oblivion.  He lets a large amount of nonsense through, so why not this one, if it qualifies as such?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"BIG CINEMA" IS PUSHING CREATIONISM!!!!!!!!!111111one
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 05 2008,01:33

Quote (Reed @ May 05 2008,00:11)
I admit that I don't know enough about Gonzales activities prior to the tenure to dispute to have an opinion of where he fell on that line.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Reed,

I've done some searching and from what I can tell, the main thrust of his career has been a series of ten papers (one of them a review of his own work to that time) exploring the chemical makeup of stars which harbor planets, presumably to support the Rare Earth/GHZ hypotheses.

The later parts of the series can be found at  < arXiv.org >, but the first ones I found elsewhere.

(Edit to add: NOTICE.  All papers linked below are .pdfs)

The first paper in what would eventually become the series was published while he was at UT Austin:

Gonzalez, G. 1996, < The stellar metallicity-giant planet connection >, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 285, Issue 2, pp. 403-412.

He was at University of Washington for the following parts of the series:

Gonzalez, G. 1998, < Spectroscopic analyses of the parent stars of extrasolar planetary system candidates >, Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.334, p.221-238

Gonzalez, Guillermo; Vanture, Andrew D. 1998, < Parent stars of extrasolar planets III: rho^1 CANCRI Revisited >, Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.339, p.L29-L32 (Letter to the editor)

Gonzalez, Guillermo; Wallerstein, George; Saar, Steven H. 1998, < Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets. IV. 14 Herculis, HD 187123, and HD 210277 >, The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 511, Issue 2, pp. L111-L114.

Gonzalez, Guillermo; Laws, Chris 2000, < Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets. V. HD 75289 >, The Astronomical Journal, Volume 119, Issue 1, pp. 390-396.

Gonzalez, Guillermo; Laws, Chris; Tyagi, Sudhi; Reddy, B. E. 2001, < Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets. VI. Abundance Analyses of 20 New Systems >, The Astronomical Journal, Volume 121, Issue 1, pp. 432-452.

(Edit to add that this is where Gonzalez formally proposed the "Galactic Habitable Zone":
Gonzalez, Guillermo; Brownlee, Donald; Ward, Peter 2001, < The Galactic Habitable Zone I. Galactic Chemical Evolution >, Icarus, 49pp.)

Laws, Chris; Gonzalez, Guillermo; Walker, Kyle M.; Tyagi, Sudhi; Dodsworth, Jeremy; Snider, Keely; Suntzeff, Nicholas B.; 2003, < Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets VII: New Abundance Analyses of 30 Systems >, The Astronomical Journal, Astron.J.125:2664-2677,2003

This is the point at which Gonzalez moved to Iowa State.  He published an invited review of his work thus far for Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Gonzalez, Guillermo 2006, < The Chemical Compositions of Stars with Planets: A Review >, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 118, Issue 849, Page 1494–1505.

He then continued the series.

Gonzalez, Guillermo; Laws, Chris; submitted 2007, < Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets. VIII. Chemical Abundances for 18 Elements in 31 Stars >, "to be published in MNRAS" (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society) ; 16 pages;

A search of MNRAS hasn't turned up part VIII for me, so I don't know if it's been published yet.

Gonzalez, Guillermo, (Submitted on 4 Feb 2008), < Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets. IX. Lithium Abundances >, Submitted to MNRAS, 8 pages.

Also not yet found at MNRAS, and given the submission date, I'm assuming it has also yet to be published.

In 2006, Nikos Prantzos of Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris took Gonzalez to task not for his work on the chemical abundances of these stars as much as for there being no evidence to support Gonzalez' initial assumptions that these chemical abundances have so much bearing on the ability for life to begin.

From his introduction:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The concept of GHZ is much less well defined than the one of CHZ, since none of the presumably relevant factors can be quantified in a satisfactory way. Indeed, the role of the metallicity in the formation and survival of Earth-like planets is not really understood at present, while the “lethality” of supernovae and other cosmic explosions is hard to assess. The first study attempting to quantitatively account for such effects is made by Lineweaver et al. (2004, herefater L04), with a detailed model for the chemical evolution of the Milky Way disk. They find that the probability of having an environment favourable to complex life is larger in a “ring” (a few kpc wide) surrounding the Milky Way center and spreading outwards in the course of the Galaxy’s evolution.

We repeat that exercice here with a model that reproduces satisfactorily the major observables of the Milky Way disk (Sec. 2). In Sec. 3 we discuss the role of metallicity and we quantify it in a different (and, presumably, more realistic) way than L04, in the light of recent simulations of planetary formation. In Sec. 4 we discuss the risk of SN explosions and conclude that it can hardly be quantified at present, in view of our ignorance of how robuste life really is. For comparison purposes, though, we adopt the same risk factor as the one defined in L04. In Sec. 5 we present our results, showing that the GHZ may, in fact, extend to the whole Galactic disk today. We conclude that, at the present stage of our knowledge, the GHZ may extend to the entire MW disk.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Prantzos, Nikos 2006, < On the "Galactic Habitable Zone" >, Strategies for Life Detection, ISSI Bern, April 24-28 2006.

The long and the short of it seems to be that Prantzos points out that Gonzalez assumes his conclusion - that Earth is "rare" due to certain metallicities in parent stars and their effect on planet formation - then goes on to catalogue metallicity data in stars to support his assumption/conclusion.

Bear in mind that I'm not a physicist or a professional astronomer.  That's just the view from a carpenter's son.

(Edited a few times for clarity which does not come easily at 3AM)


Posted by: October Mermaid on May 05 2008,01:35

That IS really odd.  I didn't know Kevin deleted/censored any comments over there.  Heck, he let one of my banal ones get through that added nothing to the conversation whatsoever, so anything should be fair.
Posted by: Nomad on May 05 2008,02:14

Quote (October Mermaid @ May 05 2008,01:35)
That IS really odd.  I didn't know Kevin deleted/censored any comments over there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He deleted my comment where I simply asked him what Sternberg had been expelled from.  I think he's carefully allowing antagonistic posts that fail to make appreciable points so that it looks like he's supporting that whole "freedom to question" thing while he deletes the questions that he can't or doesn't dare answer.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Heck, he let one of my banal ones get through that added nothing to the conversation whatsoever, so anything should be fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Exactly.  If it adds nothing to the conversation he can leave it in since it doesn't raise any possibly dangerous points.
Posted by: didymos on May 05 2008,02:21

Quote (October Mermaid @ May 04 2008,23:35)
That IS really odd.  I didn't know Kevin deleted/censored any comments over there.  Heck, he let one of my banal ones get through that added nothing to the conversation whatsoever, so anything should be fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It is fair to point out that it got held for moderation, so maybe something went wrong on that end, and the comment just died alone in some temp directory.  Or Kevin doesn't know how to work that side of it very well. Not trying to insult the guy, but it's a realistic possibility.  Another is that it sends an email or something in cases like that, and he simply hasn't noticed it yet.
I have no idea what the details of the TypePad blog system are, so who knows? I could quite easily be entirely wrong.
Posted by: PTET on May 05 2008,05:03

Quote (Ptaylor @ May 04 2008,20:40)
 
Quote (Dr.GH @ May 02 2008,21:24)

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
STEIN: Yeah, it`s interesting. I wrote about this already, that if you -- what`s going to happen, if you marry up eugenics and limited access to universal health care, it`s going to be you just go die, you just go off and die. Already in Germany I`m told people are given this little pill when they get old and sick and they take the pill and go to sleep and don`t wake up.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben Stein is a poster-child for the malevolent stupidity of creationism.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"Germany has had no penalty for either suicide or assisted suicide since 1751, although it rarely happens there due to the hangover taboo caused by Nazi mass murders, plus powerful, contemporary, church influences. Direct killing by euthanasia is a crime. In 2000 a German appeal court cleared a Swiss clergyman of assisted suicide because there was no such offence, but convicted him of bringing the drugs into the country. There was no imprisonment." - < Assisted Suicide Laws Around the World
>

"Active euthanasia is explicitly banned in Germany, but the law on assisted suicide is less clear." - < BMJ >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That damnable Charles Darwin. Somehow he managed to travel back in time to 1751 and change Germany's laws on assisted suicide.

Doesn't the Bible say something about bearing false witness?

But as ever, it's ok to lie if you're doing it for God. Right, Ben?
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on May 05 2008,06:14

O'Leary has a "friend" who says of Expelled:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I believe it's #13 of all time in box office receipts after only two weekends and it's possible, if not likely, it will crack into the top ten before it's done.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Erm, #13 all time box office receipts? I don't think so. #13 in some narrow category, perhaps.
This "friend" continues on


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
$6 million going into the third weekend is tanking? This person needs to check out "Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden" which came out on the same weekend as EXPELLED. I don't think Spurlock's bomb (the guy who brought you Supersize Me) has even made $300k yet. That's a poor performing film. By contrast, EXPELLED is a huge success.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And compared to all those films that never even came out EXPELLED is a huge success.  < This is journalism? >
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 05 2008,06:25

Denyse's "friend".





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Sock puppet with raw Sardine >, by willem velthoven
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on May 05 2008,06:47

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 05 2008,04:14)
O'Leary has a "friend" who says of Expelled:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I believe it's #13 of all time in box office receipts after only two weekends and it's possible, if not likely, it will crack into the top ten before it's done.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Erm, #13 all time box office receipts? I don't think so. #13 in some narrow category, perhaps.
This "friend" continues on
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
$6 million going into the third weekend is tanking? This person needs to check out "Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden" which came out on the same weekend as EXPELLED. I don't think Spurlock's bomb (the guy who brought you Supersize Me) has even made $300k yet. That's a poor performing film. By contrast, EXPELLED is a huge success.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And compared to all those films that never even came out EXPELLED is a huge success.  < This is journalism? >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I got into a minor spat over at Kev's about Spurlock's flick, coincidentally. I repost the micro-fracas here, minus an intervening comment on another topic:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Um, looks like your anti-science movie is tanking at the box office.

Posted by: Boris | May 03, 2008 at 05:03 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Tanking I know. Hard to believe a doc on Science wouldn't do better than Iron Man.
Sure is beating Spurlocks movie though.

Posted by: Jeffery S | May 03, 2008 at 05:05 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Well, considering Expelled started out in 1052 venues compared to 102 for Spurlock's movie, in relative terms, Expelled is getting it's ass kicked. Especially as it's lost a fairly significant number of theatres, whereas "Where in the World" has held onto to all of its. Now add in the respective budgets for both, production and promotional, and then you might have a decent basis for what is otherwise a spurious comparison of box-office performance. Feel free to try again, Jeff.

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | May 03, 2008 at 05:36 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Sorry, Spurlock's flick has lost a decent number of theatres.

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | May 03, 2008 at 05:39 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

You know what else I overlooked? Somehow, I don't think Spurlock is paying anyone to go see his movie. That's gotta eat into any hypothetical profit Expelled has generated, or just drive it further into the red. Plus, it's been enjoined, so they can't, unlikely as the idea is, add any more theaters to the roster. So, Spurlock? Yeah, not a box-office juggernaut, or, quite honestly, success, but who would you rather be at this point?

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | May 03, 2008 at 06:03 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

LET ME TRY AGAIN
how polite let me try this one. Spurlock was only in 120 theaters, but yet still didn't get the theater avg. Expelled got. Having low theater count should improve theater avg. Not in Spurlocks case. Expelled doubled Spurlocks avg.
Funny how the facts can work for both arguments, but common sense work for mine. BE atch

Posted by: Jeffery S | May 03, 2008 at 07:24 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

No, read the stuff about costs of production and promotion. I corrected my original statement, which was based on theater retention. The rest of it still holds though. Plus, Spurlock isn't getting sued by anyone. If you want to add on some more, he's gotten far better reviews, though hardly stellar. You're right about the per theater average, but unless we know ticket prices and number of showings, et cetera, that's not a great metric. Just to reiterate I said:

"Now add in the respective budgets for both, production and promotional, and then you might have a decent basis for what is otherwise a spurious comparison of box-office performance."

It is worth looking at how steeply per theater average has declined for each film, however, if we are going to talk averages. Expelled started at a high of $1149 and has dropped to $152. The Spurlock film started at $432 and has dropped to $66. That's a $997 drop vs. $366. Looked at that way, Expelled is doing slightly worse. It looks even worse for Expelled when you consider theater loss, as "Where in the World" went from 102 to 72 theaters on 4/25, a much larger relative decrease than Expelled, which by contrast went from 1052 to 1041 on the same date, yet didn't suffer as drastic a decline in averages as Expelled.

My earlier, erroneous comment on theater loss was based on a figure I saw which apparently won't apply until after this weekend, and a misreading of the "Where in the World" chart.

Anyway, and again, all this ignores things like ticket prices, where theaters actually are, number of showings per day, et cetera. In any case, the really important question is, if we're gonna talk money: profit or loss? Depending on how you want to look at the facts, Expelled either "wins" or "loses" handily on that account from what I can tell.

Posted by: Thomas S. Howard | May 04, 2008 at 12:57 AM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Here's the link to the initial Jeff-inciting comment: < link >

I kinda screwed up at first, but it worked out alright.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 05 2008,09:19

I'm thinking of getting the domain www.bensteinery.com and do nothing but link to supid shit Stein has said and every review I can find.  I'd use a tasty quote or two from each review.

Anyhow, I just started thinking of it.  A super meta repository for a super meta tard.

Just thinking out loud...

Maybe www.isbensteinsmaterthanafifthgrader.com

I'd really want to harp on how ignorant Ben is about elementary science concepts like there's a reason Darwinism doesn't have an answer for why the planets stay alligned, Ben...
Posted by: Kristine on May 05 2008,09:57

Quote (Ptaylor @ May 04 2008,19:40)
Quote (Dr.GH @ May 02 2008,21:24)
Howdy.

I watched a short part of an interview Stein did this afternoon on CNN Headline News talking head Glenn Beck. I got dizzy and had purple spots in front of my eyes.  Stein was explaining that even today German doctors pass out pills to kill people.  Maybe I hallucinated.  No... he actually said that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's the transcript:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
BECK: It`s exactly what happened in Germany. And what happened in Germany, when you couple it with this kind of thinking that you see in the movie, bad things happen.

STEIN: Yeah, it`s interesting. I wrote about this already, that if you -- what`s going to happen, if you marry up eugenics and limited access to universal health care, it`s going to be you just go die, you just go off and die. Already in Germany I`m told people are given this little pill when they get old and sick and they take the pill and go to sleep and don`t wake up.

BECK: No.

STEIN: Yes, yes, that`s happening a lot in Germany.

BECK: What`s the name of the pill? That`s being prescribed by doctors?

STEIN: Apparently it`s a super powerful barbiturate. And people take it and that`s it for them.

BECK: You say we`re never going to forget -- what the .

STEIN: The problem with that of course is what if you`re just in a bad mood for a couple of hours and you take it and then you`re gone for good. You can`t change your mind.

BECK: I don`t know if that`s the -- I mean .

STEIN: That`s one of the problems.

BECK: That`s one of the problems. The other problem, I see it, doctors are prescribing -- are killing people in Germany.

STEIN: Well, again you might say. Again. Yeah, again. We showed this -- we documented in the movie that they`ve been doing this for a while.

BECK: You know what, let me go to this because you went to the Hatimar (ph) Clinic which is a death clinic where the German doctors, took two of them, had to sign a form say, yeah, we`ve got to kill this person. Watch this.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Source >
Scroll about 1/5 of the way down, or Find the string 'pill'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, for pity's sake, now concern over global warming is causing the food shortages! (Of course it has nothing to do with agricultural policy and manditory use of terminal seeds. Oh, of course not!;)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
STEIN: So, it`s a net energy loser. It`s using up a lot of crops that could be feeding animals and people.

BECK: It`s going to have more. I think it`s like -- what is it, 24...

STEIN: They`re doubling it.

BECK: Yes.

STEIN: They`re either doubling it or tripling it.

BECK: I think it`s 25 percent this year. It`s 50 next year.

STEIN: And not only is it causing a food crisis, which is terrible, and real people are really starving, but also it is causing environmental havoc because lots and lots of jungle and virgin forests are being knocked down to grow corn.

BECK: Ben...

STEIN: And yet people will not allow drilling in some remote spot in Alaska for oil.

BECK: Through Santa`s reindeer`s head.

STEIN: No, not going through Santa`s reindeer`s head.

BECK: Here`s the thing. You talk about it in your movie "Expelled." It`s the same thing with Islamic extremism, global warming, ethanol.

STEIN: Yes, you`re not allowed to tell the truth.

BECK: You can`t...

STEIN: You`re not allowed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who knew that all those corn fields for ethanol just popped up like magic all over the world in the past year! And did anyone else find this disturbing?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
BECK: How many dogs do you have?

STEIN: We have three dogs and six cats and a fish.

BECK: OK. Here`s the thing. If you`re a listener to the radio program, you know that I have a homeland security rule. I think if you have more than three cats, not married -- so, in other words, you can marry and you can have three cats.

So, in other words, if you have two cats and she had two cats, you could marry. But you can`t have four. You`ve got to choose one, "Sophie`s Choice," and get rid of one cat.

STEIN: No, but we...

BECK: You have six, I`d put a cruiser out in front of your house because you`re one of the crazy cat people.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(emphasis mine)
Har har, jokes about "Sophie's Choice" (choosing which of your children the Nazis let live) is so funny.[QUOTE] :O
For shame.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on May 05 2008,10:26

Quote (Kristine @ May 05 2008,10:57)

Har har, jokes about "Sophie's Choice" (choosing which of your children the Nazis let live) is so funny.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sophie's choice? Reading these two I'm thinking "Dumb and Dumber" is the more apt movie reference.
Posted by: Kristine on May 05 2008,10:59

"In this theatre of 144 seats, < I am alone >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Clad in a frumpy suit and tan sneakers, he pads around downtown Seattle, interrupting pedestrians and café diners to see if they know where the Discovery Institute is. Flipping maps one way and the other, shrugging his shoulders, throwing up his arms, he finally stumbles upon the shabby office on the eighth floor of a nondescript building.

As best as I can tell, he is trying to portray the Discovery Institute as an out-of-the-way, modest establishment run by ordinary people who are fighting the good fight in the name of scientific inquiry. He does not unveil the slick Web site (which now features Stein's photo and the section "Expelled Explained"), the Hollywood-grade propaganda films, the hard religious slant and the wealthy donors by which it is known.

I'd say Ben knew exactly where to find the Discovery Institute.

It gets worse.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on May 05 2008,11:30

Quote (Kristine @ May 05 2008,10:59)
It gets worse.[/quote]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


... but the article gets better.

Thanks for the research - how did you find this one, way down in Roanoke VA?
Posted by: Kristine on May 05 2008,11:58

Google "Ben Stein" with "science" and hit News.

That's how I found < this one >, too.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I saw it, so you don't have to: Ben Stein's 'Expelled'

...Anyone else sit through this monstrous excuse for a movie? I stuck around for the whole thing, and never have 90 minutes felt longer. I actually started groaning and muttering at the screen when Stein shamelessly exploited the memory of the millions whom Hitler murdered — which, apparently, was Charles Darwin's fault somehow?! (Seriously, what was Stein thinking with that?) I'd apologize to the audience members who were irritated by my involuntary heckling, but there were only like four of them, and they were people who had paid money to see Expelled, so I don't really feel too bad. Anyway, take it from me: Do not see this movie under any circumstances. Not ironically, not so you can mock it in the footnotes of your Ph.D dissertation on molecular biology, not even because you think it might make a funny "I saw it, so you don't have to" blog item. And if you already made the mistake I did and subjected yourself to this stinker, go ahead and vent your feelings below — and please accept my condolences...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



and < this one >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Thumbs Fucking Down: Everyone’s favorite monotonous, red eye-alleviating host Ben Stein compared the development of science to the gas chambers of Auchwitz. “Science leads you to killing people,” Stein said in a Trinity Broadcasting Network interview. So, that Clear Eyes solution for which people recognize you is not a derivative of science at all, right? And it isn’t because of science that you can still drag your decrepit carcass into your Malibu home, right? What do you do with that lifetime supply of eye drops, anyway?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Eye-drops lead you to killing people! :p (Now, why didn't I think of that?) :)
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,14:53

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 04 2008,17:50)
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,16:02)
   
Quote (didymos @ April 23 2008,15:37)
OK, I'm tenatively calling bullshit on something, but don't know if it really is.  The next-to-latest DI "blog" posting claims that Guillermo Gonzales invented the concept of the Galactic Habitable Zone, as part of their ongoing "he wuz teh ekspelldz.  He can haz tenur?" campaign. As far as I know, he's just a proponent, and maybe introduced the term, as best I can tell, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This 2006 Paper > On the “Galactic Habitable Zone” by Nikos Prantzos (.pdf) has these references:

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
9. Gonzalez, G. (1997), MNRAS, 285:403-412
10. Gonzalez, G. (2005), Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 35:555-606
11. Gonzalez, G., Brownlee, D., Ward, P. (2001), Icarus, 152: 185-200
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That should get you started looking...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Dr. Phil Plait of < BadAstronomy > has a weekly live video chat and I JanieBelle asked what he thought of Gonzalez' "Galactic Habitable Zone" and < Prantzos' 2006 challenge > of it.  (I had previously emailed him links to the papers in question.)

"Destroyed" is his word of choice.

He also was very explicit that he sees no problem at all with denying tenure to Gonzalez based solely on his creationism.

Rough quote to the best of my memory:

 
Quote (Dr. Phil Plait @ about an hour ago)
If you think the universe is 6000 years old, you shouldn't be teaching science.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Amen.

So let's review the Iowa State tenure decision:

Creationist.
No appreciable funding in the form of grants.
Little in the way of publications.
No grads.
and now Sole claim to scientific "fame" debunked within a very few years.

Any questions?

Edited for a format issue.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


1. GG is not YEC.
2. The totality of GG's research output makes creepy Avalos' look absolutely anemic by comparison, yet he received tenure.
3. Dawkins' last research output is dated to the Thatcher administration, yet I've not seen calls for his ouster from Oxford.
4. Phil Plait is a jackass.

Any questions?
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 05 2008,14:58

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:53)
Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes.

Do you have anything useful to add to any discussion whatsoever?
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:01

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 05 2008,14:58)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:53)
Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes.

Do you have anything useful to add to any discussion whatsoever?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I just did. As someone currently in academia, I just bitch-slapped your half-assed assertions back to the unlit corner where they belong. By the way, will someone kindly forward my post to Lauri Lebo in the sticks?
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,15:01

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,14:53)
1. GG is not YEC.
2. The totality of GG's research output makes creepy Avalos' look absolutely anemic by comparison, yet he received tenure.
3. Dawkins' last research output is dated to the Thatcher administration, yet I've not seen calls for his ouster from Oxford.
4. Phil Plait is a jackass.

Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


1. Wrong comes in many flavours

2. What about his funding?

3. Because his role isn't research, it's helping the public understand science?

4. Ah, hybridization. More proof of common descent!
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 05 2008,15:01

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,14:53)
1. GG is not YEC.
2. The totality of GG's research output makes creepy Avalos' look absolutely anemic by comparison, yet he received tenure.
3. Dawkins' last research output is dated to the Thatcher administration, yet I've not seen calls for his ouster from Oxford.
4. Phil Plait is a jackass.

Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just a few.

What apples v. oranges comparison would be useful for comparing research output of a scholar in a department of Religion with a scholar in a department of Physics? Do you think that grants are needed to assure a positive tenure decision in a Religion department? Where would those grants come from?

What part of "tenure decision" don't you understand? The part where you don't have tenure until you prove yourself in a few years of effort (the case of Gonzalez), or the part where you have proven yourself and are quite a few years past that decision (in the case of Dawkins)?

Are you really as stupid as you seem to be?
Posted by: stevestory on May 05 2008,15:02

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:53)
2. The totality of GG's research output makes creepy Avalos' look absolutely anemic by comparison, yet he received tenure.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Both wrong and irrelevant.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,15:03

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:01)
...As someone currently in academia...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry Bob, but..


Lofty 'qualifications' indeed.

When i grows up will be spaceship pilot 4 sure.
Posted by: stevestory on May 05 2008,15:05

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 05 2008,16:01)

Are you really as stupid as you seem to be?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He's not so much stupid, as he has a desire to look smart by putting others down, which causes him to make bad decisions. He's young. We're hoping he grows as he gets older.


Posted by: stevestory on May 05 2008,15:07

If he doesn't, he'll wind up another Berlinksi, and the world has too many of those as is.
Posted by: stevestory on May 05 2008,15:10

We can be mean at times too.



but damn if that ain't funny.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:10

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:01)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,14:53)
1. GG is not YEC.
2. The totality of GG's research output makes creepy Avalos' look absolutely anemic by comparison, yet he received tenure.
3. Dawkins' last research output is dated to the Thatcher administration, yet I've not seen calls for his ouster from Oxford.
4. Phil Plait is a jackass.

Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


1. Wrong comes in many flavours

2. What about his funding?

3. Because his role isn't research, it's helping the public understand science?

4. Ah, hybridization. More proof of common descent!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


1. No doubt!
2. That, apparently, was a legitimate issue.
3. Sounds like they created the post especially for a dried-up Dawkins.
4. < Thou sayest! >
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 05 2008,15:11

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,12:53)
1. GG is not YEC.
2. The totality of GG's research output makes creepy Avalos' look absolutely anemic by comparison, yet he received tenure.
3. Dawkins' last research output is dated to the Thatcher administration, yet I've not seen calls for his ouster from Oxford.
4. Phil Plait is a jackass.

Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes.

Do you genuinely not understand how the tenure process works, or are you just playing dumb in hopes of winning your argument?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As someone currently in academia, I just bitch-slapped your half-assed assertions back to the unlit corner where they belong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's entirely possible for a grad student to be ignorant of how tenure review really works (I didn't know when I was a grad student).

'Bitch slapping'? Yeesh, gotta do something about those anger issues, Robert.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:15

Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:07)
If he doesn't, he'll wind up another Berlinksi, and the world has too many of those as is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I could never relocate to Paris, though.
Posted by: stevestory on May 05 2008,15:18

Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,15:25

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:10)
4. < Thou sayest! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are these two texts equal?




Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:28

Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 05 2008,15:30

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:01)
Quote (Lou FCD @ May 05 2008,14:58)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:53)
Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes.

Do you have anything useful to add to any discussion whatsoever?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I just did. As someone currently in academia, I just bitch-slapped your half-assed assertions back to the unlit corner where they belong. By the way, will someone kindly forward my post to Lauri Lebo in the sticks?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"As someone currently in academia", you're amazingly ignorant, self-deluded, and vapid, overinflated self-description notwithstanding.
Posted by: stevestory on May 05 2008,15:36

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:28)
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your boy Dembksi didn't.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,15:38

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:28)
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Phhhh... Materialist chance worshiper!
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,15:39

Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:36)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:28)
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your boy Dembksi didn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


At the same time that research in the Bible Code has taken off, research in a seemingly unrelated field has taken off as well, namely, biological design. These two fields are in fact closely related. Indeed, the same highly improbable, independently given patterns that appear as the equidistant letter sequences in the Bible Code appear in biology as functionally integrated (“irreducibly complex”) biological systems, of the sort Michael Behe discussed in Darwin’s Black Box.

The relevant statistical methodology is identical for both fields. As a result, the two fields stand to profit from each other. For instance, my forthcoming book, The Design Inference, gives a thorough account of universal probability bounds, i.e., how small a p-value one needs to eliminate chance decisively. (Although the literature on universal probability bounds dates back to the French probabilist Emile Borel, it seems not to have been engaged by the Bible Code researchers.)

This convergence of the Bible Code and biological design should not seem surprising. There is a tradition within both Judaism and Christianity of speaking of two ”books” where God reveals himself—the Book of Scripture, which is the Bible, and the Book of Nature, which is the world. I commend Jeffrey Satinover for his efforts to read both books.

Posted by: stevestory on May 05 2008,15:39

Dangit. Fun though this is, Bowmen Gray pool just opened 5 mins ago and them laps aren't going to do themselves. l8rz
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:43

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 05 2008,15:01)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,14:53)
1. GG is not YEC.
2. The totality of GG's research output makes creepy Avalos' look absolutely anemic by comparison, yet he received tenure.
3. Dawkins' last research output is dated to the Thatcher administration, yet I've not seen calls for his ouster from Oxford.
4. Phil Plait is a jackass.

Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just a few.

What apples v. oranges comparison would be useful for comparing research output of a scholar in a department of Religion with a scholar in a department of Physics? Do you think that grants are needed to assure a positive tenure decision in a Religion department? Where would those grants come from?

What part of "tenure decision" don't you understand? The part where you don't have tenure until you prove yourself in a few years of effort (the case of Gonzalez), or the part where you have proven yourself and are quite a few years past that decision (in the case of Dawkins)?

Are you really as stupid as you seem to be?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's more like apples and pears, not apples and oranges. They are distinct, to be certain, but both are pomes and share many characteristics. I am well versed in Biblical scholarship and I think Avalos' work is mediocre. His claim to "fame," other than displaying an unhealthy fixation with GG, is ancient sanitation and chicano religion.

That's right, folks, if you want to know which hand the ancients used to wipe their asses or how some Mexicans think there is a portal to Hell that opens on El Día de los Muertos then Avalos is your go to guy.

And, of course, there is still the issue of dried-up Dawkins.
Posted by: stevestory on May 05 2008,15:45

(One last thing as i'm out the door. Check out the new post at PT, where Joe Felsenstein beats Salvador like a rented mule)
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:45

Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:36)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:28)
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your boy Dembksi didn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I dropped Bill awhile ago. He is like the Jeremiah Wright of ID.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,15:46

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:45)
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:36)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:28)
 
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your boy Dembksi didn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I dropped Bill awhile ago. He is like the Jeremiah Wright of ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who's the main man in ID at the moment?
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 05 2008,15:48

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:43)
It's more like apples and pears, not apples and oranges. They are distinct, to be certain, but both are pomes and share many characteristics. I am well versed in Biblical scholarship and I think Avalos' work is mediocre. His claim to "fame," other than displaying an unhealthy fixation with GG, is ancient sanitation and chicano religion.

That's right, folks, if you want to know which hand the ancients used to wipe their asses or how some Mexicans think there is a portal to Hell that opens on El Día de los Muertos then Avalos is your go to guy.

And, of course, there is still the issue of dried-up Dawkins.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And this is your defense of ID?

Agumentum ad Igotnuthinum?

Did they teach you that in academia?

Sweet.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 05 2008,15:50

Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,16:45)
(One last thing as i'm out the door. Check out the new post at PT, where Joe Felsenstein beats Salvador like a rented mule)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Direct link for the sick, lame, and lazy:

< Gambler’s Ruin is Darwin’s Gain >
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:51

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:25)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:10)
4. < Thou sayest! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are these two texts equal?




---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, although I think Gary Gygax (of blessed memory) deserves to be sainted more than Mother Teresa (who seems to have been a phony).
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:53

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 05 2008,15:48)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:43)
It's more like apples and pears, not apples and oranges. They are distinct, to be certain, but both are pomes and share many characteristics. I am well versed in Biblical scholarship and I think Avalos' work is mediocre. His claim to "fame," other than displaying an unhealthy fixation with GG, is ancient sanitation and chicano religion.

That's right, folks, if you want to know which hand the ancients used to wipe their asses or how some Mexicans think there is a portal to Hell that opens on El Día de los Muertos then Avalos is your go to guy.

And, of course, there is still the issue of dried-up Dawkins.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And this is your defense of ID?

Agumentum ad Igotnuthinum?

Did they teach you that in academia?

Sweet.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's more like argumentum playbythesamerulesum or argumentum acrosstheboardum
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 05 2008,15:53

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:51)
No, although I think Gary Gygax (of blessed memory) deserves to be sainted more than Mother Teresa (who seems to have been a phony).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd agree, but let's get the conversation back around to Expelled.

We begin to stray a bit afield here.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,15:55

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:46)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:45)
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:36)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:28)
 
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your boy Dembksi didn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I dropped Bill awhile ago. He is like the Jeremiah Wright of ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who's the main man in ID at the moment?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you asking for their de facto "leader" or the ID proponent(s) I like best?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 05 2008,15:58

By the same rules or across the board would indicate that the performance of an astronomer seeking tenure should be compared to other astronomers seeking tenure, and not, as the DI did at various times, comparing an astronomer seeking tenure to astronomers already having tenure, or to people outside the astronomy field.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,15:59

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:55)
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:46)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:45)
 
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:36)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:28)
   
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your boy Dembksi didn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I dropped Bill awhile ago. He is like the Jeremiah Wright of ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who's the main man in ID at the moment?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you asking for their de facto "leader" or the ID proponent(s) I like best?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gimme the players, their strengths and weaknesses.

Rate them on a scale where RoB's are positive and Ed Braytons are negative so you can score from 5 Eds (Booo!) to 5 RoBs (Huzzah!)

tell me any that you have a man crush on, or suspect might be gay, or that Jesus might disapprove of.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 05 2008,15:59

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,13:51)
No, although I think Gary Gygax (of blessed memory) deserves to be sainted more than Mother Teresa (who seems to have been a phony).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Except Mother Teresa was Albanian. That's one thing in her favor.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 05 2008,16:07

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:43)
It's more like apples and pears, not apples and oranges. They are distinct, to be certain, but both are pomes and share many characteristics. I am well versed in Biblical scholarship and I think Avalos' work is mediocre. His claim to "fame," other than displaying an unhealthy fixation with GG, is ancient sanitation and chicano religion.

That's right, folks, if you want to know which hand the ancients used to wipe their asses or how some Mexicans think there is a portal to Hell that opens on El Día de los Muertos then Avalos is your go to guy.

And, of course, there is still the issue of dried-up Dawkins.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Robert

"As someone currently in academia", and furthermore, as someone with tenure in a science department who has served on our tenure/promotion committee, I find your arguments incredibly fatuous.

Different departments can have different criteria for tenure; the gap widens incredibly when you start to compare different disciplines. So your asinine comparison of Avalos and Gonzalez bespeaks either incredible ignorance, or incredible dishonesty.

Secondly, your opinion of Avalos' work is just that, one outside opinion. Since it fails to take into account his teaching, his service within the department, his work with graduate students, and a whole host of other factors that his department colleagues considered before granting him tenure, it might even be a remarkably ignorant opinion. If you ever get to the point where your work, your collegiality, and your potential is subjected to the scrutiny that is given to most scholars who have earned tenure, you might be able to convince me that your opinion is anything but ignorance. Right now, it just smells like ignorance, or worse.

Finally, your assessment of Dawkins as "dried-up" is even more irrelevant. As noted before, his work prior to tenure (in yet another discipline!) was certainly deemed by his colleagues to have been sufficient for them to grant him tenure. That decision has been vindicated. Dawkins' body of work is substantial, and undoubtedly far exceeds the norm for most biologists. I have no doubt that it exceeds your output by a nearly infinite margin. So sniping at a productive and world-renowned scholar, in another discipline, is beyond just ill-advised. It borders on the ridiculous.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 05 2008,16:08

Mother Teresa, doesn't she have a line of sticky buns or something?
Posted by: dnmlthr on May 05 2008,16:11

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 05 2008,22:08)
Mother Teresa, doesn't she have a line of sticky buns or something?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< I believe you might be thinking of someone else... >
Posted by: tsig on May 05 2008,16:19

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 05 2008,15:11)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,12:53)
1. GG is not YEC.
2. The totality of GG's research output makes creepy Avalos' look absolutely anemic by comparison, yet he received tenure.
3. Dawkins' last research output is dated to the Thatcher administration, yet I've not seen calls for his ouster from Oxford.
4. Phil Plait is a jackass.

Any questions?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes.

Do you genuinely not understand how the tenure process works, or are you just playing dumb in hopes of winning your argument?

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As someone currently in academia, I just bitch-slapped your half-assed assertions back to the unlit corner where they belong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's entirely possible for a grad student to be ignorant of how tenure review really works (I didn't know when I was a grad student).

'Bitch slapping'? Yeesh, gotta do something about those anger issues, Robert.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does he wear a dress when he does the bitch-slapping?
Posted by: dnmlthr on May 05 2008,16:21

< At least Ben and friends has one fan except for FtK >

Here's a choice quote from the piece.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Stein’s critics fail to effectively refute anything in “Expelled”; they just use epithets to ridicule it and hope they can make it go away.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Guess she hasn't found expelled exposed, which is number 7 on google atm. Or Maxwell's demon is working triple shifts, poor guy.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,16:29

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:59)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:55)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:46)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:45)
   
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:36)
   
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:28)
     
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your boy Dembksi didn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I dropped Bill awhile ago. He is like the Jeremiah Wright of ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who's the main man in ID at the moment?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you asking for their de facto "leader" or the ID proponent(s) I like best?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gimme the players, their strengths and weaknesses.

Rate them on a scale where RoB's are positive and Ed Braytons are negative so you can score from 5 Eds (Booo!) to 5 RoBs (Huzzah!)

tell me any that you have a man crush on, or suspect might be gay, or that Jesus might disapprove of.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, let's see. I give Bill 4 Eds for his litany of faux pas and inability/unwillingness to recognize legitimate criticism of his work. (Incidentally, I saw Bill's book whilst looking for some books in QA.) I might have given him fewer Eds but for the fact that with his education he should know better.

I give GG 4 ROBs for his previous research and also because like St. Heddle, I think "cosmological ID" is the stronger ID.

Fritz Schaefer also gets 4 ROBs. He may not have won the Nobel prize but his CV is impressive by any objective measure.

Behe gets 1 ROB. He deserves credit for putting his idea out there but it appears to me to have been sunk. Also, I feel sort of bad for him.

Paul Nelson gets 2 Eds. I disdain YEC.

Berlinsky gets deux ROBs. He'd get trois but he loses one for taking a swipe at the Big Bang and (allegedly) being dismissive of the cosmological argument.

David Heddle gets 5 ROBs. Like St. Heddle, I don't like much of the DI's politics, including the "tee-hee, it doesn't have to be God, tee-hee!" Also, I could probably get on board for 4 out of the 5 points of Calvinism.

Jonathan Wells gets 5 Eds for being a Moonie Cultist, for writing something as stupid as "Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism" and for thinking that allegedly gluing moths to a tree for a photo is a big deal. Oh, by the way, I understand that the repentant ghost of Haeckel signed an affidavit in the presence of Wells and a Moonie notary public to the effect that his embryo drawings were a fraud. He also affirmed that Rev. Moon was the Savior of Mankind.




Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 05 2008,16:34

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,13:43)
I am well versed in Biblical scholarship and I think Avalos' work is mediocre. His claim to "fame," other than displaying an unhealthy fixation with GG, is ancient sanitation and chicano religion.

That's right, folks, if you want to know which hand the ancients used to wipe their asses or how some Mexicans think there is a portal to Hell that opens on El Día de los Muertos then Avalos is your go to guy
.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good thing we know you too well to think that maybe you just have some thing against Mexicans, Robert. ;)



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Also, I could probably get on board for 4 out of the 5 points of Calvinism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I have to ask: which point can you not get behind?
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,16:36

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 05 2008,16:07)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:43)
It's more like apples and pears, not apples and oranges. They are distinct, to be certain, but both are pomes and share many characteristics. I am well versed in Biblical scholarship and I think Avalos' work is mediocre. His claim to "fame," other than displaying an unhealthy fixation with GG, is ancient sanitation and chicano religion.

That's right, folks, if you want to know which hand the ancients used to wipe their asses or how some Mexicans think there is a portal to Hell that opens on El Día de los Muertos then Avalos is your go to guy.

And, of course, there is still the issue of dried-up Dawkins.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Robert

"As someone currently in academia", and furthermore, as someone with tenure in a science department who has served on our tenure/promotion committee, I find your arguments incredibly fatuous.

Different departments can have different criteria for tenure; the gap widens incredibly when you start to compare different disciplines. So your asinine comparison of Avalos and Gonzalez bespeaks either incredible ignorance, or incredible dishonesty.

Secondly, your opinion of Avalos' work is just that, one outside opinion. Since it fails to take into account his teaching, his service within the department, his work with graduate students, and a whole host of other factors that his department colleagues considered before granting him tenure, it might even be a remarkably ignorant opinion. If you ever get to the point where your work, your collegiality, and your potential is subjected to the scrutiny that is given to most scholars who have earned tenure, you might be able to convince me that your opinion is anything but ignorance. Right now, it just smells like ignorance, or worse.

Finally, your assessment of Dawkins as "dried-up" is even more irrelevant. As noted before, his work prior to tenure (in yet another discipline!) was certainly deemed by his colleagues to have been sufficient for them to grant him tenure. That decision has been vindicated. Dawkins' body of work is substantial, and undoubtedly far exceeds the norm for most biologists. I have no doubt that it exceeds your output by a nearly infinite margin. So sniping at a productive and world-renowned scholar, in another discipline, is beyond just ill-advised. It borders on the ridiculous.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not impressed with Dawkins' work. Not only because I think he is overrated but also because I think much of ethology is glorified haruspicy.

As for comparing GG and Avalos, Iowa State is not known for either physics or religious studies. If anything, GG was too good for Iowa State's physics department, the delusions of the chair notwithstanding.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 05 2008,16:36

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:29)
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:59)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:55)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:46)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:45)
   
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:36)
   
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:28)
     
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your boy Dembksi didn't.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I dropped Bill awhile ago. He is like the Jeremiah Wright of ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who's the main man in ID at the moment?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you asking for their de facto "leader" or the ID proponent(s) I like best?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gimme the players, their strengths and weaknesses.

Rate them on a scale where RoB's are positive and Ed Braytons are negative so you can score from 5 Eds (Booo!) to 5 RoBs (Huzzah!)

tell me any that you have a man crush on, or suspect might be gay, or that Jesus might disapprove of.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, let's see. I give Bill 4 Eds for his litany of faux pas and inability/unwillingness to recognize legitimate criticism of his work. (Incidentally, I saw Bill's book whilst looking for some books in QA.) I might have given him fewer Eds but for the fact that with his education he should know better.

I give GG 4 ROBs for his previous research and also because like St. Heddle, I think "cosmological ID" is the stronger ID.

Fritz Schaefer also gets 4 ROBs. He may not have won the Nobel prize but his CV is impressive by any objective measure.

Behe gets 1 ROB. He deserves credit for putting his idea out there but it appears to me to have been sunk. Also, I feel sort of bad for him.

Paul Nelson gets 2 Eds. I disdain YEC.

Berlinsky gets deux ROBs. He'd get trois but he loses one for taking a swipe at the Big Bang and (allegedly) being dismissive of the cosmological argument.

David Heddle gets 5 ROBs. Like St. Heddle, I don't like much of the DI's politics, including the "tee-hee, it doesn't have to be God, tee-hee!" Also, I could probably get on board for 4 out of the 5 points of Calvinism.

Jonathan Wells gets 5 Eds for being a Moonie Cultist, for writing something as stupid as "Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism" and for thinking that allegedly gluing moths to a tree for a photo is a big deal. Oh, by the way, I understand that the repentant ghost of Haeckel signed an affidavit in the presence of Wells and a Moonie notary public to the effect that his embryo drawings were a fraud. He also affirmed that Rev. Moon was the Savior of Mankind.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


PoTW for effort alone!
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,16:40

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 05 2008,16:34)
I have to ask: which point can you not get behind?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Limited atonement.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 05 2008,16:47



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
David Heddle gets 5 ROBs. Like St. Heddle, I don't like much of the DI's politics, including the "tee-hee, it doesn't have to be God, tee-hee!" Also, I could probably get on board for 4 out of the 5 points of Calvinism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do they have saints in Calvinism, and if so how does Heddle feel about being one? Don't you have to be dead first?
Posted by: Nerull on May 05 2008,16:47

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,17:36)
As for comparing GG and Avalos, Iowa State is not known for either physics or religious studies. If anything, GG was too good for Iowa State's physics department, the delusions of the chair notwithstanding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Flunking grad students, no grant money, no research output: A standard of excellence.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 05 2008,16:50

Quote (Nerull @ May 05 2008,14:47)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,17:36)
As for comparing GG and Avalos, Iowa State is not known for either physics or religious studies. If anything, GG was too good for Iowa State's physics department, the delusions of the chair notwithstanding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Flunking grad students, no grant money, no research output: A standard of excellence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Doesn't matter: Dawkins sucks, therefore they should have tenured Gonzalez.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,16:55

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 05 2008,15:38)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:28)
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:18)
Maybe RO'B's grudge against Avalos is because in 1998 Avalos saw through the fraud of the Bible Code, while Dembski approved of the Bible Code and linked it to ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You are being facetious, right? I think the "Bible code" is horseshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Phhhh... Materialist chance worshiper!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did you know Moby Dick predicted Princess Di's death?!

< http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/codes/diana.html >

Also, I understand that Bill is helping the son of an assassinated African king by transferring his father's millions into his bank account. The prince saw Bill's endorsement of the Bible codes and knew he was the right man for the job.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,16:56

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 05 2008,16:50)
Quote (Nerull @ May 05 2008,14:47)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,17:36)
As for comparing GG and Avalos, Iowa State is not known for either physics or religious studies. If anything, GG was too good for Iowa State's physics department, the delusions of the chair notwithstanding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Flunking grad students, no grant money, no research output: A standard of excellence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Doesn't matter: Dawkins sucks, therefore they should have tenured Gonzalez.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Argumentum ad Dawkins
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 05 2008,16:56

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:36)
I'm not impressed with Dawkins' work. Not only because I think he is overrated but also because I think much of ethology is glorified haruspicy.

As for comparing GG and Avalos, Iowa State is not known for either physics or religious studies. If anything, GG was too good for Iowa State's physics department, the delusions of the chair notwithstanding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


As pointed out before, your impressions of work done in areas where you have no expertise, and institutions where you have never studied or worked, are, in the immortal words of Cactus Jack Garner, "not worth a bucket of warm spit".

In talking with my physics colleagues here, I am quite convinced that you have it backwards. GG would have been denied tenure in any reputable physics department. More critically, if he was "too good" for them, why didn't he move on prior to that tenure decision?  We lose productive faculty members prior to tenure all the time, particularly if someone tells them that they are "too good' for us here at a small state school. If GG was such a hot property, he would have vamoosed from there earlier. Since he didn't, maybe you can accept the fact that he was not really a good bet.

In the meantime, I'd urge you to quit commenting about stuff that you know next to nothing about.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,17:03

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 05 2008,16:47)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
David Heddle gets 5 ROBs. Like St. Heddle, I don't like much of the DI's politics, including the "tee-hee, it doesn't have to be God, tee-hee!" Also, I could probably get on board for 4 out of the 5 points of Calvinism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do they have saints in Calvinism, and if so how does Heddle feel about being one? Don't you have to be dead first?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I dunno. I'll ask him next time I log into facebook. :)
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 05 2008,17:10

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 05 2008,16:56)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,16:36)
I'm not impressed with Dawkins' work. Not only because I think he is overrated but also because I think much of ethology is glorified haruspicy.

As for comparing GG and Avalos, Iowa State is not known for either physics or religious studies. If anything, GG was too good for Iowa State's physics department, the delusions of the chair notwithstanding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


As pointed out before, your impressions of work done in areas where you have no expertise, and institutions where you have never studied or worked, are, in the immortal words of Cactus Jack Garner, "not worth a bucket of warm spit".

In talking with my physics colleagues here, I am quite convinced that you have it backwards. GG would have been denied tenure in any reputable physics department. More critically, if he was "too good" for them, why didn't he move on prior to that tenure decision?  We lose productive faculty members prior to tenure all the time, particularly if someone tells them that they are "too good' for us here at a small state school. If GG was such a hot property, he would have vamoosed from there earlier. Since he didn't, maybe you can accept the fact that he was not really a good bet.

In the meantime, I'd urge you to quit commenting about stuff that you know next to nothing about.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know why GG went to Iowa State. Astronomy research requires very expensive equipment and I doubt they are up to snuff there. Also, I think he should have stayed on with the people he was most productive with, but that is all water under the bridge. The tapering off of his productivity at Iowa State is a legitimate negative but it does not excuse the departmental backstabbing.
Posted by: didymos on May 05 2008,17:13

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,14:56)
 
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 05 2008,16:50)
Doesn't matter: Dawkins sucks, therefore they should have tenured Gonzalez.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Argumentum ad Dawkins
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Should we give him credit for, if not inventing the Argumentum ad Dawkins , at least developing it to it's current oh-so-useful state?

 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,12:53)

3. Dawkins' last research output is dated to the Thatcher administration, yet I've not seen calls for his ouster from Oxford.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,13:43)

And, of course, there is still the issue of dried-up Dawkins.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Edited to fix bad quote tags.
Posted by: LawnBoy on May 05 2008,17:14

I don't know if this had been noted previously, but the < weekend numbers > are up:

15th place
$678,304 for the weekend
$6,613,256 overall so far
Posted by: didymos on May 05 2008,17:16

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,15:10)
The tapering off of his productivity at Iowa State is a legitimate negative but it does not excuse the departmental backstabbing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What proof of this do you have?  Recall, the man's anemic funding would have been even more so without his ID book, which he then submitted as part of his tenure application.  So, this backstabbing, you have some evidence, right?
Posted by: Kristine on May 05 2008,17:20

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,14:15)
   
Quote (stevestory @ May 05 2008,15:07)
If he doesn't, he'll wind up another Berlinksi, and the world has too many of those as is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I could never relocate to Paris, though.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I could! I loved it there. :) Not too far from Oxford, I might add, though very far from the Galapagos. ;)



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
John [Derbyshire],
I think you and < other conservative critics > of Ben Stein's movie are overlooking a significant part of the damage this film is doing: it diverts attention away from the areas of the academy, such as English, Poli Sci, Sociology, gender studies, black studies, etc. that really have become real cesspools of leftist dogma and actually are dire need of reform.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


While I probably disagree with Mr. Derbyshire in the exact particulars of which exact "lunac[ies have] run rampant through our Humanities departments this past couple of decades," I did not think of this and am glad that someone else has brought it up. There is a lot of crap masquerading as scholarship in the humanities.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It is not a coincidence that the current strain of creationism exemplified by Expelled gives off a strong whiff of postmodernism:  ruthless power-holders imposing their own version of reality, etc. "When the religious Right adopts the epistemology of the multicultural Left — that truth is relative — there goes the Enlightenment …"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now, there are two conservatives I could have a beer with. Maybe even on the Boulevard Montparnasse. ;) France does have good beer. (Certain truths are relative.)
Posted by: bystander on May 05 2008,17:21

Phyllis Schlafly has a review of Expelled and it is ofcourse positive.


I've also been googling news on Ben Stein for reviews and my favourites are the ones from conservatives and the religious. Here is another one from

< The Corner >.

The religious tend to say that he has points but has gone overboard and the conservatives tend to say that he is an embarrassment to conservatives.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 05 2008,17:26

Quote (bystander @ May 05 2008,17:21)
Phyllis Schlafly has a review of Expelled and it is ofcourse positive.


I've also been googling news on Ben Stein for reviews and my favourites are the ones from conservatives and the religious. Here is another one from

< The Corner >.

The religious tend to say that he has points but has gone overboard and the conservatives tend to say that he is an embarrassment to conservatives.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I love the part where Schlafly says Caroline Crocker "lost her professorship"  

That's some tasty tard for ya.
Posted by: J-Dog on May 05 2008,17:33

Quote (LawnBoy @ May 05 2008,17:14)
I don't know if this had been noted previously, but the < weekend numbers > are up:

15th place
$678,304 for the weekend
$6,613,256 overall so far
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


New Corrected numbers are in:

15th place
$678,304 for the weekend
$6,666,666 overall so far
Posted by: didymos on May 05 2008,17:57

Quote (LawnBoy @ May 05 2008,15:14)
I don't know if this had been noted previously, but the < weekend numbers > are up:

15th place
$678,304 for the weekend
$6,613,256 overall so far
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


While I've seen $3.5 million as a low figure for the budget, I've found reports that contradict that.  One is from a supporter of the film < here >:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I saw a prescreening and one of the producers said it cost around $5 million to make (I've also heard $7 million including distribution) and they were planning to spend "millions" more in marketing.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I believe Mathis himself said $5 milllion in an interview, but I can't track it down.  Still looking.  Anyway, point being, even if you exclude promotion, if this thing has made any profit at all, it falls somewhere between "not much" and "jack shit".  Of course, they haven't released any figures on how many people they had to pay to see the movie. All of which makes this little exchange on UD hilarious:

< Nathan >:    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

1

Nathan

04/21/2008

10:44 am

Does anyone know what the budget to actually film Expelled was? I have been seeing banner ads for the film for months so I know they must have spent a fortune in advertising.

Wikipedia says it was 3.5 million but there’s no telling how accurate that is.

I know its only been out for a week so there’s still hope for it to do better. I was just curious and haven’t had any luck confirming this elsewhere.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< scordova >:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


2

scordova

04/21/2008

11:31 am

Nathan,

Good question. I have no answers yet. I will say, that the marketing budget is not fixed. I expect if revenues are hefty, they’ll reinvest some in coming weeks to market it even more.

The LA Times reports Expelled’s total budget up till now is in the single digit millions. So wiki seems reasonably accurate.

Let’s say that the movie makes $30,000,000 over the next few weeks. It would be wise for the Expelled producers to invest in international and DvD markets afterwords. The nice thing at that point is that the marketing budget will be scalable to profits versus having to fork it out of their own pockets like they did at the start.

Note Expelled did better than any other movie on Sunday relative to Saturday. It is #1 in that regard. In fact that it was Stellar!! This bodes very well for the future of the movie in coming weeks!!!

The movie has energized the viral marketing. I’m hopeful the Expelled crew will be wealthy and rewarded quite well for their good work.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



(bolding on Sal mine).

< JABbering Stooge >    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


3

JABbering Stooge

04/21/2008

5:38 pm

We’re Number 9! We’re Number 9!…

Ruh-roh. Guess who didn’t do so well at the box office this weekend?
“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” a rare documentary opening in wide release, debuted at No. 9 with $3.1 million. Released by Rocky Mountain Pictures, the film features…

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Alas, no further communications from Mr. Cordova were forthcoming.  Or anyone else for that matter.

(edited for bad grammar)
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 05 2008,18:13

They said it had a 3.5M budget, Logan tard or one of the others was quoted in a recent Dallas Morning News article and said they had spent "multiples of that" in distribution and promotion costs.

The fact it's grossed 6M does not mean they get 6M.  And I bet they had to offer theaters a sweetheart deal to get it shown in so many of them.

Their in a deep financial hole but I suspect in the long run (assuming DVDs actually sell) I think they could break even and possibly pocket a few bucks.

Ben Tard said they have other projects in the works.  Can't wait to hear more about them!
Posted by: didymos on May 05 2008,18:40

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 05 2008,16:13)
They said it had a 3.5M budget, Logan tard or one of the others was quoted in a recent Dallas Morning News article and said they had spent "multiples of that" in distribution and promotion costs.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's the one I was thinking of.  OK, so not $5 million.  Here's the < quote >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Nearly $4 million was spent on producing the movie and "a multiple of that" in distribution and marketing so far, Mr. Craft says.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 05 2008,16:13)

The fact it's grossed 6M does not mean they get 6M.  And I bet they had to offer theaters a sweetheart deal to get it shown in so many of them.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



No, I know.  Hence the not much/jack shit.  Oh and sweetheart deal for those not owned by a guy who funded the DI (who still wasn't willing to forego profit and spam it to all his theaters).  I'd love to see the accounting on the film, in any case.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 05 2008,21:27



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'd love to see the accounting on the film
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'm still hoping for a tell-all book from an insider.  Hey we can hope can't we?
Posted by: Doc Bill on May 05 2008,22:27

Considering "Expelled" is not about making money, nor about returning on investment, none of this really matters.

Clearly, the conservative christian creationists never expected to get rich off of "Expelled" because those who bankrolled the film are rich already.  It was a donation.

Unfortunately, "Expelled" is such a nasty little film that the entire episode backfired on the CCC's spectacularly.  Ben Stein has been "exposed" for the shallow, uninformed, scientifically illiterate schlump he is ("Darwinism doesn't explain thermodynamics!  Darwinism doesn't explain gravity!") whose public pronouncements in interviews will have Stein go down as possibly the stupidest person to breathe without mechanical assistance.

Bueller, Bueller is NOTHING compared to Darwinism doesn't explain gravity!  Really, is anyone on record as having said something this abjectly stupid?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Obviously, trying to link "Darwinism" to the Nazis failed, and, by the way, what is the relevance of that today?  Oh, yeah, that right wing conservative christian creationists are Nazis.  Thanks for reminding me!

No, the shot to be heard around the world is simply another petard by which Ben Stein (Thank You Very Much) has linked "intelligent design" directly to religion.  Really, Ben, we are truly grateful for this.

If Kitzmiller sunk "intelligent design" then Expelled and Ben Stein dragged it to the sea floor and piled it under tons of anchors.
Posted by: Badger3k on May 05 2008,23:09

Quote (Doc Bill @ May 05 2008,22:27)
Clearly, the conservative christian creationists never expected to get rich off of "Expelled" because those who bankrolled the film are rich already.  It was a donation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not a donation, an offering.  Kinda like indulgences.
Posted by: didymos on May 05 2008,23:55

Quote (Badger3k @ May 05 2008,21:09)
 
Quote (Doc Bill @ May 05 2008,22:27)
Clearly, the conservative christian creationists never expected to get rich off of "Expelled" because those who bankrolled the film are rich already.  It was a donation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not a donation, an offering.  Kinda like indulgences.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Which to bring it full circle, is what pissed Martin Luther off, causing him to forge Lutheranism, which purified and reformed as it was, was sure to catch on with the Jews.  Of course it didn't, which really sent Luther off the rails and resulted in that little tract "On the Jews and Their Lies".
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 06 2008,06:44

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 05 2008,17:10)
I don't know why GG went to Iowa State. Astronomy research requires very expensive equipment and I doubt they are up to snuff there. Also, I think he should have stayed on with the people he was most productive with, but that is all water under the bridge. The tapering off of his productivity at Iowa State is a legitimate negative but it does not excuse the departmental backstabbing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Robert

When you are in a hole, quit digging.

Astronomy "equipment" (aka telescopes) does not exist on very many campuses. Observatories are usually situated in remote high places. Astronomers (at least the tenured ones) get grants to purchase telescope time for their research.

Your California provincialism is showing along with your ignorance. ISU has a strong physics department, even if you have never been there (or maybe because you have never been there). Did you stop to think (of course not!) that your low opinion of the place, if true, makes it even more pathetic that Gonzalez couldn't get tenured there?

And as for your notion that he should "have stayed on with the people he was most productive with", that is also ignorant. I think we can agree that he was most productive as a post-doctoral fellow. That is not a job; it is training, and it is usually funded by someone else's grant-getting abilities. Just like you can't stay in college forever, you can't stay a post-doc forever. Any scientist worth a damn wants to get a "real job" and their own grants and their own students after their training and education is over. Your conception of how Gonzalez should have managed his career is a study in massive ignorance

Again, please stop commenting about stuff you know next to nothing about.
Posted by: dheddle on May 06 2008,08:51

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 04 2008,17:50)
       
Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,16:02)
           
Quote (didymos @ April 23 2008,15:37)
OK, I'm tenatively calling bullshit on something, but don't know if it really is.  The next-to-latest DI "blog" posting claims that Guillermo Gonzales invented the concept of the Galactic Habitable Zone, as part of their ongoing "he wuz teh ekspelldz.  He can haz tenur?" campaign. As far as I know, he's just a proponent, and maybe introduced the term, as best I can tell, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This 2006 Paper > On the “Galactic Habitable Zone” by Nikos Prantzos (.pdf) has these references:

             

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
9. Gonzalez, G. (1997), MNRAS, 285:403-412
10. Gonzalez, G. (2005), Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 35:555-606
11. Gonzalez, G., Brownlee, D., Ward, P. (2001), Icarus, 152: 185-200
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That should get you started looking...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Dr. Phil Plait of < BadAstronomy > has a weekly live video chat and I JanieBelle asked what he thought of Gonzalez' "Galactic Habitable Zone" and < Prantzos' 2006 challenge > of it.  (I had previously emailed him links to the papers in question.)

"Destroyed" is his word of choice.

He also was very explicit that he sees no problem at all with denying tenure to Gonzalez based solely on his creationism.

Rough quote to the best of my memory:

         
Quote (Dr. Phil Plait @ about an hour ago)
If you think the universe is 6000 years old, you shouldn't be teaching science.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Amen.

So let's review the Iowa State tenure decision:

Creationist.
No appreciable funding in the form of grants.
Little in the way of publications.
No grads.
and now Sole claim to scientific "fame" debunked within a very few years.

Any questions?

Edited for a format issue.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


After a  first (quick) reading of the Prantzos paper it looks to me like a legitimate response to some aspects of Gonzalez's GHZ. Specifically it calls into question Gonzalez's assumptions about the metalicity-planet correlation. As for the danger of supernovea, the case it makes is itself based on what appear  to be crude models (that's all that is available) and assumptions. It doesn't address (unless I missed it--I am in finals-grading hell week)  other aspects of the GHZ, such as orbit stability (our sun's orbit, that is) and other catastrophic events such as gamma ray bursts. In short, it is a fair criticism, but if Plait thinks this paper “destroyed” the GHZ, then he is dreaming. Now it might be that Plait is basing "destroyed" on this and other papers that I am not aware of--this is out of my field.

By the way--was this paper ever published?

Also, if Plait's comment about "you should not teach if think the universe is 6000 years old" is meant to apply to Gonzalez then he should be reminded that Gonzalez is not a YEC.


One more comment--none of this speaks poorly of Gonzalez. Even if this paper did destroy the GHZ, it would not be a knock on Gonzalez. It would only mean that Gonzalez made a proposal, published, and others began poking holes in it. That is science at its best and in no way shape or form damages Gonzalez.  Gonzalez, in my opinion, cannot ever be faulted for the GHZ. It was and as far as I know still is a legitimate scientific idea, regardless of whether it turns out to be wrong. It will always, always, stand as a far better example of scholarship than, say, Hector Avalos launching a no-risk petition drive. Gonzalez’s weakness (as far as tenure at ISU is concerned) never would have been whether the GHZ stood the test of time, most  scientific ideas don’t, but what did he do after the GHZ work, during the time he was tenure track at ISU.
Posted by: dheddle on May 06 2008,09:03

A small footnote to my comment above.

Those who criticize the GHZ as if it were some sort of ID voodoism--and I refer primarily to the scientific savants who try to shoot it down with puddle analogies, almost give plausibility to ID Inc.’s persecution claims. Because the GHZ idea did pass peer review. It's as if some are saying—yeah but it "snuck through" because at the time we didn’t know Gonzalez was an IDist—if we did we would have worked hard to kill it.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 06 2008,12:08

Fair enough, Heddle.  Thanks for taking the time to look, I appreciate your giving your thoughts on the matter.

Thanks specifically for addressing the peer review issues.  I can't say I enjoyed being taken to task, but it's a lickin' I needed (and asked for).  I was absolutely wrong to suggest that the GHZ "snuck through" peer review, etc.  Guilty as charged and appropriately chided.

Near as I can tell, the last two papers I linked by Gonzalez (the ones on that list that he's done since arriving at Iowa St.) have not been published (yet).

Prantzos' paper seems to have been presented at a conference called Strategies for Life Detection and slated for publication in Space Science Reviews, 2007.

Here's what < SpringerLink > gives me:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Received: 27 September 2006  Accepted: 11 June 2007  Published online: 25 September 2007
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Again, this was a live video chat with Plait (every Sunday, tune in!) and like an idiot I didn't take notes or record it.  What I was writing was from memory, and the comment about YECs teaching science may or may not have been directed specifically at Gonzalez.  It's entirely possible I misheard/misinterpreted/misremembered the precise context of that quote.  It's also entirely possible that he mistakenly believed Gonzalez to be a YEC.

I'll see what I can do about clarifying/correcting that particular issue.

I'll still stand by < my comments > on his allying himself with Young Earth Creationists:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have to agree with Wesley however, that whether he himself is specifically a YEC is irrelevant to the point that he's colluding with people whose entire goal is to supplant science with religion.  Further, it's a very specific sect of religion that despite public protestations to the contrary is overwhelmingly YEC.

In that sense, Gonzalez has allied himself with anti-science crusaders, and to either expect or demand that the Science department at a reputable institution of higher education simply overlook such an association is blockheaded.  It requires the institution to devour its own entrails from the inside out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Lastly, I'm at least consoled that Prantzos was in fact addressing Gonzalez' assumptions about how metallicities of the parent stars bore on planet formation, rather than the actual metallicity data itself.  I thought that was the general gist of the paper, but I wanted to make sure.

Thanks again for taking the time to look at this, especially during Grading Hell Week.

(Edited at least once for spelling.)


Posted by: ERV on May 06 2008,12:23

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 06 2008,06:44)
Your California provincialism is showing along with your ignorance. ISU has a strong physics department, even if you have never been there (or maybe because you have never been there). Did you stop to think (of course not!) that your low opinion of the place, if true, makes it even more pathetic that Gonzalez couldn't get tenured there?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Poo pooing midwest schools is a sure-fire way to show your ignorance on a topic.  Wisconsin is a top school for virology research.  Alabama was the birthplace of all great HIV researchers (everyone in the HIV research world did their PhD or a post-doc there).

People bitch to me "Why didnt you go to Haaaarvard?  Y R U in Oklahooooma?"

Um, cause OK is in the Top 10 micro departments in the country, has a wonderfully low cost of living, I get a ton of attention from my professors (they arent assholes), its a very cooperative environment... But its not Harvard so it cant be a good school *rolleyes*
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on May 06 2008,12:32

Gonzalez careers into distilled woo not in postulating a GHZ, but in the bizarre arguments he makes in "The Priviledged Planet," including the notion that "our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery." Among the features of this design for discovery (per the DI FAQ):

- the earth's surface provides the best view of solar eclipses. (By implication, this superior view was contrived for this purpose).

- the earth is a high fidelity data recorder of events in the past - by means of trees, coral, polar ice, marine sediments, etc. (Never mind that much of his audience fervently wishes to ignore the data there recorded, specifically in the fossil record.)

- other planets in the solar system are situated to "serve as the Earth's protectors."

- features of the planet (its location in the galaxy, planetary rotation on an axis, the age of the cosmos etc., a dark nighttime sky, etc) have been arranged to permit scientific exploration (e.g. astronomy).

These assertions go wildly beyond the mere postulated fact of a GHZ, however scientifically valid such an hypothesis might have been. There is a huge leap from descriptive, contingent facts with bearing upon the emergence of life (solar and galactic systems present some conditions conducive to life, and others that are not), and the various forms of the weak anthropic argument those facts may support, and this unscientific baloney.
Posted by: dheddle on May 06 2008,12:40

Lou FCD,

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I can't say I enjoyed being taken to task
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Actually I wasn’t taking you to task (not intentionally.)  In truth I hadn’t read all the comments on this thread pertaining to Gonzalez and didn't know you wrote about papers "slipping through." I was referring to history—the last time I discussed Gonzalez on here (or maybe it was somewhere else, it's all a blur) there was quite a bit of the puddle analogy carbon-chauvinism type criticism of GHZ—and it simply doesn’t apply. Maybe it applies to the local, i.e., the Privileged Planet, but definitely not to the GHZ, which is an altogether different scale.

The GHZ really is a scientifically neutral claim, even if Gonzalez formulated it from a creationist world-view. (Cool how science done right works that way.) It is not outrageous at all—it simply is the proposition that most of the galaxy, primarily where the density of stars is high, is uninhabitable for complex life. That may indeed be the case.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 06 2008,12:53

Quote (dheddle @ May 06 2008,13:40)
Lou FCD,

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I can't say I enjoyed being taken to task
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Actually I wasn’t taking you to task (not intentionally.)  In truth I hadn’t read all the comments on this thread pertaining to Gonzalez and didn't know you wrote about papers "slipping through." I was referring to history—the last time I discussed Gonzalez on here (or maybe it was somewhere else, it's all a blur) there was quite a bit of the puddle analogy carbon-chauvinism type criticism of GHZ—and it simply doesn’t apply. Maybe it applies to the local, i.e., the Privileged Planet, but definitely not to the GHZ, which is an altogether different scale.

The GHZ really is a scientifically neutral claim, even if Gonzalez formulated it from a creationist world-view. (Cool how science done right works that way.) It is not outrageous at all—it simply is the proposition that most of the galaxy, primarily where the density of stars is high, is uninhabitable for complex life. That may indeed be the case.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I didn't say it per se, but in my gloating, I did imply that the science was crap because it had been challenged (successfully, to my mind at the time).

The one does not necessarily follow from the other.
Posted by: Kristine on May 06 2008,12:54

All I can say is, what a pity that Gonzalez did not use his particular viewpoint to argue to believers that exploration of the universe is our destiny (which is not something that I believe necessarily, but don't have a strenuous objection to a professor saying), instead of arguing that it's already happened because it was destined all along.

There's a difference, IMHO.
Posted by: J-Dog on May 06 2008,12:58

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ May 06 2008,12:32)
These assertions go wildly beyond the mere postulated fact of a GHZ, however scientifically valid such an hypothesis might have been. There is a huge leap from descriptive, contingent facts with bearing upon the emergence of life (solar and galactic systems present some conditions conducive to life, and others that are not), and the various forms of the weak anthropic argument those facts may support, and this unscientific baloney.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Privileged Planet II (Part Deaux - I am sure it's in the early "research stage" as we speak).

It's amazing, It's astonishing! It's a privilege! It's a miracle!

It's as if my legs were designed to just perfectly reach the ground!

And it's as if my hands were designed to touch together
in prayer!  (No, don't touch me there Dr. Dembski...)


Posted by: dheddle on May 06 2008,12:59

Reciprocating Bill,

Not that I want to defend the PP (although I did enjoy it) but...

The Privileged Planet takes a rather weak ID position. Its proposition that habitability is correlated with observability is, in most cases, fairly sensible if not obvious. I’ll point out that the really strong ID argument would have been just the opposite: that habitability and observability are not correlated, and therefore the earth’s good platform for observability is miraculous. They actually argued for the preclusion of earth’s observability as a good example of the divine. Why is earth a good observatory for the universe? According to the PP you should not answer “because God wanted us to see not just our galaxy but the entire universe” but rather because habitability demands that we are in a low stellar-density region, and as a correlated bonus a low density region makes for a good observatory, for the same reason you put terrestrial observatories in out-of—the-way places.

There are more metaphysical parts of the PP that are strongly IDistic, but I have always thought the basic correlation they argued is actually slightly anti-ID.

EDIT: corrected eastern-european style by inserting a missing definite article. Because I have the privilege to do so.
Posted by: Kristine on May 06 2008,13:03

Getting back to empty theatres for a second...

If I yell "Fire!" during a mostly empty screening of Expelled, can I claim freedom of speech? How about a screening that's full? Why should we passively accept the idea that because the Darwinian film got to the screen first that we rebels shouldn't make shadow puppets? Anyone? Anyone? :p

(I'm done with finals, Heddle, ERV, Albatrossity and all. Pfffttt! :D )
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 06 2008,13:06

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ May 06 2008,13:32)
Gonzalez careers into distilled woo not in postulating a GHZ, but in the bizarre arguments he makes in "The Priviledged Planet," including the notion that "our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery." Among the features of this design for discovery (per the DI FAQ):

- the earth's surface provides the best view of solar eclipses. (By implication, this superior view was contrived for this purpose).

- the earth is a high fidelity data recorder of events in the past - by means of trees, coral, polar ice, marine sediments, etc. (Never mind that much of his audience fervently wishes to ignore the data there recorded, specifically in the fossil record.)

- other planets in the solar system are situated to "serve as the Earth's protectors."

- features of the planet (its location in the galaxy, planetary rotation on an axis, the age of the cosmos etc., a dark nighttime sky, etc) have been arranged to permit scientific exploration (e.g. astronomy).

These assertions go wildly beyond the mere postulated fact of a GHZ, however scientifically valid such an hypothesis might have been. There is a huge leap from descriptive, contingent facts with bearing upon the emergence of life (solar and galactic systems present some conditions conducive to life, and others that are not), and the various forms of the weak anthropic argument those facts may support, and this unscientific baloney.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think that this seems to relate to what Prantzos was saying in that Gonzalez assumed the "Rare Earth" (habitable planets could only form given these conditions), studied the stars looking for those conditions (the metallicity series of papers), then concluded that the Earth was rare (only this zone has planets with those conditions - the GHZ paper).

It's like the anthropic principle in technicolor, which seems to be what you're pointing out in the PP as well.

Upon a re-read (yet another), I'm not even sure Prantzos is saying that the GHZ doesn't exist, it's more like he's saying that Gonzalez assumed his conclusion.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on May 06 2008,13:07

Quote (dheddle @ May 06 2008,13:59)
Reciprocating Bill,

Not that I want to defend the PP (although I did enjoy it) but...

The Privileged Planet takes a rather weak ID position. Its proposition that habitability is correlated with observability is, in most cases, fairly sensible if not obvious. I’ll point out that the really strong ID argument would have been just the opposite: that habitability and observability are not correlated, and therefore the earth’s good platform for observability is miraculous. They actually argued for the preclusion of earth’s observability as good example of the divine. Why is earth a good observatory for the universe? According to the PP you should not answer “because God wanted us to see not just our galaxy but the entire universe” but rather because habitability demands that we are in a low stellar-density region, and as a correlated bonus a low density region makes for a good observatory, for the same reason you put terrestrial observatories in out-of—the-way places.

There are more metaphysical parts of the PP that are strongly IDistic, but I have always thought the basic correlation they argued is actually slightly anti-ID.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am responding to the marketing materials advanced by the DI, for which Gonzalez also bears responsibility. There, unequivocally, "Our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery."

Silly stuff.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 06 2008,13:21

Quote (ERV @ May 06 2008,10:23)
People bitch to me "Why didnt you go to Haaaarvard?  Y R U in Oklahooooma?"

Um, cause OK is in the Top 10 micro departments in the country, has a wonderfully low cost of living, I get a ton of attention from my professors
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Don't forget that climate, food, and local culture.  ;)






*And PS, yes, I've been to Oklahoma several times.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 06 2008,13:29

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 06 2008,06:44)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Astronomy "equipment" (aka telescopes) does not exist on very many campuses. Observatories are usually situated in remote high places
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yes, which is why Iowa State, which is situated in the plains of BFE, is not an ideal location.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Your California provincialism is showing along with your ignorance.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ISU has a strong physics department...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It does not compare favorably to the sort of physics departments we have here.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And as for your notion that he should "have stayed on with the people he was most productive with", that is also ignorant. I think we can agree that he was most productive as a post-doctoral fellow. That is not a job; it is training, and it is usually funded by someone else's grant-getting abilities. Just like you can't stay in college forever, you can't stay a post-doc forever. Any scientist worth a damn wants to get a "real job" and their own grants and their own students after their training and education is over. Your conception of how Gonzalez should have managed his career is a study in massive ignorance

Again, please stop commenting about stuff you know next to nothing about.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Postdocs have been known to take faculty positions at the same institution. (Amazing, but true!) Some people even take faculty positions at the institutions they received their degrees from. Imagine that!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 06 2008,13:36

Quote (ERV @ May 06 2008,10:23)
Poo pooing midwest schools is a sure-fire way to show your ignorance on a topic.  Wisconsin is a top school for virology research.  Alabama was the birthplace of all great HIV researchers (everyone in the HIV research world did their PhD or a post-doc there).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If I may, linguistics has its own parallels to this.

For some reason I've never understood, east coast Ivy League schools almost all have shitty ling departments. Cornell and Princeton are nowheresville in linguistics, tho Cornell had some life signs back in the 60's. Yale used to have a department worth talking about, but you hardly hear about it anymore. Harvard is legendary for having one or two famous profs and otherwise being a dysfunctional backwater that ignores grad and undergrad students, routinely denies tenure to people with promise (then inexplicably tenures nobodies), and never tenures women. And yet, I've known a few people who went there for grad school anyway, since the cachet of that Hahvid name was just irresistible. When I asked them who they're studying with, they list 2 or 3 people I've never heard of and, crucially, some profs at MIT who let them sit in on their classes.

For some reason, the action in ling depts. seems to be disproportionately seems to be in State Universities and private western/non-ivy league Universities, such as MIT and Stanford. There's no geographic correlation, either: the Midwest, West Coast, and Northeast are all equally represented, tho there ain't much in the South. And, there are plenty of shitty, overrated departments in the Northeast and the West Coast.

And for the record, UCLA has a very good department (I got my BA there), so Ben Stein can, once again, go fuck himself.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 06 2008,13:39

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HOMOCENTRIST.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 06 2008,13:42

Quote (ERV @ May 06 2008,12:23)
Poo pooing midwest schools is a sure-fire way to show your ignorance on a topic.  Wisconsin is a top school for virology research.  Alabama was the birthplace of all great HIV researchers (everyone in the HIV research world did their PhD or a post-doc there).

People bitch to me "Why didnt you go to Haaaarvard?  Y R U in Oklahooooma?"

Um, cause OK is in the Top 10 micro departments in the country, has a wonderfully low cost of living, I get a ton of attention from my professors (they arent assholes), its a very cooperative environment... But its not Harvard so it cant be a good school *rolleyes*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


For the record, I was not poo-pooing all Iowa State programs. I happen to know that they are excellent when it comes to applied statistics. (Still, it is not worth living in the ****hole that is Ames, Iowa.)
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 06 2008,13:43

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,13:39)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HOMOCENTRIST.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL! It is worse than you think. I grew up in the suburbs of S.F.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 06 2008,13:45

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:43)
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,13:39)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HOMOCENTRIST.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL! It is worse than you think. I grew up in the suburbs of S.F.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Lemme know when your Ted Haggard moment is comming... I can be on a plane with my camera in 2 hours!  ;)
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 06 2008,13:46

Not only do I find the Privileged Planet argument unconvincing, a little common sense makes it downright IDiotic.

If you look at the big picture the earth's "privileged" status has been thusly for a miniscule amount of time in relation to the age of the universe.  And how long has the earth been able to sustain life during its own life?  
We might as well say cats are privileged because the holes in their fur line up exactly where their eyes are located.

The stupid burns, peeps.  It burns.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 06 2008,13:46

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,11:39)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HOMOCENTRIST.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm terribly torn here. I want to defend California, but I don't want to be seen as helping Robert. What to do?  :O
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 06 2008,13:48

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 06 2008,13:46)
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,11:39)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HOMOCENTRIST.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm terribly torn here. I want to defend California, but I don't want to be seen as helping Robert. What to do?  :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


BUILD A FLOAT, PUT YOUR FEATHERS AND SPEEDOS ON AND HAVE A PARADE, LIKE YOU NORMALLY DO.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 06 2008,13:55

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,11:48)
 
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 06 2008,13:46)
   
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,11:39)
     
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HOMOCENTRIST.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm terribly torn here. I want to defend California, but I don't want to be seen as helping Robert. What to do?  :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


BUILD A FLOAT, PUT YOUR FEATHERS AND SPEEDOS ON AND HAVE A PARADE, LIKE YOU NORMALLY DO.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: improvius on May 06 2008,14:00

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:29)
[quote=Albatrossity2,May 06 2008,06:44][/quote]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Astronomy "equipment" (aka telescopes) does not exist on very many campuses. Observatories are usually situated in remote high places
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yes, which is why Iowa State, which is situated in the plains of BFE, is not an ideal location.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know much about astronomy, but I went to college in Iowa (Grinnell).  One of the more striking features of the area was how clear the night sky was, even going just a few blocks away from the campus.  It was frequently possible to see the Milky Way with the naked eye.  We even had an observatory a little ways off campus.  I never checked it out, but it always seemed like it would be a good place for viewing.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 06 2008,14:02

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,13:45)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:43)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,13:39)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HOMOCENTRIST.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL! It is worse than you think. I grew up in the suburbs of S.F.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Lemme know when your Ted Haggard moment is comming... I can be on a plane with my camera in 2 hours!  ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do I at least get his killer salary ($400,000 per year, I think--perfectly consistent with the Galilean peasant background of Jesus Christ)?

[Redacted the puerile bit.]
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 06 2008,14:06

Quote (improvius @ May 06 2008,14:00)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:29)
Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 06 2008,06:44)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Astronomy "equipment" (aka telescopes) does not exist on very many campuses. Observatories are usually situated in remote high places
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yes, which is why Iowa State, which is situated in the plains of BFE, is not an ideal location.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know much about astronomy, but I went to college in Iowa (Grinnell).  One of the more striking features of the area was how clear the night sky was, even going just a few blocks away from the campus.  It was frequently possible to see the Milky Way with the naked eye.  We even had an observatory a little ways off campus.  I never checked it out, but it always seemed like it would be a good place for viewing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My good friend Zach went to Grinnell as an undergrad (then to Iowa State). I understand it is a good liberal arts college.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 06 2008,14:07

I will happily pro-rate you a daily amount* (see how I didnt use the Latin term  ;)  ) for your day of homoery. I suspect you will LIEK THE MAN SAUSAGE AND CATCH TEH_GAY AND BE FABULOUS.





*Call it $1100. Chatterbox said he will give you 'a healthy tip', whatever that is. Must be a CA thang...
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 06 2008,14:09

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:02)
Do I at least get his killer salary ($400,000 per year, I think--perfectly consistent with the Galilean peasant background of Jesus Christ)...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Correction: apparently Ted Haggard only made a measly $138,000 per year (not counting benefits).
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 06 2008,14:09

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
         
Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 06 2008,06:44)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Astronomy "equipment" (aka telescopes) does not exist on very many campuses. Observatories are usually situated in remote high places
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, which is why Iowa State, which is situated in the plains of BFE, is not an ideal location.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Robert

You are indeed still digging. See if you can follow along with these questions and answers.

Are there world-class astronomy programs at Princeton or Northwestern or Michigan State or Rice or Wisconsin? Yes, despite their location in places that might offend your tender sensibilities. Does CalTech, arguably the top school in this field, have a world-class observatory on campus? No. Is Mt. Palomar, probably the closest observatory to Pasadena, still a world-class facility? No, thanks to the light pollution and smog generated by all you californicators. Is the Hubble space telescope approximately the same distance from you as it is from Ames IA? Yes. Can telescopes be operated remotely, without ever leaving your lab? < Yes. > What is the common denominator that allows someone in California or someone in Iowa to run a telescope in Hawaii or in outer space? Grant money. Did Gonzalez ever get any grant money that would allow him to do this?  No. Is that the single biggest reason why he was denied tenure. Yes.
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Your California provincialism is showing along with your ignorance.          

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for proving my point. I earned my doctoral degree at a decent California university (Stanford), and, based on that experience, I convinced that native Californians are probably as provincial as anyone in the country. This is particularly true for those who have never been out of the state; their level of disdain for the rest of the country is matched only by their ignorance about the rest of the country. Your ignorance, on the other hand, seems boundless.
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ISU has a strong physics department...          

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

It does not compare favorably to the sort of physics departments we have here.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice goal post move. Granted, ISU is not in the same league as CalTech or UC-Berkeley or Wisconsin or Princeton or Texas. Why didn't Gonzalez get a job at one of those places if he was so brilliant? Why couldn't he keep that job if the institution has such low standards?
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And as for your notion that he should "have stayed on with the people he was most productive with", that is also ignorant. I think we can agree that he was most productive as a post-doctoral fellow. That is not a job; it is training, and it is usually funded by someone else's grant-getting abilities. Just like you can't stay in college forever, you can't stay a post-doc forever. Any scientist worth a damn wants to get a "real job" and their own grants and their own students after their training and education is over. Your conception of how Gonzalez should have managed his career is a study in massive ignorance.          

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Postdocs have been known to take faculty positions at the same institution. (Amazing, but true!) Some people even take faculty positions at the institutions they received their degrees from. Imagine that!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So what? Apparently you now understand that he needed a job after his post-doc. That's some progress, at least. But did they offer him a job at Washington after his post-doc there? Apparently not. So what is the point of your argument?
Posted by: Nerull on May 06 2008,14:13

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:29)
Yes, which is why Iowa State, which is situated in the plains of BFE, is not an ideal location.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And the top of a mountain in a remote area is not a great place for a university. Neither is low earth orbit.

What, do you think astronomy research still consists of looking through a telescope and sketching what you see?

Universities rent telescope time from observatories, using the grants that GG failed to bring in. Its all done from far away, no physical access is required. The telescope itself would be monitored by a few techs, but it mostly runs automatically.

It doesn't matter where the university is located. You can request pictures from anywhere in the world.

Your ignorance is showing.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 06 2008,14:14

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:09)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:02)
Do I at least get his killer salary ($400,000 per year, I think--perfectly consistent with the Galilean peasant background of Jesus Christ)...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Correction: apparently Ted Haggard only made a measly $138,000 per year (not counting benefits).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Phhh! PEANUTS. DAVESCOT'S VELVET UNDERCRACKERS COST MORE THAN THAT.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 06 2008,14:21

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 06 2008,12:09)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,13:29)
           
Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 06 2008,06:44)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Astronomy "equipment" (aka telescopes) does not exist on very many campuses. Observatories are usually situated in remote high places
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, which is why Iowa State, which is situated in the plains of BFE, is not an ideal location.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Robert

You are indeed still digging. See if you can follow along with these questions and answers.

Are there world-class astronomy programs at Princeton or Northwestern or Michigan State or Rice or Wisconsin? Yes, despite their location in places that might offend your tender sensibilities. Does CalTech, arguably the top school in this field, have a world-class observatory on campus? No. Is Mt. Palomar, probably the closest observatory to Pasadena, still a world-class facility? No, thanks to the light pollution and smog generated by all you californicators. Is the Hubble space telescope approximately the same distance from you as it is from Ames IA? Yes. Can telescopes be operated remotely, without ever leaving your lab? < Yes. > What is the common denominator that allows someone in California or someone in Iowa to run a telescope in Hawaii or in outer space? Grant money. Did Gonzalez ever get any grant money that would allow him to do this?  No. Is that the single biggest reason why he was denied tenure. Yes.
           

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Your California provincialism is showing along with your ignorance.            

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

The words "California" and "provincialism" do not go together. California is the Latium of the U.S.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for proving my point. I earned my doctoral degree at a decent California university (Stanford), and, based on that experience, I convinced that native Californians are probably as provincial as anyone in the country. This is particularly true for those who have never been out of the state; their level of disdain for the rest of the country is matched only by their ignorance about the rest of the country. Your ignorance, on the other hand, seems boundless.
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ISU has a strong physics department...            

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

It does not compare favorably to the sort of physics departments we have here.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice goal post move. Granted, ISU is not in the same league as CalTech or UC-Berkeley or Wisconsin or Princeton or Texas. Why didn't Gonzalez get a job at one of those places if he was so brilliant? Why couldn't he keep that job if the institution has such low standards?
           

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And as for your notion that he should "have stayed on with the people he was most productive with", that is also ignorant. I think we can agree that he was most productive as a post-doctoral fellow. That is not a job; it is training, and it is usually funded by someone else's grant-getting abilities. Just like you can't stay in college forever, you can't stay a post-doc forever. Any scientist worth a damn wants to get a "real job" and their own grants and their own students after their training and education is over. Your conception of how Gonzalez should have managed his career is a study in massive ignorance.            

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Postdocs have been known to take faculty positions at the same institution. (Amazing, but true!) Some people even take faculty positions at the institutions they received their degrees from. Imagine that!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So what? Apparently you now understand that he needed a job after his post-doc. That's some progress, at least. But did they offer him a job at Washington after his post-doc there? Apparently not. So what is the point of your argument?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Really, Alby. I think my background in academia more than qualifies me to say which geology departments are good and which are bad. For example, I would assume a truly high quality geology department has to be near rocks.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on May 06 2008,14:58

I'm thinking that to look through the wrong end of a telescope you've got to be there. That could be the cause of Robert O's confusion.
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 06 2008,15:05

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 06 2008,14:21)
Really, Alby. I think my background in academia more than qualifies me to say which geology departments are good and which are bad. For example, I would assume a truly high quality geology department has to be near rocks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, and vulcanology departments have to be near active volcanoes. (Incidentally, I understand they are always looking for students and faculty.)
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 06 2008,15:22

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 06 2008,14:14)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:09)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:02)
Do I at least get his killer salary ($400,000 per year, I think--perfectly consistent with the Galilean peasant background of Jesus Christ)...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Correction: apparently Ted Haggard only made a measly $138,000 per year (not counting benefits).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Phhh! PEANUTS. DAVESCOT'S VELVET UNDERCRACKERS COST MORE THAN THAT.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, well, you'd wear special underwear* too if you had to satisfy scores of married women who want you for their baby daddy.


*Not to be confused with the kind Mitt wears.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 06 2008,15:59

Official numbers are in.  Expelled did $100 per theater yesterday ($66,000).

See more < here >

They should be announcing a DVD soon.
Posted by: ERV on May 06 2008,16:05

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,15:59)
Official numbers are in.  Expelled did $100 per theater yesterday ($66,000).

See more < here >

They should be announcing a DVD soon.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They are legally barred from making a DVD, remember?

At least until the Yoko suit plays out.
Posted by: didymos on May 06 2008,17:45

Quote (ERV @ May 06 2008,14:05)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,15:59)
Official numbers are in.  Expelled did $100 per theater yesterday ($66,000).

See more < here >

They should be announcing a DVD soon.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They are legally barred from making a DVD, remember?

At least until the Yoko suit plays out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I, er, imagine, that if they removed the cultural commentarymusical quote-mine they could start selling DVDs.  Might not be a bad idea, as they may need to have a nice stockpile of ready cash in the near future.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 06 2008,18:20

Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
Posted by: Doc Bill on May 06 2008,19:07

Soundtrack?

Bad to the Bone on iTunes for 99 cents.

Imagine:  99 cents.

So, you think Expelled could have purchased a copy of Imagine from iTunes for 99 cents and saved themselves a lawsuit?

I'm kidding, of course, but you could put together a soundtrack for Expelled for about 5 bucks.  Go iTunes!
Posted by: Annyday on May 06 2008,19:41

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 06 2008,13:36)
And, there are plenty of shitty, overrated departments in the Northeast and the West Coast.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I shortened your post. Now I'm pretty sure it applies to everyone's field.
Posted by: blipey on May 06 2008,21:14

Quote (improvius @ May 06 2008,14:00)
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 06 2008,14:29)
Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 06 2008,06:44)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Astronomy "equipment" (aka telescopes) does not exist on very many campuses. Observatories are usually situated in remote high places
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yes, which is why Iowa State, which is situated in the plains of BFE, is not an ideal location.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know much about astronomy, but I went to college in Iowa (Grinnell).  One of the more striking features of the area was how clear the night sky was, even going just a few blocks away from the campus.  It was frequently possible to see the Milky Way with the naked eye.  We even had an observatory a little ways off campus.  I never checked it out, but it always seemed like it would be a good place for viewing.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, but you forgot that it isn't in California.
Posted by: lkeithlu on May 06 2008,22:15

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ May 06 2008,14:58)
I'm thinking that to look through the wrong end of a telescope you've got to be there. That could be the cause of Robert O's confusion.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you look into a telescope's wrong end, do you look into the future?
Posted by: October Mermaid on May 06 2008,23:57

Quote (lkeithlu @ May 06 2008,22:15)
Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ May 06 2008,14:58)
I'm thinking that to look through the wrong end of a telescope you've got to be there. That could be the cause of Robert O's confusion.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you look into a telescope's wrong end, do you look into the future?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, the cosmos looks into you.
Posted by: Doc Bill on May 07 2008,00:58

< Brilliant! >
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 07 2008,02:10

I want to be a < Doctor of Cubism >.

A cube only has four sides!
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 07 2008,10:55

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,19:20)
Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This should be the first track >.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 07 2008,11:56

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 07 2008,10:55)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,19:20)
Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This should be the first track >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< An alternative soundtrack choice. >
Posted by: Louis on May 07 2008,12:11

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ May 07 2008,17:56)
Quote (Lou FCD @ May 07 2008,10:55)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,19:20)
Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This should be the first track >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< An alternative soundtrack choice. >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And for the ExpelledExposed soundtrack perhaps I might suggest < a little MC Hawking? > < Or perhaps this? >

We could interpose it with possibly the funniest expose of creationism < EVAR! >

Louis
Posted by: Louis on May 07 2008,19:21

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 08 2008,01:05)
Alrighty, I know Expelled news has been slow in coming today, but we have strayed far from yon path, what with calculators and pocket protectors and all.

Let us move forthwith back into the direction of < Dr. NeinStein's Pompous Aventures to Dachau and Other TARD to Make Your Skin Crawl >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Expelled news? NEWS? NEW-s?

What the hairy gibbering fuck is there NEW about Expelled? It's the same identical bog standard creationist/theist drivel we have seen since time immemorial. If there were anything NEW about it there would be very little to laugh at.

The only novelty with IDCreationism is they are lying slightly more about their motivations. You know the whole "Ixnay on the Odgay" angle. This is a tragic and comedic diversion. Whether we, or anyone else, like it or not there always will be credulous, dumb, bitter, dishonest little fuck ups like FTK, Dembski, Behe, etc etc etc too stupid to understand basic science, too dishonest to ackowledge failure, and too pompous to recognise their limitations. Whatever happens some schmuck somewhere will divise "Creationism Version 1.5*" and the whole shebang will begin again.

Until then, we can have some fun poking them with sticks (we are after all also members of H. sapiens, and thus we love a decent bit of cruelty and physical comedy) but let's not pretend we're doing anything more serious than occasionally reminding a few people where the line between dumb and not dumb lies.

Louis

*By my count there has been 1.0 (Biblical creationism), 1.1 (Scientific creationism), 1.2 (Creation Science), 1.3 (Intelligent Design: the early years, it's science honest guv'nor) and 1.4 (Intelligent Design: the dotage, it's all about the persecution). Did I miss any? There will be no version 2.0 btw, creationists haven't got the imagination. All versions will be modifications of version 1.0, no "speciation" will occur, the mutations are all very superficial, the core claims remain identical. You can bank on that prediction too! ;-)
Posted by: didymos on May 07 2008,19:59

Quote (Louis @ May 07 2008,17:21)
*By my count there has been 1.0 (Biblical creationism), 1.1 (Scientific creationism), 1.2 (Creation Science), 1.3 (Intelligent Design: the early years, it's science honest guv'nor) and 1.4 (Intelligent Design: the dotage, it's all about the persecution). Did I miss any? There will be no version 2.0 btw, creationists haven't got the imagination. All versions will be modifications of version 1.0, no "speciation" will occur, the mutations are all very superficial, the core claims remain identical. You can bank on that prediction too! ;-)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ah, but a case could be made for other species:  Islamic and Jewish Creationism/ID come to mind.  And, I think sub-species exist:  YEC, OEC, IDiot, Geocentrics, et cetera. Even those break down into infraspecific groups.  So for OECs you've got gappers, day-agists, progressivists.  Still there's a lot of horizontal transfer going on, rather like the archaea and bacteria.

Then you have the convergent stuff like Hindu Creationism via ISKCON, sometimes labeled "Vedic Creationism".  And just consider all the extinct varieties: Atumic Masturbationsim,  Ouranic Castrationism, The Ymiric Dismemberment Model of Creation, etc.  

And none of these were or are static: branchings , the acquisition of new features, hybridizing, competition....It's all there, man. The evolution of creationism is both a fact and a theory.

(edited to reword repetitive phrase)
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 07 2008,20:50

Quote (Quidam @ May 07 2008,21:44)
Normally you'd be correct and that would be a crafty ripost, but the escalators at South Kensington are closed for repair so for the duration the loo is inaccessible.  You'll have to huff or withdraw your Shadwell
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Fortunately, as the resident janitor, I have the keys to the loo.

:D





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< am mädchenklo in der stadtwerkstatt >, by tschörda
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Louis on May 08 2008,02:25

Quote (didymos @ May 08 2008,01:59)
Quote (Louis @ May 07 2008,17:21)
*By my count there has been 1.0 (Biblical creationism), 1.1 (Scientific creationism), 1.2 (Creation Science), 1.3 (Intelligent Design: the early years, it's science honest guv'nor) and 1.4 (Intelligent Design: the dotage, it's all about the persecution). Did I miss any? There will be no version 2.0 btw, creationists haven't got the imagination. All versions will be modifications of version 1.0, no "speciation" will occur, the mutations are all very superficial, the core claims remain identical. You can bank on that prediction too! ;-)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ah, but a case could be made for other species:  Islamic and Jewish Creationism/ID come to mind.  And, I think sub-species exist:  YEC, OEC, IDiot, Geocentrics, et cetera. Even those break down into infraspecific groups.  So for OECs you've got gappers, day-agists, progressivists.  Still there's a lot of horizontal transfer going on, rather like the archaea and bacteria.

Then you have the convergent stuff like Hindu Creationism via ISKCON, sometimes labeled "Vedic Creationism".  And just consider all the extinct varieties: Atumic Masturbationsim,  Ouranic Castrationism, The Ymiric Dismemberment Model of Creation, etc.  

And none of these were or are static: branchings , the acquisition of new features, hybridizing, competition....It's all there, man. The evolution of creationism is both a fact and a theory.

(edited to reword repetitive phrase)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But of course I deny it utterly. It's not possible to go from Ymir to Jehovah. Creation myths were created in their current form by....erm....god (or the devil) and they have never evolved. After all who has ever seen Zeus turn into Vishnu? It just doesn't happen. Teach the controversy I say.

Louis
Posted by: Bob O'H on May 08 2008,04:39

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,18:20)
Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I heard that John Cage's estate was looking into legal action on that.
Posted by: didymos on May 08 2008,05:57

Quote (Bob O'H @ May 08 2008,02:39)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,18:20)
Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I heard that John Cage's estate was looking into legal action on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You know, it's really too bad Lou Reed didn't have something appropriate enough for < Expelled > to appropriate.   Best. Lawsuit. Ever.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 08 2008,06:25

Quote (Bob O'H @ May 08 2008,05:39)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,18:20)
Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I heard that John Cage's estate was looking into legal action on that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I heard that they tried performing 4'33" themselves but could only come up with 2'10" before NeinStein started blabbing again.

To invoke Lenny, they just can't keep their mouths shut.


Posted by: nuytsia on May 08 2008,06:38

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 07 2008,02:55)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,19:20)
Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This should be the first track >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This video is not available in your country.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



WTF is that!  :angry:
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 08 2008,07:26

Quote (nuytsia @ May 08 2008,07:38)
Quote (Lou FCD @ May 07 2008,02:55)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 06 2008,19:20)
Fark the DVD, I can't wait for the Expelled soundtrack!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< This should be the first track >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This video is not available in your country.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



WTF is that!  :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That totally sucks.

It's the BareNaked Ladies video for Be My Yoko Ono, on the official Warner Bros. Records YouTube channel.

It's legal and everything!
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 08 2008,09:18

Peeps, enjoy some < Ken Miller on Expelled > with your morning coffee.
Posted by: J-Dog on May 08 2008,09:39

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 08 2008,09:18)
Peeps, enjoy some < Ken Miller on Expelled > with your morning coffee.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That was a beautiful article!  I love the smell of Burnt IDists in the morning...
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 08 2008,10:33

Quote (J-Dog @ May 08 2008,09:39)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 08 2008,09:18)
Peeps, enjoy some < Ken Miller on Expelled > with your morning coffee.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That was a beautiful article!  I love the smell of Burnt IDists in the morning...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Kristine on May 08 2008,10:42

Interesting take.. < Expulsion >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
She explained that she works for a production company that I had contacted by email several weeks earlier in regards to an upcoming film. The film, “Expelled” - a documentary that claims to “[blow] the horn on suppression” and give voice to “the silenced majority” of American creationists - promises to be controversial, and I had designed to write an advance feature article for a major daily exploring the issues it will present.

According to the film’s website, “Big Science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom. What they forgot is that every generation has its Rebel…” Of course, the “smart new ideas” are merely archaic, counter-reality creationist concepts re-labeled as “Intelligent Design”, and this generation’s “Rebel” - it turns out - is the aged, crusty, monotoned Ben Stein, a former speech writer for Richard Nixon, mostly unknown for his bit roles in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and the television show The Wonder Years.

This call represented a break-through. After having been treated with high suspicion by the media company for weeks, the girl on the phone was prepared to set a specific time and date whereupon I could finally interview the producers responsible for the film. Happily, I made arrangements for the following week. Ultimately, the interviews would never take place. After several cancellations, re-schedulings, and further erratically timed phone calls (all on the producers’ ends), Expelled’s people finally stopped responding to my inquiries altogether, for reasons not entirely clear.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Later, the same writer reviews Expelled (and expresses my own feelings about < trying to review > such a fatiguing film.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
With the film’s website reporting widespread blog coverage - dubious as any of their data must be considered - and given the fact that that I’ve already written about it on this site - another entry regarding Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed might seem redundant and tiresome, if not needless, given that the film has already been near-universally panned. But, if my review - or the act of reviewing - is to be redundant and tiresome, at least it is in proper keeping with the film itself, for Expelled was a terribly redundant and tiresome work. And if my thoughts add little to the mass of writings already dedicated to the topic, at least I will have helped to somewhat justify (to myself) the mischievous curiosity that led me into the theater for what proved to be an agonising endurance test, staining an otherwise lovely Spring Saturday evening. The scientific errors of the film have been thoroughly corrected, most notably by those scientists who appeared in the film portrayed as a bitter conspiracy of atheist Nazi-sympathisers1 . For my part, I will attempt to review the film for its cinematic merits. The power of the presentation of the arguments necessarily overlaps with an assessment of the film’s worth as a film alone, but anybody seriously interested in more detailed refutations of Expelled’s claims would do well to follow the footnoted links.

Already well aware that the film is Creationist propaganda, and previously informed as to the arguments that were to be presented therein, I didn’t particularly expect a rational, thought-provoking piece, but I actually did expect a well-produced, emotionally driven piece that might have served to give its arguments at least the appearance of credibility… Instead what I found was a muddled collage of unconvincing half-arguments poorly paced amidst constipated footage of Stein often doing nothing more than walking or reflecting. In one such prolonged scene, Stein visits a museum of Natural History, wherein he stares into the face of a statue representation of his nemesis, Charles Darwin. Stein’s face is shiftless and rigid, betraying no emotion whatsoever, and one is almost convinced that it is Stein who will ultimately win the staring contest. What this is meant to convey is uncertain, but it does reveal that, outside of his typical undemanding dead-pan roles, Stein is worthless as an actor.

In attempting to establish a link between Darwin’s theory and Nazi eugenics, Stein visits Hadamar, a former Nazi doctor testing facility (now converted into a memorial museum) wherein human subjects - “life unworthy of life” - were cold-heartedly utilized. In a scene more droll and monotonous than Stein’s narrative voice, the viewer is taken through the facility one mostly-empty room at a time as a tour guide wearily explains the significance of each in fractured English. The apparent refusal to employ editing leads to the only real suspense of the film: one begins to dread the possibility that the doddering old Stein will soil his Depends, and the viewer will be forced to watch him use the lavatory (though such a scene would arguably have been the most tasteful in the film). Worse, the point is unclear. The film promotes a concept of Intelligent Design that concedes variation within a species (”microevolution”), but denies that one species might ever evolve into another (”macroevolution”). But does this concession to heredity not allow for an ID-acceptable eugenics? The Nazis were not trying to breed a new species, but an “improved” population of humans, for which only an acceptance of heredity is necessary. Further, is not the relegation of blame upon believers in Evolutionary Theory for the crimes of Nazi Germany rather the same as blaming the grievous destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the believers in Atomic Theory?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Emphasis mine.
Posted by: J-Dog on May 08 2008,11:20

Quote (Kristine @ May 08 2008,10:42)
Interesting take.. < Expulsion >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
She explained that she works for a production company that I had contacted by email several weeks earlier in regards to an upcoming film. The film, “Expelled” - a documentary that claims to “[blow] the horn on suppression” and give voice to “the silenced majority” of American creationists - promises to be controversial, and I had designed to write an advance feature article for a major daily exploring the issues it will present.

According to the film’s website, “Big Science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom. What they forgot is that every generation has its Rebel…” Of course, the “smart new ideas” are merely archaic, counter-reality creationist concepts re-labeled as “Intelligent Design”, and this generation’s “Rebel” - it turns out - is the aged, crusty, monotoned Ben Stein, a former speech writer for Richard Nixon, mostly unknown for his bit roles in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and the television show The Wonder Years.

This call represented a break-through. After having been treated with high suspicion by the media company for weeks, the girl on the phone was prepared to set a specific time and date whereupon I could finally interview the producers responsible for the film. Happily, I made arrangements for the following week. Ultimately, the interviews would never take place. After several cancellations, re-schedulings, and further erratically timed phone calls (all on the producers’ ends), Expelled’s people finally stopped responding to my inquiries altogether, for reasons not entirely clear.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Later, the same writer reviews Expelled (and expresses my own feelings about < trying to review > such a fatiguing film.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
With the film’s website reporting widespread blog coverage - dubious as any of their data must be considered - and given the fact that that I’ve already written about it on this site - another entry regarding Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed might seem redundant and tiresome, if not needless, given that the film has already been near-universally panned. But, if my review - or the act of reviewing - is to be redundant and tiresome, at least it is in proper keeping with the film itself, for Expelled was a terribly redundant and tiresome work. And if my thoughts add little to the mass of writings already dedicated to the topic, at least I will have helped to somewhat justify (to myself) the mischievous curiosity that led me into the theater for what proved to be an agonising endurance test, staining an otherwise lovely Spring Saturday evening. The scientific errors of the film have been thoroughly corrected, most notably by those scientists who appeared in the film portrayed as a bitter conspiracy of atheist Nazi-sympathisers1 . For my part, I will attempt to review the film for its cinematic merits. The power of the presentation of the arguments necessarily overlaps with an assessment of the film’s worth as a film alone, but anybody seriously interested in more detailed refutations of Expelled’s claims would do well to follow the footnoted links.

Already well aware that the film is Creationist propaganda, and previously informed as to the arguments that were to be presented therein, I didn’t particularly expect a rational, thought-provoking piece, but I actually did expect a well-produced, emotionally driven piece that might have served to give its arguments at least the appearance of credibility… Instead what I found was a muddled collage of unconvincing half-arguments poorly paced amidst constipated footage of Stein often doing nothing more than walking or reflecting. In one such prolonged scene, Stein visits a museum of Natural History, wherein he stares into the face of a statue representation of his nemesis, Charles Darwin. Stein’s face is shiftless and rigid, betraying no emotion whatsoever, and one is almost convinced that it is Stein who will ultimately win the staring contest. What this is meant to convey is uncertain, but it does reveal that, outside of his typical undemanding dead-pan roles, Stein is worthless as an actor.

In attempting to establish a link between Darwin’s theory and Nazi eugenics, Stein visits Hadamar, a former Nazi doctor testing facility (now converted into a memorial museum) wherein human subjects - “life unworthy of life” - were cold-heartedly utilized. In a scene more droll and monotonous than Stein’s narrative voice, the viewer is taken through the facility one mostly-empty room at a time as a tour guide wearily explains the significance of each in fractured English. The apparent refusal to employ editing leads to the only real suspense of the film: one begins to dread the possibility that the doddering old Stein will soil his Depends, and the viewer will be forced to watch him use the lavatory (though such a scene would arguably have been the most tasteful in the film). Worse, the point is unclear. The film promotes a concept of Intelligent Design that concedes variation within a species (”microevolution”), but denies that one species might ever evolve into another (”macroevolution”). But does this concession to heredity not allow for an ID-acceptable eugenics? The Nazis were not trying to breed a new species, but an “improved” population of humans, for which only an acceptance of heredity is necessary. Further, is not the relegation of blame upon believers in Evolutionary Theory for the crimes of Nazi Germany rather the same as blaming the grievous destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the believers in Atomic Theory?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Emphasis mine.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Way to go again Kristine - you are my Librarian Hero!

You should be talking to Hollywood about a REAL Movie:  Kristine Harley and her Card File Of Doom - The Search For The Missing Expelled Links.

I think we can make a lot of money marketing your hat, and  whip!
Posted by: Kristine on May 08 2008,11:53

I reiterate my call for a collaboration on a "Waiting for Guffman"esque film about the ID movement. :)

(Although, how do we top Ray Comfort's "banana" demo or that peanut butter argument? Pixie sticks? Pez?)
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 08 2008,11:55

Quote (J-Dog @ May 08 2008,11:20)
Way to go again Kristine - you are my Librarian Hero!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


PHHH. SHE HAS NEVER EVEN BEAN TO LIBRARIA.  :angry:
Posted by: dheddle on May 08 2008,12:08

Quote (Kristine @ May 08 2008,11:53)
I reiterate my call for a collaboration on a "Waiting for Guffman"esque film about the ID movement. :)

(Although, how do we top Ray Comfort's "banana" demo or that peanut butter argument? Pixie sticks? Pez?)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I suggest Hostess Hoho's. Or, more accurately, < H@H@s >. After < restrictor plates >, they clearly are the seminal invention of the 20'th century.

(anyone following my posts today should be able to use their nixplanatory filter to prove that I'm supposed to be grading finals.)
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 08 2008,12:26

Breifly threadjacking as I see Dave is here.

If in your neo Luddite ways you prefer NASCAR over F1, then surely < THIS > is better than NASCAR?
Posted by: dheddle on May 08 2008,12:29

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 08 2008,12:26)
Breifly threadjacking as I see Dave is here.

If in your neo Luddite ways you prefer NASCAR over F1, then surely < THIS > is better than NASCAR?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard,

No, but it's better than soccer!
Posted by: carlsonjok on May 08 2008,12:33

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 08 2008,12:26)
Breifly threadjacking as I see Dave is here.

If in your neo Luddite ways you prefer NASCAR over F1, then surely < THIS > is better than NASCAR?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't know about Heddle, but I think this is more in line with Arden's, umm, preference.



< Link. >
Posted by: Louis on May 08 2008,12:38

Quote (dheddle @ May 08 2008,18:29)
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 08 2008,12:26)
Breifly threadjacking as I see Dave is here.

If in your neo Luddite ways you prefer NASCAR over F1, then surely < THIS > is better than NASCAR?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard,

No, but it's better than soccer!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


SO? Anything's better than soccer. Watching soccer is only mildly less painful than having your foreskin pulled up over your head with barbed fish-hooks.

Soccer=22 overpaid, coiffured actors mincing about for 90 or so minutes in order to fleece increasingly exorbitant amounts of cash out of the working classes (or those who desire to be working class). It might not have always been thus, but by heck it's basically what it is now.

You might gather I'm not a fan. You also might gather that the "soccerisation" of other sports is something I am unlikely to be a fan of.

Louis
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 08 2008,14:41

Looks like tonight is my last chance to see < Expelled > on the big screen here in Manhappiness KS. It is not listed among the shows for tomorrow.

Too bad I have other plans. Dang, I'm sorry to have missed it  ???
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 08 2008,14:57

Quote (Louis @ May 08 2008,12:38)
Quote (dheddle @ May 08 2008,18:29)
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 08 2008,12:26)
Breifly threadjacking as I see Dave is here.

If in your neo Luddite ways you prefer NASCAR over F1, then surely < THIS > is better than NASCAR?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard,

No, but it's better than soccer!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


SO? Anything's better than soccer. Watching soccer is only mildly less painful than having your foreskin pulled up over your head with barbed fish-hooks.

Soccer=22 overpaid, coiffured actors mincing about for 90 or so minutes in order to fleece increasingly exorbitant amounts of cash out of the working classes (or those who desire to be working class). It might not have always been thus, but by heck it's basically what it is now.

You might gather I'm not a fan. You also might gather that the "soccerisation" of other sports is something I am unlikely to be a fan of.

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


1) its called "football". Call your sport "throwball" or "Sumos in armour" or summin.
2) It's the beautiful game. Dembski would be better off looking for god there than in the fracterial blagella.

I agree with Louis that 'simulation', 'alice bands', 'stepovers' and 'hugging' have started to homoize the sport.
Posted by: didymos on May 08 2008,16:37

Amusing thread at Kev's place called < "A potential collector's item?" >.  Apparently, Kev had Dick to the Dawk to the Ph.D autograph his copy of "The God Delusion".  Anyway, a commenter had  < this > to offer:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

If only he'd put "PS Im smarter than you, I have a science degree". Then it would have been amazing.

If you do sell it you should definitely put the money towards the sequel. It could be Ben Stein fighting a wave of zombies led by Hitler zombie. Ben stein blows Hitlers head off and turns to the camera. "Streng verbo[t]en bitches" Now THATS acting...

Posted by: salty valty | May 08, 2008 at 02:02 PM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 08 2008,21:01

Would somone go get ERV, quickly.  She'll want to see this.   It's official, Ben Stein's divorce from reality is final:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
 
< Ben Stein Is Expelled! >

Ben Stein got his start as a lawyer and a speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and in more recent years he has written books, offered investment advice, and hosted both a game show (Win Ben Stein's Money) and a reality TV show (America's Most Smartest Model). But he is probably still best known for playing the boring high-school economics teacher who took attendance in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.


Now Stein is tackling education of a different kind, as the star of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary about the Intelligent Design movement—and the academic establishment's efforts to stifle the debate over the limitations of evolutionary theory that many ID advocates have been calling for.

The film opens in limited release this Friday.

How did you get involved in this movie?

Ben Stein: Walt Ruloff [co-writer and co-producer of the film] contacted me and showed me a bunch of very interesting slides and moving pictures about the cell. We talked a lot about the historical effects of Darwinism and social Darwinism, and he asked me if I would like to host a discussion about where Darwinism had gaps and where there were some unanswered questions about evolution. He said I could have a little bit of input into the storyline. I told him I was especially horrified by what Darwinism's social and historical impact had been on Jews, and that that would motivate me to try to get some involvement in the project.

How familiar were you with the subject of Intelligent Design prior to this?

Stein: Not at all. I'm still not that familiar with it. I'm more familiar with it than most people, but nowhere near as familiar with it as a genuine expert in the subject. I don't pretend to be a scientist. I'm the person who moderates the discussion between and among the scientists.

Did you do a lot of reading to prep for the role?

Stein: Some. I read one book cover to cover, From Darwin to Hitler, and that was a very interesting book—one of these rare books I wish had been even longer. It's about how Darwin's theory—supposedly concocted by this mild-mannered saintly man, with a flowing white beard like Santa Claus—led to the murder of millions of innocent people.

Inevitably, this subject gets into the overlap between science and religion. Do you have any sort of religious inclination yourself?

Stein: I'm Jewish, and I have always believed that there is a God who was the prime mover in the universe, so it's not hard for me to think of him as the Intelligent Designer.


Stein says his research has bolstered his faith

Has your research into the intelligent design debate affected your beliefs?

Stein: Yes, it has made my belief in that much stronger. It has pointed out something which haunted me ever since I learned about Darwinism, which is, Where did it all start? How did life start? Darwinism has nothing to say about that—nothing useful, anyway—but I think Intelligent Design has a great deal to say about it.

[ID advocate] Phillip Johnson has said that as a scientific theory, Intelligent Design doesn't necessarily lead to God. It could lead to an alien, or something like that.

Stein: That's not my view. Because if there are people from another planet, where did they come from?

Right. My understanding is that ID advocates have tried to remain officially agnostic on that sort of question --

Stein: Well, they can be as officially agnostic as they want. I think the Designer is God.

Your film is very up front about the God aspect.

Stein: I think that's perfectly sensible, because I feel very strongly that there is a God and he's the guy who did it.

Do you feel that by putting God so front-and-center, you are blowing the ID scientists' cover?

Stein: No, because I'm not speaking for them, I'm just speaking for me. And for me, it's pretty clear-cut that until we learn some better explanation for how life began, there is a God who always existed and created the heavens and the earth. And until somebody gives me a better explanation, I'll go for it.

And it doesn't scare me at all when scientists say, "Oh, but that can't be proved," because neither can any of the Darwinian hypotheses about how life began be proved. Anyway, I couldn't give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. It doesn't earn any extra respect from me, because it's not as if science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists were telling Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists were telling Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50 million people in order to further the revolution.

What if someone said evolution is true and it doesn't matter how it has been used?

Stein: But I don't believe it is true. And aside from modification within species, I don't think anyone has ever been able to prove one species that evolved by Darwinian means. It's incomprehensible to me how Darwinism could explain something as complex as the organic cell, and it's incomprehensible to me how Darwinism could explain how life began. And they don't even try.

As for me, I'm choosing a theory [ID] that seems to fit the evidence, as well as my intuitive feeling of awe in the face of God. If Darwinists can present me with evidence about how the world began and how the cell got so complex, I'll be glad to re-examine my beliefs.

Some people—including some Christians who accept Darwinian science—say that ID is just a new version of the "God of the gaps" theory.

Stein: You can call God the "God of the gaps," but if the God of the gaps is the God who created the heavens and the earth, and created all the living things within that, then that's an awfully big God.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



There is so much to highlight here....Where do you start?  Someone from PT should do a line by line rebuttal, and not a snarky one either.  Treat it as a lesson in science and reason and not a scolding.  Seriously.  Ben Stein needs a science education and we should give it to him, publicly and in a respectful manner.  He ridicules himself quite nicely, so just teach him publicly.

Ok class, is Ben Stein mental?  Seriously, read it again and tell me he's not mental or going mental.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on May 08 2008,21:32

yo MChris it is much more parsimonious that he is simply a very dishonest man.  One may embellish that with whatever flourish they find fitting, but 'Ben Stein is a liar' is the potato that you dress up with lil ol facts like this or that.  



ETA crikey that was a huge frunking picture.  removed lame ass warlock  and inserted a flashback to 1998 or something.

we form like voltron and the genius just happen to be tha head.  word is bond son we aint tryin to jus jump in and jump out do you know what i'm sayin, we in it for the gusto.  we making a bizness out of that shit and there is a lot of people out there who been waitin to hear this shit cause I know I been waitin to hear it.  And I ain't braggin or nuttin, but this shit is like one of the most some shit documentaries of all time, god.  word up.  



Posted by: Louis on May 09 2008,03:30

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 08 2008,20:57)
Quote (Louis @ May 08 2008,12:38)
Quote (dheddle @ May 08 2008,18:29)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 08 2008,12:26)
Breifly threadjacking as I see Dave is here.

If in your neo Luddite ways you prefer NASCAR over F1, then surely < THIS > is better than NASCAR?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard,

No, but it's better than soccer!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


SO? Anything's better than soccer. Watching soccer is only mildly less painful than having your foreskin pulled up over your head with barbed fish-hooks.

Soccer=22 overpaid, coiffured actors mincing about for 90 or so minutes in order to fleece increasingly exorbitant amounts of cash out of the working classes (or those who desire to be working class). It might not have always been thus, but by heck it's basically what it is now.

You might gather I'm not a fan. You also might gather that the "soccerisation" of other sports is something I am unlikely to be a fan of.

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


1) its called "football". Call your sport "throwball" or "Sumos in armour" or summin.
2) It's the beautiful game. Dembski would be better off looking for god there than in the fracterial blagella.

I agree with Louis that 'simulation', 'alice bands', 'stepovers' and 'hugging' have started to homoize the sport.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You mistake me for an Yank. I called football "soccer" because many here are of a Yankish persuasion and would better understand the term.

I have similarly disparaging views about "American Football" which has ventured into the "overpaid actor" territory like it's UKian namesake. It's a badly played game of rugby between four teams of motorcycle couriers on steroids. The main purpose of the sport, advertising, is occasionally and briefly interspersed with actual play, and like all things sporting and/or American it seems that the most ignorant and asinine pundits are the ones with the biggest gigs.

Baseball: like cricket is an excuse for the crowd to get increasingly drunk. Most players vastly overpaid.

Basketball: Now this I like, but also suffering from the overpaying hype drivel that has ruined professional sports the world over.

Ice Hockey: Proper sport. Blood, violence, occasional interaction with the rules and tools of the sport. Love it. See above for downsides. Will accept field hockey as gentler substitute.

Cricket: Used to be a civilised sport of antiquarian quaintness, great sport still yet horrendously marred by, you guessed it, overpaid superstars and plebian sentiment. Conspiracy theory fans love the MCC (who secretly control the world, oh yes they do).

Rugby League: Alright if you're a disgraced sprinter I suppose. Not a bad training ground for the backs in a real game. Mind you, it has produced some right hard bastards, so I can't complain too much. Getting a bit soccerised in the right places though, unfortunately.

Aussie Rules/Gaelic rules/Hurling/Pelota/Lacrosse: Bloody marvellous. Violent, deadly, terrifying. Sufficiently small globally that massive soccerisation has yet to occur. Proper sports.

Rugby Union: Sport of the gods, not a bad word to say about it. I might be biased. 30 men competing for glory. Bluff camaraderie, songs about women's genitals, excessive alcoholism, violence, training 5 nights a week. Hurrah! Perfection. Need to keep eyes peeled for increasing overpayment and poovish soccerising in future.

What has this to do with Expelled the movie you ask? Well I can find you a tenuous link I'm sure.

Hmmm sport...Ben Stein....over commercialisation of entities not entirely suited to it...hmm....honour...glory....prowess...acheivement...GOT IT!

Ben Stein's movie is like the Portuguese soccer team. Claims to brilliance yet frequently disappointing, flashes lots of money about yet underperforms, the team has the occasional good player who has drifted off into obscurity after going whacko but most importantly every time they get the ball and someone goes for a perfectly legal tackle all the players fall over and start screaming to the ref about a foul like the lying, game playing sacks of shit they are.

Tenuous, but accurate!

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on May 09 2008,14:38

Hee hee. :)





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Folks, this film is seriously boring >. Granted, I am not an unbiased source. But I can honestly say this is one criticism I did not expect to be making. I was expecting to be laughing at the funny parts, getting angry at the getting angry parts, and hating myself all the while for getting sucked into the sick little Spock-with-a-goatee world the creationists and ID folks have created for themselves. It didn't happen. This movie is capital-B boring. I find this subject enthralling and still couldn't manage to pay attention.

The movie is, of course, a pack of lies from start to finish. How bad is it? The opening scene shows Ben Stein at a podium lecturing about freedom and America's greatness to an auditorium filled with Pepperdine University students, several of whom are seen stroking their chins thoughtfully while Stein does his thing. Only they are not Pepperdine students, who it turns out are too savvy to have anything to do with this. Turns out they are extras.

From here we get a whirlwind tour through the annals of Darwinian oppression. The most pathetic here was Discovery Institue flak Michael Egnor. It seems that after he started expressing his creationist sympathies at the Discovery Institute blog he faced the full wrath of the Darwinian establishment. As he tells the story, and if you are not already doing so I recomment sitting down, some bloggers wrote nasty things about him! Also pathetic was journalist Pamela Winnick. Apparently when she started turning her news articles into platforms for adovcating ID, the Darwinan steamroller of doom revved up and -- wait for it -- people criticzed her!

Folks, oppression just ain't what it used to be.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on May 09 2008,16:05

Quote (Kristine @ May 09 2008,12:38)
Hee hee. :)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey, I < made > that.  Where'd you run across it?
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 09 2008,20:48

The last theater in 10 miles of my house showing Expelled has the following data on their website regarding the phauxumentry:

Reviews:
· "As a work of nonfiction filmmaking it is a sham and as agitprop it is too flimsy to strike any serious blows." Los Angeles Times
- Mark Olsen

· "...a flimsy attempt to discredit Darwinist theory as the cornerstone of modern biology..." Variety
- Justin Chang

Similar Movies You Might Like;

·NOVA: Judgement Day - Intelligent Design on Trial
·A Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus
Posted by: Marion Delgado on May 10 2008,18:23

I am proud to announce that I will be added to the production of Expelled II:No Intelligence Anywhere. Independent producer Martin Durkin of Channel 4 will join Ben Stein.

I was tossed off of a science panel on BBC 4 because I had research proving statistico-thermodynamically that the London underground was designed -- intelligently designed -- in such a way that you could not fail to arrive at Mornington Crescent station from any starting point within the lifetime of an average traveler. First, I noted it would take random chance over 17 quintillion years to produce such a well-tailored design.

The idea that travelers, especially window-shoppers with MC on their minds, would have developed techniques on their own enabling them to get to MC, even from Victoria, is absurd on the face of it.

The Totteridge and Whetstone Finchley Flipover, for instance, does absolutely nothing, leaving you back at Mill Hill East. The Osterly Ru-Slip is worse, stranding you at Arsenal, often right after a football game. Yet, combined, they produce Kensington's well-known, and taken for granted, Hounslow Flagellating Barnet-work, which often solves five expression rule-tangles at once. Where would the incentive be for a single traveling organism to develop it?

Dr. Dembski has graciously secured me a stipend from the DI to branch out from intelligent tubing and use crescentology in application to finally solve the sickle-cell anaemia problem once and for all.

Take THAT, BBC 4 .. perhaps now you regret EXPELLING me, hmm?
Posted by: stevestory on May 10 2008,18:31

Quote (Marion Delgado @ May 10 2008,19:23)
I am proud to announce that I will be added to the production of Expelled II:No Intelligence Anywhere. Independent producer Martin Durkin of Channel 4 will join Ben Stein.

I was tossed off of a science panel on BBC 4 because I had research proving statistico-thermodynamically that the London underground was designed -- intelligently designed -- in such a way that you could not fail to arrive at Mornington Crescent station from any starting point within the lifetime of an average traveler.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thinks about adding a comment. Takes a deep hit off the squashed Coke can which serves as a functional crack pipe. Decides against it.
Posted by: stevestory on May 10 2008,18:36

Quote (dheddle @ May 08 2008,13:29)
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 08 2008,12:26)
Breifly threadjacking as I see Dave is here.

If in your neo Luddite ways you prefer NASCAR over F1, then surely < THIS > is better than NASCAR?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard,

No, but it's better than soccer!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL, good comment, Heddle.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 10 2008,18:52

Quote (Marion Delgado @ May 10 2008,19:23)
I am proud to announce that I will be added to the production of Expelled II:No Intelligence Anywhere. Independent producer Martin Durkin of Channel 4 will join Ben Stein.

I was tossed off of a science panel on BBC 4 because I had research proving statistico-thermodynamically that the London underground was designed -- intelligently designed -- in such a way that you could not fail to arrive at Mornington Crescent station from any starting point within the lifetime of an average traveler. First, I noted it would take random chance over 17 quintillion years to produce such a well-tailored design.

[&etc.]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You'll be happy < to find the most recent play > of the current match on the Bathroom Wall (the only legal pitch on the board).

The game seems to have stalled (I believe I am in spoon for one more round), so if you'd care to jump in, please do.

I should warn you though, we've been flirting with Toilet MC in this match, and the skill is quite above the norm.


Posted by: blipey on May 10 2008,23:58

< The staying power of a classic >

After a mere 3 weeks, this classic is now raking in nearly 17 viewers per day per screen.

Awesome.

ETA: by my calculations, barely 900,000 people have seen this film.  I suppose that's not too bad for a documentary, but hardly classic status.
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 11 2008,00:50

Quote (stevestory @ May 10 2008,18:36)
Quote (dheddle @ May 08 2008,13:29)
Quote (Richardthughes @ May 08 2008,12:26)
Breifly threadjacking as I see Dave is here.

If in your neo Luddite ways you prefer NASCAR over F1, then surely < THIS > is better than NASCAR?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Richard,

No, but it's better than soccer!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL, good comment, Heddle.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


SHUT IT STERNBERGER YOU BALLERINA.
Posted by: didymos on May 11 2008,01:53

Quote (blipey @ May 10 2008,21:58)
< The staying power of a classic >

After a mere 3 weeks, this classic is now raking in nearly 17 viewers per day per screen.

Awesome.

ETA: by my calculations, barely 900,000 people have seen this film.  I suppose that's not too bad for a documentary, but hardly classic status.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What ticket price are you assuming?  Also, are you guesstimating repeat viewers as well?
Posted by: Kristine on May 12 2008,09:19

Quote (didymos @ May 09 2008,15:05)
 
Quote (Kristine @ May 09 2008,12:38)
Hee hee. :)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey, I < made > that.  Where'd you run across it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here, whilst googling.

< http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/complet....000.jpg >
Posted by: bfish on May 12 2008,15:41

Looks like the estimate for box office for the Mother's Day weekend (C'mon, Mom! It's got Nazis in it. You'll love it) were   < roughly 1/10th the box office of opening weekend. >
Maybe that is typical. At any rate, even Zeno's paradox says it can't hang around much longer, can it?
Posted by: Kristine on May 12 2008,16:57

< "Ditto for John Lennox"? >
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It’s [the movie] not “objective” but it does tell the truth.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Whatever. :)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< The film's intellectual dishonesty is plainly apparent > when narrator Ben Stein recites a carefully edited excerpt from Darwin's Descent of Man: "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

In trying to forge a link between Darwin and the Holocaust, Mr. Stein neglects to quote Darwin's following sentences: "The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature." Whether it was imbued by evolution or a creator, Darwin recognized the transcendent value of the human conscience.

Why is this important? Just as the physical theories of motion, electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics led to the technologies that transformed society in the 20th century, modern biology will enable technologies that will transform human society in the 21st century.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


(I miss my Galapagos Islands. A year ago. A friggin' year already.  :(  )
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 12 2008,19:14

Well, I went to see the stinker this afternoon.  I took about 20 pages of notes (in the dark).  I can hardly think of how to begin describing how bad this piece of crap is.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 12 2008,21:15

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 12 2008,20:14)
I can hardly think of how to begin describing how bad this piece of crap is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm thinking you're off to a good start.
Posted by: Coyote on May 12 2008,22:14

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 13 2008,05:14)
Well, I went to see the stinker this afternoon.  I took about 20 pages of notes (in the dark).  I can hardly think of how to begin describing how bad this piece of crap is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hi GH

Coyote
Posted by: blipey on May 12 2008,23:15

Quote (didymos @ May 11 2008,01:53)
Quote (blipey @ May 10 2008,21:58)
< The staying power of a classic >

After a mere 3 weeks, this classic is now raking in nearly 17 viewers per day per screen.

Awesome.

ETA: by my calculations, barely 900,000 people have seen this film.  I suppose that's not too bad for a documentary, but hardly classic status.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What ticket price are you assuming?  Also, are you guesstimating repeat viewers as well?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I was going with $7.00 a ticket.  And, you're right, I didn't take into account repeat viewers.  I'll amend my statement to:

I think 900,000 tickets have been bought.  No idea how many repeats there would be, but it might be reasonable (in Kansas, anyway  :D ) to say there were upwards of 100,000 repeats.
Posted by: Kristine on May 13 2008,10:15

The latest from < Ben Stein Watch >. His latest column is truly a sight to behold. I finally fired off a letter to the NYT. (Stein's a "dog fancier at night"? At least it spares the goats.)
Posted by: Quidam on May 13 2008,10:37

I like the headline
< You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, or Can You? >

Ben isn't stupid. But he's buoyed by people taking the machinations of his febrile brain seriously and he's pushing the envelope to see how many people he can get to believe what he's making up.

Posted by: charlie d on May 13 2008,11:50

I loved the line:
"They [fossil fuels] heat our homes and our swimming pools."

Somehow, this idea that common people can relate to the increased maintenance costs of heated swimming pools doesn't seem to fit Stein's pseudo-populist shtick.
Posted by: Benny H on May 13 2008,13:18

If you want to see "Expelled" you better see it quick. According to Boxofficemojo.com the nearest theater to my zip code showing the movie today is 16 miles away. Starting Friday it will be 386 miles away, in another state.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 13 2008,13:31

Quote (Benny H @ May 13 2008,11:18)
If you want to see "Expelled" you better see it quick. According to Boxofficemojo.com the nearest theater to my zip code showing the movie today is 16 miles away. Starting Friday it will be 386 miles away, in another state.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I can top that.

According to Boxofficemojo, after this coming weekend the nearest theaters to the SF Bay Area that are showing Expelled are in Kirksville, MO and Cochranton, PA -- 1,594 and 2,235 miles from my zip code, respectively.


Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 13 2008,14:04

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 13 2008,13:31)
I can top that.

According to Boxofficemojo, after this coming weekend the nearest theaters to the SF Bay Area that are showing Expelled are in Kirksville, MO and Cochranton, PA -- 1,594 and 2,235 miles from my zip code, respectively.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Roadtrip!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 13 2008,14:23

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 13 2008,12:04)
 
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 13 2008,13:31)
I can top that.

According to Boxofficemojo, after this coming weekend the nearest theaters to the SF Bay Area that are showing Expelled are in Kirksville, MO and Cochranton, PA -- 1,594 and 2,235 miles from my zip code, respectively.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Roadtrip!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Forget it. If I go on a road trip to the midwest, it ain't for Ben Stein.


Posted by: JohnW on May 13 2008,14:27

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 13 2008,11:31)
Quote (Benny H @ May 13 2008,11:18)
If you want to see "Expelled" you better see it quick. According to Boxofficemojo.com the nearest theater to my zip code showing the movie today is 16 miles away. Starting Friday it will be 386 miles away, in another state.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I can top that.

According to Boxofficemojo, after this coming weekend the nearest theaters to the SF Bay Area that are showing Expelled are in Kirksville, MO and Cochranton, PA -- 1,594 and 2,235 miles from my zip code, respectively.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Son Of Narnia Rides Again hits the screens this week.  So that should be the end of < Expelled >'s share of the church outing / fundie youth group market.  And as that was pretty much their only market...
Posted by: stevestory on May 13 2008,14:45

< http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=documentary.htm >

Another half a million and it'll tie with the Tupac Shakur movie!
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 13 2008,17:56

Quote (Coyote @ May 12 2008,20:14)
Quote (Dr.GH @ May 13 2008,05:14)
Well, I went to see the stinker this afternoon.  I took about 20 pages of notes (in the dark).  I can hardly think of how to begin describing how bad this piece of crap is.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hi GH

Coyote
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Howdy back.
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 13 2008,18:10

I watched it in the first showing.  There were 7 people there in all.  Two women sitting together, and the rest of us well separtated.  The two women, and one solo one occassionally laughed when Stein made fun of PZ or Dawkins.  As the film progressed, the elderly woman sitting alone became more and more vocal.  She ended up saying "Liar, Liar, Liar" every time PZ or Dawkins appeared on the screen.  Except that is when Dawkins claimed that evolutionary studies lead to atheism and that he, unlike other scientists, was honest about that fact.  Then the little old lady nearly shouted, "I knew it!"

Way to score Richard.  I think the phrase is "Own score!"
Posted by: bfish on May 13 2008,19:03

I just listened to the < May 7 Scientific American podcast >  (it's OK - I had my wife subscribe to it for me), titled, "Evolution Enclaves: Darwin the botanist and Origins of Life research." It's got a couple of interesting interviews, and then an unexpected bonus at the end.

The SciAm podcasts always close with a feature called, "Totally Bogus," in which they discuss four recent science stories: three real ones and another that they just made up. You have to pick out the fake story. This week's choices:
Story #1) Belly fat is associated with increased diabetes risk, but fat in other body parts may lessen the risk.
Story #2) the number of fat cells in your body remains constant after childhood.
Story #3) some bats are capable of producing sounds 100 times louder than a rock concert.

(I know that #1 and #2 are true, so, at this point I'm thinking #3 must be bogus. Then came story #4....)

Story #4) Ben Stein, the star of the anti-evolution movie Expelled, is a big supporter of most other science in general.

Damn, I couldn't stop laughing.

Sure enough, the host explained that story #4 was "Totally Bogus." "Apparently Ben Stein hates all science, not just evolution," he said, using as evidence Stein's appearance on Trinity, in which he linked listening to scientists to the Nazi gas chambers.

Very satisfying.
Posted by: didymos on May 13 2008,19:08

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 13 2008,16:10)
Except that is when Dawkins claimed that evolutionary studies lead to atheism and that he, unlike other scientists, was honest about that fact.  Then the little old lady nearly shouted, "I knew it!"

Way to score Richard.  I think the phrase is "Own score!"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think the ball was so close to that particular goal a light breeze would have knocked it in.  Hell, it may have been in the goal already, as her exclamation demonstrates.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 13 2008,19:30

Quote (bfish @ May 13 2008,20:03)
Story #3) some bats are capable of producing sounds 100 times louder than a rock concert.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That was actually a pretty interesting read, though I don't recall where it was I read about it.
Posted by: nuytsia on May 13 2008,20:04

Quote (Lou FCD @ May 13 2008,11:30)
 
Quote (bfish @ May 13 2008,20:03)
Story #3) some bats are capable of producing sounds 100 times louder than a rock concert.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That was actually a pretty interesting read, though I don't recall where it was I read about it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Several years ago I was watching Noctule bats flying down a valley and over a lake. It was early evening with good light and the bats were quite low so I got a great view and didn't bother with my detector. As they flew over head though, I could physically feel them because my ears started pinching.

They were loud, I just couldn't hear them. :D
Posted by: Quidam on May 13 2008,20:09

Ain't decibels wonderful.  The Bulldog fishing bat (Noctilio leporinus) can emit 138 dB but fortunately it's at 55kHz so we can't hear it.


As distinct from the Noctilio steinoramus, which emits a repetitive monotone whine until his prey collapses from brain atrophy.


Posted by: didymos on May 13 2008,21:14

Poor  Kev.  All he has left are pro- and anti- trolls.  He tries to post about < comics > and all he gets is:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Thats nice and all Kevin. But what about Sternberg?? Expelled is a comic book, a comic book full of lies. I HATE YOU!

Posted by: Jeffery S | May 13, 2008 at 09:09 AM

Its great to see all these incredibly entertaining concepts, that Im sure you plan on twisting and distorting with your creationist lies. Leave it alone Kevin. Stick to the 700 club or Left Behind comics please.

Posted by: Billy Reuben | May 13, 2008 at 09:55 AM

Willow Creek sounds good. I hope you get the rights to it. If so give Ben Stein a cameo as someone who gets mauled by a werewolf. I think that should make all of your critics happy. You get bonus points for using PZ as the werewolf that kills him, he already has the facial hair so its not much of a stretch...

Posted by: Salty Valty | May 13, 2008 at 10:27 AM

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Nerull on May 13 2008,22:20

Something amusing: I was doing some searches on gamma-ray astronomy, which is still a field pushing the limits of technology, and Iowa State was one of the first results. Apparently they are responsable for the camera system in a high-energy telescope array, and they've also got one of the researchers heavily involved in the GLAST program. This is hardly low-end astronomy.

So what exactly do they need to do before they're worthy of Gonzalez? ;)
Posted by: ReligionProf on May 13 2008,22:54

Hi everyone! I've had a commenter/spammer/stalker who thinks highly of himself and Expelled flood one of my blog posts with comments: < http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008....ed.html >

If anyone feels like giving him a good working over regarding his scientific knowledge, his arrogance, or his status as a crackpot, I invite all interested to do so. Thanks! :-)
Posted by: 1of63 on May 13 2008,23:30

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 13 2008,18:10)
I watched it in the first showing.  There were 7 people there in all.  Two women sitting together, and the rest of us well separtated.  The two women, and one solo one occassionally laughed when Stein made fun of PZ or Dawkins.  As the film progressed, the elderly woman sitting alone became more and more vocal.  She ended up saying "Liar, Liar, Liar" every time PZ or Dawkins appeared on the screen.  Except that is when Dawkins claimed that evolutionary studies lead to atheism and that he, unlike other scientists, was honest about that fact.  Then the little old lady nearly shouted, "I knew it!"

Way to score Richard.  I think the phrase is "Own score!"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you're talking about soccer, it's "own goal".

And do you really think anything Dawkins said - short of announcing that he had joined the Southern Baptists - would have changed what the people in that audience thought of him?

Televangelists, fundie preachers, creationists and their shills, Expelled are preaching to the converted.  Except in a tiny minority of cases, they don't change minds, they say what the punters - the believers who put money in their pockets - want to hear.

Same goes for the atheist cheerleaders with one major exception.  Up until very recently, standing up for non-belief didn't win you friends or money, so you could assume that those who did so had a lot more courage, honesty and integrity going for them than the other side.

That said, there is one very good reason why Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, Myers et al should be speaking out: if they don't, the only voice that will be heard in the public square is that of the pulpit-pounders.  

This is not about religion or science or philosophy, this is about PR.  Say nothing and you might as well not be there.  Speak quietly and politely and reasonably and your voice - and what you have to say - won't be heard above the racket from the religious rabble-rousers.  If you want to be heard you have to grab the audience by the ears and make them pay attention.

Who gives a toss whether Dawkins scored with the biddies in that audience?  What counts is that he was in the movie at all.  He wasn't there because he spent his life tip-toeing around the religious sensibilities of believers.  He was there because he told them bluntly that he though their beliefs were delusional because they persisted in believing in things for which science could find no evidence at all.  Being made fun of by a little toadie like Ben Stein is not a badge of shame, it's a badge of honor.
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 14 2008,01:51

I understand that Dawkins has an avid fan base- one might say a cult following.  I think first of all that it is incompetent to assert that science can provide evidence that gods don't exist. I do not think that any do exist, but that is not a scientific conclusion. Further, Dawkin's assertion that he is more honest than other scientists is both insulting and wrong.  Finally, there are many, many thousands of scientists who are active in some faith or other, which makes Dawkins simply wrong.

If you don't care about what anyone thinks, why bother to reply to creationist bullshit in the first place?  As you have said, "Who gives a toss whether Dawkins scored with the biddies in that audience?"  

Why do you bother?


Posted by: dheddle on May 14 2008,05:24

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 14 2008,01:51)
I understand that Dawkins has an avid fan base- one might say a cult following.  I think first of all that it is incompetent to assert that science can provide evidence that gods don't exist. I do not think that any do exist, but that is not a scientific conclusion. Further, Dawkin's assertion that he is more honest than other scientists is both insulting and wrong.  Finally, there are many, many thousands of scientists who are active in some faith or other, which makes Dawkins simply wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I have to say I am in agreement with Dr. GH here. Dawkins gets a ground-breaker’s credit for not caring about religious sensibilities—but in that he is hardly novel. I doubt that Dawkins could offend believers any more (*) than Gary or many other atheists that attack a) the dumb things (some) creationists say about science b) the political methods they employ and c) their dishonesty when it comes to the motivations of their actions.

In fact, Dawkins, as far as I can tell, breaks no ground in points a-c above—the points that are important to most scientists, me included, even though I’m a believer. And in fact he is somewhat more gentlemanly than most.

But Dawkins, looking for bigger fish, ventures elsewhere, into the metaphysical or the theological, and attacks the very  notion of God. Again he is not unique nor is he breaking down barriers. There have been intellectual atheists for generations. What he is, in this case, is not very skilled at what he attempts, but that (for this post) is irrelevant. Dawkins is ready to throw believing scientists under the bus, and to cast aspersions on the honesty of scientists who may agree with him on points a-c above, but who find it of no interest to challenge believers, in any more than a cocktail party sense, on the unscientific question of God’s existence. That seems to be the source of his enormous following.

----------------
(*) Which in fact is not much. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that Sunday sermons are now almost exclusively devoted to the question of fending off the atheist hordes.
Posted by: raguel on May 14 2008,05:42

dheddle: Frankly your indignation would carry more weight if you hadn't put your name on the "dissent from Darwinism" list, knowing full well it was a vacuous statement.

For my own part, I'm a recovering fundamentalist with a more nuanced view of god and religious beliefs (I never even heard of deism back then lol, but then I grew up in Florida :D ) I do remember thinking in college, "if God is not necessary for chemistry, then God isn't necessary for anything". I no longer believe it's that simple, but I think the efficacy of the scientific method vs. the abject failure of religion is telling.
Posted by: dheddle on May 14 2008,05:49

Quote (raguel @ May 14 2008,05:42)
dheddle: Frankly your indignation would carry more weight if you hadn't put your name on the "dissent from Darwinism" list, knowing full well it was a vacuous statement.

For my own part, I'm a recovering fundamentalist with a more nuanced view of god and religious beliefs (I never even heard of deism back then lol, but then I grew up in Florida :D ) I do remember thinking in college, "if God is not necessary for chemistry, then God isn't necessary for anything". I no longer believe it's that simple, but I think the efficacy of the scientific method vs. the abject failure of religion is telling.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm sorry, maybe because you are, by your own words, "more nuanced" you mistakenly detected indignation in my post when none was present nor intended. I'm not nuanced at all, so it is better to read my posts at face value.
Posted by: raguel on May 14 2008,06:01

Heh. I misread your post. My apologies

And what I meant wrt the nuanced comment, is that I have a different view of religion now than I did when I was a teenager. Basically I was brought up to believe that any religion other than Christianity was created/inspired by Satan, and any non-Baptist denomination was suspect.

Not that it has much to do with where this thread was actually heading. Well, the good news is I'm now 2 posts closer to an edit button.  :p
Posted by: dheddle on May 14 2008,06:08

Quote (raguel @ May 14 2008,06:01)
Heh. I misread your post. My apologies

And what I meant wrt the nuanced comment, is that I have a different view of religion now than I did when I was a teenager. Basically I was brought up to believe that any religion other than Christianity was created/inspired by Satan, and any non-Baptist denomination was suspect.

Not that it has much to do with where this thread was actually heading. Well, the good news is I'm now 2 posts closer to an edit button.  :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Cool. Understood.

(P.S. Well, not any non-Baptist denomination--but I do harbor suspicions about those rascally Methodists. One can never tell what they're really up to!

Oh, and the Congregationalists, don't get me started on the Congregationalists.)
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 14 2008,06:20

Quote (Nerull @ May 13 2008,22:20)
Something amusing: I was doing some searches on gamma-ray astronomy, which is still a field pushing the limits of technology, and Iowa State was one of the first results. Apparently they are responsable for the camera system in a high-energy telescope array, and they've also got one of the researchers heavily involved in the GLAST program. This is hardly low-end astronomy.

So what exactly do they need to do before they're worthy of Gonzalez? ;)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, obviously they need to move Ames to somewhere in Southern California, and they need the imprimatur and nihil obstat of Robert O'Brien. Then, and only then, will they be worthy of hiring and retaining an intellectual of the stature of Guillermo Gonzalez.
Posted by: Maya on May 14 2008,07:49

Quote (Quidam @ May 13 2008,20:09)
As distinct from the Noctilio steinoramus, which emits a repetitive monotone whine until his prey collapses from brain atrophy.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Clearly you pinned that bat to a tree it wouldn't normally rest on, you sneaky evilutionist!
Posted by: charlie d on May 14 2008,08:56

Quote (dheddle @ May 14 2008,05:24)
Quote (Dr.GH @ May 14 2008,01:51)
I understand that Dawkins has an avid fan base- one might say a cult following.  I think first of all that it is incompetent to assert that science can provide evidence that gods don't exist. I do not think that any do exist, but that is not a scientific conclusion. Further, Dawkin's assertion that he is more honest than other scientists is both insulting and wrong.  Finally, there are many, many thousands of scientists who are active in some faith or other, which makes Dawkins simply wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I have to say I am in agreement with Dr. GH here. Dawkins gets a ground-breaker’s credit for not caring about religious sensibilities—but in that he is hardly novel. I doubt that Dawkins could offend believers any more (*) than Gary or many other atheists that attack a) the dumb things (some) creationists say about science b) the political methods they employ and c) their dishonesty when it comes to the motivations of their actions.

In fact, Dawkins, as far as I can tell, breaks no ground in points a-c above—the points that are important to most scientists, me included, even though I’m a believer. And in fact he is somewhat more gentlemanly than most.

But Dawkins, looking for bigger fish, ventures elsewhere, into the metaphysical or the theological, and attacks the very  notion of God. Again he is not unique nor is he breaking down barriers. There have been intellectual atheists for generations. What he is, in this case, is not very skilled at what he attempts, but that (for this post) is irrelevant. Dawkins is ready to throw believing scientists under the bus, and to cast aspersions on the honesty of scientists who may agree with him on points a-c above, but who find it of no interest to challenge believers, in any more than a cocktail party sense, on the unscientific question of God’s existence. That seems to be the source of his enormous following.

----------------
(*) Which in fact is not much. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that Sunday sermons are now almost exclusively devoted to the question of fending off the atheist hordes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Mmm... I personally don't find all of Dawkins' arguments particularly effective, but I do think it's undeniable that he, Harris etc, with their explicit distaste for religion have touched a nerve with many believers (see the demonization to which they have been subjected in some circles), and have allowed many people who share the same views but were somewhat afraid to speak up to "come out of the closet".  I think this is quite important and a positive development, especially in the US where atheists are a mistrusted/despised (and in some cases - kids especially - browbeaten or worse) minority.  

Their arguments may not be particularly original, but because of the way they made them and/or because of this particular moment in history (a relatively widespread backlash against religious fundamentalism in US politics and the tragic realization of its pernicious effects internationally) they seem to have captured the public imagination.

As for Gary's comment, I don't think that it is correct to say that Dawkins claims that "science can provide evidence that gods don't exist".  He says that if one accepts that science is a (quite possibly, the only) reliable way of learning things about the universe, assuming that gods are active in the universe then claims about gods' actions can be subject to scientific scrutiny, and when they are, one finds that they don't stand up.   After that, it's a matter for those who make the claims to either corroborate them better, or explain why science is not reliable and should be rejected (note that most creationists, including ID advocates, try indeed to do both).  

Dawkins's position is that, in the absence of convincing evidence, we have no reason to believe in any god other than a wish to do so, and some good reasons (political, philosophical) to reject gods altogether.
Posted by: Quidam on May 14 2008,09:57

Quote (Maya @ May 14 2008,06:49)
Quote (Quidam @ May 13 2008,20:09)
As distinct from the Noctilio steinoramus, which emits a repetitive monotone whine until his prey collapses from brain atrophy.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Clearly you pinned that bat to a tree it wouldn't normally rest on, you sneaky evilutionist!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If it were the tree of knowledge you would be correct.  Noctilio steinoramus would have to be pinned, glued and screwed to stay there.

That however is the Tree of Ignorance, which provides Noctilio steinoramus with all the sustenance it needs.  It lives of the fruits of Ignorance: prejudice, fear, doubt, envy, deceit and revelation.  These pass largely unchanged through its digestive system and are subsequently consumed by Caenorhabditis cdesignproponentists.
Posted by: Maya on May 14 2008,15:21

Quote (Quidam @ May 14 2008,09:57)
Quote (Maya @ May 14 2008,06:49)
Clearly you pinned that bat to a tree it wouldn't normally rest on, you sneaky evilutionist!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Noctilio steinoramus would have to be . . . screwed to stay there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Eeewww.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
These pass largely unchanged through its digestive system and are subsequently consumed by Caenorhabditis cdesignproponentists.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Double eeewww.

;-)
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 14 2008,15:59

Expelled raked in $38,000 on Monday and $35,000 yesterday.  See it all < here >

Looks like Waterloo has been postponed.  Again.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 14 2008,17:54

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 14 2008,13:59)
Looks like Waterloo has been postponed.  Again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dammit. So I bought all those canned goods and guns for nothing. :angry:
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 14 2008,18:16

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 14 2008,15:54)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 14 2008,13:59)
Looks like Waterloo has been postponed.  Again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dammit. So I bought all those canned goods and guns for nothing. :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OT

For the last 20 years or so, when I encounter some nitwit "survivalist" with guns and canned goods, I ask them how large their goat herd is, and how will they deal with the hybrid instability of Golden Bantam?

(Trick question about corn, I know.  But it takes 3 years and a couple of acres to get the joke).
Posted by: 1of63 on May 14 2008,22:58

[quote=Dr.GH,May 14 2008,01:51][/quote]
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think first of all that it is incompetent to assert that science can provide evidence that gods don't exist.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I agree, but how many scientists can you think of that actually claim that?  Most that I'm aware of simply argue that science has found no evidence of a god nor any need to propose one to explain what they see.  The furthest I've seen some go is to argue that God is so highly improbable as to be next to impossible

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Further, Dawkin's assertion that he is more honest than other scientists is both insulting and wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

 
If that's what he actually said then I'd say 'yes' and 'yes', I agree with you.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Finally, there are many, many thousands of scientists who are active in some faith or other, which makes Dawkins simply wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sure, there are lots of scientists who follow one sort of religion or another.  Question is, how do they reconcile their faith with their research?  

How does a YEC geologist square a belief in a 10,000 year old Earth with science which says it's around 4.5 billion years old?  Does he compartmentalize?  Does he go to the lab in Science Mode during the week and then switch to Faith Mode on Sunday when he shouts 'Hallelujah!' with the rest of the holy-rollers?

Does it matter, of course?  I'd say if he continues to produce good science then, no, it doesn't matter at all.

Is he being honest, though, as honest as Dawkins?  No, he's not.

Okay, that's an extreme example.  The likes of Kenneth Miller, Francis Collins  and Conway Morris are a bit more sophisticated than that.  But it seems to me that even they have to cobble together some version of Christianity that can be fitted around the science and they can get away with it because there are still plenty of gaps to fit their God into.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If you don't care about what anyone thinks, why bother to reply to creationist bullshit in the first place?  As you have said, "Who gives a toss whether Dawkins scored with the biddies in that audience?"  

Why do you bother?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



1)  To be heard.  Can't let all the other loudmouths think they've got away with their crap unchallenged.  Can't let any audience think there's no other views out there.

2)  It's good fun, like a kind of team sport.  We cheer our heroes when they score with a good argument and jeer at the hopeless fumbles of the hapless boobs on the other side.
Posted by: 1of63 on May 14 2008,23:34

[quote=dheddle,May 14 2008,05:24][/quote]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But Dawkins, looking for bigger fish, ventures elsewhere, into the metaphysical or the theological, and attacks the very  notion of God. Again he is not unique nor is he breaking down barriers. There have been intellectual atheists for generations. What he is, in this case, is not very skilled at what he attempts, but that (for this post) is irrelevant. Dawkins is ready to throw believing scientists under the bus, and to cast aspersions on the honesty of scientists who may agree with him on points a-c above, but who find it of no interest to challenge believers, in any more than a cocktail party sense, on the unscientific question of God’s existence. That seems to be the source of his enormous following.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You can define your God away into some entirely separate supernatural realm far beyond our reach and, yes, the question of the existence of such a deity is unscientific.  

But if some God set up this Universe and has been tinkering with it ever since then that's something science can look at, at least in principle.  If It just lit the blue touch paper 13-14 billion years ago and has been stood well back ever since then finding evidence is going to be a bit more problematical but, again, it's still something science can take a look at.  

It all depends on your God.
Posted by: khan on May 15 2008,18:40

Quote (Dr.GH @ May 14 2008,19:16)
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 14 2008,15:54)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 14 2008,13:59)
Looks like Waterloo has been postponed.  Again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dammit. So I bought all those canned goods and guns for nothing. :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OT

For the last 20 years or so, when I encounter some nitwit "survivalist" with guns and canned goods, I ask them how large their goat herd is, and how will they deal with the hybrid instability of Golden Bantam?

(Trick question about corn, I know.  But it takes 3 years and a couple of acres to get the joke).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I was involved in circumventing the Y2K meltdown (via programming drudgery), and observed many of the apocalyptic websites.

Observations thereof:

Only white male heterosexual protestants need apply
Guns and God and Gold are all that is needed to triumph
Abysmal knowledge of actual skills needed to survive without infrastructure
Manly men can handle draft animals without training
Questions about gardening: "Carrots and onions don't produce seeds"
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 15 2008,19:18

Quote (khan @ May 15 2008,16:40)
Quote (Dr.GH @ May 14 2008,19:16)
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 14 2008,15:54)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 14 2008,13:59)
Looks like Waterloo has been postponed.  Again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dammit. So I bought all those canned goods and guns for nothing. :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OT

For the last 20 years or so, when I encounter some nitwit "survivalist" with guns and canned goods, I ask them how large their goat herd is, and how will they deal with the hybrid instability of Golden Bantam?

(Trick question about corn, I know.  But it takes 3 years and a couple of acres to get the joke).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I was involved in circumventing the Y2K meltdown (via programming drudgery), and observed many of the apocalyptic websites.

Observations thereof:

Only white male heterosexual protestants need apply
Guns and God and Gold are all that is needed to triumph
Abysmal knowledge of actual skills needed to survive without infrastructure
Manly men can handle draft animals without training
Questions about gardening: "Carrots and onions don't produce seeds"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nearly all the survivalists I have ever met would be dead within months, if not weeks or day, if they were left on their own.

I was buying supplies for a 10 person 10 day field work project in the Colorado Desert in Dec. 1999.  We had lots of food and water, (hardware, like tents, pots and pans had been bought in earlier projects).  As we checked out, there were dozens of people who assumed we were antisipating the end of the world.
Posted by: Benny H on May 15 2008,22:28

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 13 2008,13:31)
Quote (Benny H @ May 13 2008,11:18)
If you want to see "Expelled" you better see it quick. According to Boxofficemojo.com the nearest theater to my zip code showing the movie today is 16 miles away. Starting Friday it will be 386 miles away, in another state.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I can top that.

According to Boxofficemojo, after this coming weekend the nearest theaters to the SF Bay Area that are showing Expelled are in Kirksville, MO and Cochranton, PA -- 1,594 and 2,235 miles from my zip code, respectively.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oops, my mistake-it will still be playing in my area. I should have known boxofficemojo's info on theaters playing a particular movie wouldn't be accurate that many days in advance. Instead of almost completely disappearing it's losing half it's screens, which makes more sense in retrospect.
Posted by: lkeithlu on May 17 2008,07:58

Just wondering:

Why is there no link to the movie's website on UD? Wasn't there one before? Or am I misremembering?

The film seems to be gone now from Tennessee theaters. I can't find any listing.
Posted by: dhogaza on May 17 2008,15:44



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I was buying supplies for a 10 person 10 day field work project in the Colorado Desert in Dec. 1999.  We had lots of food and water, (hardware, like tents, pots and pans had been bought in earlier projects).  As we checked out, there were dozens of people who assumed we were antisipating the end of the world.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha!  I used to buy food and supplies for a field project lasting 12 weeks each fall, with an average crew of 25.

But no one at the large warehouse store where I bought most staples thought that buying pickup trucks full of food at a time was unusual.

Of course, I was doing so in Utah ... if you know anything about Mormonism, you know why it didn't raise any eyebrows.
Posted by: Kristine on May 19 2008,09:44

It's just catch-up filing at this point, but here's Ben:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"Darwinism can't explain< where physics came from >."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And with George Stephanopoulos. An idiot interviewing an idiot.

"Darwinism" can't explain why yellow is yellow.
"Darwinism" can't explain why 1/7 of all days are Mondays.
"Darwinism" can't explain how (wait for it) evolution works. (Why not? Why haven't we heard that one yet?)

*Kisses away Ben Stein's career - and Steinphanopoulos', too.*
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 19 2008,10:57

Looks like they raked in about 90k over the weekend.  Close to 30k each day.  WOW.  This turd is done.
Posted by: Kristine on May 19 2008,11:52

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 19 2008,09:57)
WOW.  This turd is done.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Plagiarist >!  :p
Posted by: Glen Davidson on May 19 2008,12:14

To be fair, it's George Stroumboulopoulos, not Stephanopoulos.  Not to say anything for the latter, it's simply not he.

Stein's lying again, of course, and not just because he's too stupid to know that biology comes from physics (so to speak), and not vice-versa.  He said previously that he'd always disliked "Darwinism", one reason he got into this, now he's claiming that his personal beliefs never got into it.

No doubt  he's misquoting Darwin's statement about how complicated it all is.  In fact the whole of evolution is probably far to complicated to ever be fully understood, while the basic model is not so very difficult.  Too much for the idiot Stein (the man is stupid, I don't care if he once had the native intelligence to avoid his current raging idiocy) to understand, but not for a grade schooler to comprehend.

Glen D
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 19 2008,12:17

Quote (Kristine @ May 19 2008,11:52)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 19 2008,09:57)
WOW.  This turd is done.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Plagiarist >!  :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who, me?  I have NEVER advocated having more than one wife.  Well not much more than 3 or 4 tops!
Posted by: Kristine on May 19 2008,17:11

Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,11:14)
To be fair, it's George Stroumboulopoulos, not Stephanopoulos.  Not to say anything for the latter, it's simply not he.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I apologize for my gaffe. And because I am so pure and wholesome, here's more < gossip on Stein >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
regarding ben stein- he spoke at one of my company's functions a few years ago, and i was assigned to escort him from his limo to the function and back when he was done. he carried with him an enormous leather satchel that he refused to let anyone else touch or carry for him. right before he was to go on stage, he opens said satchel, and hand-to-god, it was FULL of perscription drugs. like at least 100 different bottles of drugs. he downed a handful of 'em before he got on stage. it was the most bizzare thing i've ever seen. believe it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(From the comments.)

I should point fingers - I've been on Benadryl today. :p

The artricle in the above link is funny - "Win Ben Stein's Pajiba."
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Now, don’t get me wrong, folks — I don’t mean any offense to the crazy-ass backwards readers of ours who drink the intelligent design milkshake, but, come on: Expelled blames communism and Planned Parenthood on evolution (thanks for the latter Charles!;) and “reveals the stark truth: Darwinists have been conspiring to keep design out of classrooms, out of journals, and out of public discourse.” Actually, it’s not Darwinists so much as it is the motherfucking U.S. Constitution that’s keeping intelligent design out of the classroom (for now), and scientific method and peer review that’re keeping it out of journals — but for the Journal of Right Wing Nutjobs, of course.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on May 19 2008,22:48

Quote (Kristine @ May 19 2008,17:11)
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,11:14)
To be fair, it's George Stroumboulopoulos, not Stephanopoulos.  Not to say anything for the latter, it's simply not he.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I apologize for my gaffe. And because I am so pure and wholesome, here's more < gossip on Stein >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
regarding ben stein- he spoke at one of my company's functions a few years ago, and i was assigned to escort him from his limo to the function and back when he was done. he carried with him an enormous leather satchel that he refused to let anyone else touch or carry for him. right before he was to go on stage, he opens said satchel, and hand-to-god, it was FULL of perscription drugs. like at least 100 different bottles of drugs. he downed a handful of 'em before he got on stage. it was the most bizzare thing i've ever seen. believe it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(From the comments.)

I should point fingers - I've been on Benadryl today. :p

The artricle in the above link is funny - "Win Ben Stein's Pajiba."
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Now, don’t get me wrong, folks — I don’t mean any offense to the crazy-ass backwards readers of ours who drink the intelligent design milkshake, but, come on: Expelled blames communism and Planned Parenthood on evolution (thanks for the latter Charles!) and “reveals the stark truth: Darwinists have been conspiring to keep design out of classrooms, out of journals, and out of public discourse.” Actually, it’s not Darwinists so much as it is the motherfucking U.S. Constitution that’s keeping intelligent design out of the classroom (for now), and scientific method and peer review that’re keeping it out of journals — but for the Journal of Right Wing Nutjobs, of course.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


When you see him on interviews, he does seem rather robotic in his denunciations of "Darwinism".  He seems to have fixated on the notion that "Darwinism" must be able to explain everything in science if it is to be legitimate at all, and nothing in the world moves him away from such an unbearably stupid idea.

Maybe if he got off of some of his medications, he might be able to think outside of his apparently insurmountable rut.

I mentioned that he lied on the recent video about his personal views having nothing to do with his opposition.  For Talkorigins I found a reference for this.  Here's an excerpt from what I posted there:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
He does lie in the video (or he had earlier), saying that his personal
beliefs weren't important.  Here's what he said before:




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"Stein: I've been on a mission in terms of trying to get people to
think more about the role of God in their lives for a while. I've been
involved in the right to life movement for quite a long time. So, this
is really an extension of that. It's about recognizing the role that
God plays in our daily life."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




< http://www.pacificsun.com/square/index.php?i=3&t=636 >


Oh yeah, it was about his religious views.  Now he's claiming that
it's all about "freedom", you know, the government forcing religious
views to be accorded the status of science.  Of course he also made
the mistake of revealing how uninterested he is in freedom previously,
as I've noted before:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Excessive drugs would be his only (but insufficient, I would argue) excuse for never learning what evolution covers, and for rather easily forgetting what he's said before about what drives his anti-evolutionism.  Clearly he either lied on the interview to which I linked above, or he did in the more recent interview.

Glen D
Posted by: Robert O'Brien on May 19 2008,23:31

Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,12:14)
To be fair, it's George Stroumboulopoulos, not Stephanopoulos.  Not to say anything for the latter, it's simply not he.

Stein's lying again, of course, and not just because he's too stupid to know that biology comes from physics (so to speak), and not vice-versa.  He said previously that he'd always disliked "Darwinism", one reason he got into this, now he's claiming that his personal beliefs never got into it.

No doubt  he's misquoting Darwin's statement about how complicated it all is.  In fact the whole of evolution is probably far to complicated to ever be fully understood, while the basic model is not so very difficult.  Too much for the idiot Stein (the man is stupid, I don't care if he once had the native intelligence to avoid his current raging idiocy) to understand, but not for a grade schooler to comprehend.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Shouldn't this post be treble its length?
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 20 2008,00:10

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 19 2008,23:31)
Shouldn't this post be treble its length?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Calling Tarden Chatterbox: What're the rules on treble vs. triple? (Please no tribbles, n3redl1ngers..)
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 20 2008,09:47

Not sure if it's been said yet but I think Ben Stein and Expelled are the best thing to ever happen to the ID creationism movement.

When was the last time you saw negative articles about ID in virtually every single major and minor media outlet in north America?  Movie critics have gone where "reporters" feared to go - movie critics have outed Expelled for what it is, anti-science religious propaganda.  

If you look at the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes you'll see 30 negative reviews and 3 positive ones though 2 of those are kinda negative.  Many of those reviews have shown up in multiple newspapers all over the country.  

And I would bet the entertainment section of most newspapers is more popular than any science section or even the front section.  No telling how many people who were only vaguely familiar with ID will now associate it with crack pots and religious lunatics based on what they have read about Expelled.

No doubt Expelled gave the religious whack jobs a brief moment of hope but even the biggest tards are now seeing nothing, I mean nothing is going to come from Expelled other than the creationists are now officially out of the closet and are being made fun of in wholesale numbers.

Ben Stein did science a favor, he showed the world how profoundly idiotic ID really is in a way no one else could.  I wonder if any of these "freedom bills" would have suceeded if not for Expelled.

I hope Ben keeps giving interviews.  Nothing says "id is total bullshit" like Ben Stein. Kevin Miler says Expelled might be opening soon in Canada.  I wonder if anyone up North will even notice?  

Maybe I'm high on crack but I think Ben has done the rational thinking world a service.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 20 2008,10:24

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 19 2008,22:10)
 
Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 19 2008,23:31)
Shouldn't this post be treble its length?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Calling Tarden Chatterbox: What're the rules on treble vs. triple? (Please no tribbles, n3redl1ngers..)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think you have to be part of the cross dressing/bad central heating/chip butty contingent to use 'treble'.


Posted by: carlsonjok on May 20 2008,10:27

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 20 2008,09:47)
Kevin Miler says Expelled might be opening soon in Canada.  I wonder if anyone up North will even notice?  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, it does raise an interesting theological question. If you only can spend your money on one thing, should you go to see Expelled or buy one of Denyse's books?  Hmmmm.........
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 20 2008,10:35

Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
When you see him on interviews, he does seem rather robotic in his denunciations of "Darwinism".  He seems to have fixated on the notion that "Darwinism" must be able to explain everything in science if it is to be legitimate at all, and nothing in the world moves him away from such an unbearably stupid idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you try to put yourself into Stein's mindset (a horrible place, I know), this idea is not too surprising. The thing is, Stein and the rather childlike people he's now making a living off of consider 'Darwinism' to be the opposite of 'Christianity'. Since the two are 'rivals', they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything. USA! USA! USA!

It's the same as when they attack evolution by slandering Darwin. In religious apologetics, casting doubts on the character of the founder of a religion (or its followers) is one of the primary ways of 'disproving' a religion. So since they view Darwinism as a direct competitor for Jeebus's market share, they don't see why this wouldn't work to 'defeat materialism'.
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 20 2008,10:52

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,11:35)
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
When you see him on interviews, he does seem rather robotic in his denunciations of "Darwinism".  He seems to have fixated on the notion that "Darwinism" must be able to explain everything in science if it is to be legitimate at all, and nothing in the world moves him away from such an unbearably stupid idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you try to put yourself into Stein's mindset (a horrible place, I know), this idea is not too surprising. The thing is, Stein and the rather childlike people he's now making a living off of consider 'Darwinism' to be the opposite of 'Christianity'. Since the two are 'rivals', they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything. USA! USA! USA!

It's the same as when they attack evolution by slandering Darwin. In religious apologetics, casting doubts on the character of the founder of a religion (or its followers) is one of the primary ways of 'disproving' a religion. So since they view Darwinism as a direct competitor for Jeebus's market share, they don't see why this wouldn't work to 'defeat materialism'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well put.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 20 2008,10:53

Quote (carlsonjok @ May 20 2008,10:27)
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 20 2008,09:47)
Kevin Miler says Expelled might be opening soon in Canada.  I wonder if anyone up North will even notice?  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, it does raise an interesting theological question. If you only can spend your money on one thing, should you go to see Expelled or buy one of Denyse's books?  Hmmmm.........
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd go see Expelled, or rather buy the DVD over the Morphodyke's book.  Expelled is funny but in a way they did not intend.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 20 2008,11:10

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 20 2008,08:53)
 
Quote (carlsonjok @ May 20 2008,10:27)
 
Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 20 2008,09:47)
Kevin Miler says Expelled might be opening soon in Canada.  I wonder if anyone up North will even notice?  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, it does raise an interesting theological question. If you only can spend your money on one thing, should you go to see Expelled or buy one of Denyse's books?  Hmmmm.........
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd go see Expelled, or rather buy the DVD over the Morphodyke's book.  Expelled is funny but in a way they did not intend.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Ben Stein is still funny, but not 'ha-ha funny'."


Posted by: J-Dog on May 20 2008,11:17

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,10:35)
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
When you see him on interviews, he does seem rather robotic in his denunciations of "Darwinism".  He seems to have fixated on the notion that "Darwinism" must be able to explain everything in science if it is to be legitimate at all, and nothing in the world moves him away from such an unbearably stupid idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you try to put yourself into Stein's mindset (a horrible place, I know), this idea is not too surprising. The thing is, Stein and the rather childlike people he's now making a living off of consider 'Darwinism' to be the opposite of 'Christianity'. Since the two are 'rivals', they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything. USA! USA! USA!

It's the same as when they attack evolution by slandering Darwin. In religious apologetics, casting doubts on the character of the founder of a religion (or its followers) is one of the primary ways of 'disproving' a religion. So since they view Darwinism as a direct competitor for Jeebus's market share, they don't see why this wouldn't work to 'defeat materialism'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Outstanding Summary!

I think entire books, hell, sections of books, have been written that are not as lucid as what you just typed.  

After you sober up, you're gonna be amazed at what you just keyboarded!
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 20 2008,12:07

Quote (J-Dog @ May 20 2008,09:17)
   
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,10:35)
     
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
When you see him on interviews, he does seem rather robotic in his denunciations of "Darwinism".  He seems to have fixated on the notion that "Darwinism" must be able to explain everything in science if it is to be legitimate at all, and nothing in the world moves him away from such an unbearably stupid idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you try to put yourself into Stein's mindset (a horrible place, I know), this idea is not too surprising. The thing is, Stein and the rather childlike people he's now making a living off of consider 'Darwinism' to be the opposite of 'Christianity'. Since the two are 'rivals', they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything. USA! USA! USA!

It's the same as when they attack evolution by slandering Darwin. In religious apologetics, casting doubts on the character of the founder of a religion (or its followers) is one of the primary ways of 'disproving' a religion. So since they view Darwinism as a direct competitor for Jeebus's market share, they don't see why this wouldn't work to 'defeat materialism'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Outstanding Summary!

I think entire books, hell, sections of books, have been written that are not as lucid as what you just typed.  

After you sober up, you're gonna be amazed at what you just keyboarded!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stone cold sober, I swear. (I mean, I'm not Steve. ;) )

I know, I do half of my best writing under a fake name at a blog, where I can't even put it on my resume. How pitiful is that? :O
Posted by: Reginald Beasley on May 20 2008,12:08

The slow wheels of justice are churning as there was a prelim injuction hearing yesterday, here's a choice bit:

"
But in the state court PI hearing this morning, Judge Richard Lowe wasn’t nearly as convinced as Professor Wu. Judge Lowe asked Falzone why it was necessary to use Lennon’s actual performance of the song, rather than, say, having Stein say the lyrics himself or flashing the lyrics on the screen. To this, Falzone gave what we thought was a compelling and novel reply. Lennon’s performance, said Falzone, triggers a specific emotional response in the viewer’s mind — i.e. “Maybe Lennon’s right; maybe the world would be better off without religion” — and it’s that response that the film, and its use of “Imagine,” seeks to criticize.

Judge Lowe seemed skeptical, and decided to stay the original TRO pending his ruling, which means that “Expelled,” currently playing in theaters around the country, cannot be reproduced or otherwise distributed.
"

< http://blogs.wsj.com/law....and-ben >

Exactly one of the arguments I've been spouting the whole time - it's not necessary to actually use the song at all and the dishonesty of Premise will not do well for them in court.
Posted by: KimvdLinde on May 20 2008,12:13

I made a small table with the amounts expelled made in the various weekends, and the rank they achieved with regard to amount per theatre:

Apr 18–20     23     $2,824
Apr 25–27     53     $1,340
May 2–4        58     $1,034
May 9–11      84     $818
May 16–18   101     $423
Posted by: stevestory on May 20 2008,12:14

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,13:07)
Stone cold sober, I swear. (I mean, I'm not Steve. ;) )
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hell even Steve's stone cold sober at the moment.

Which really isn't surprising, since it's 1:10 in the afternoon and he's about to go to the pool and do some serious laps.
Posted by: JohnW on May 20 2008,12:23

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,08:35)
It's the same as when they attack evolution by slandering Darwin. In religious apologetics, casting doubts on the character of the founder of a religion (or its followers) is one of the primary ways of 'disproving' a religion. So since they view Darwinism as a direct competitor for Jeebus's market share, they don't see why this wouldn't work to 'defeat materialism'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Another effect of the "apologetics" approach taken by many creationists is their extensive use of quotes (and of course, quote mining).  They're used to debates proceeding by exegesis of sacred texts - that's how it's done in bible study.  And because they don't understand science, they don't understand that science has no sacred texts, so looking for "gotcha" passages in Darwin or Haldane or Gould is a waste of time.

It also explains the continued popularity of the "Darwin deathbed confession" meme.  Even if it were true, it would make no difference to whether life evolved.  But if you see this as a battle between followers of Jesus and followers of anti-Jesus, the deathbed confession sounds like a devastating argument.

We don't accept modern evolutionary theory because the Prophet Darwin told us to.  We accept it because it's the best explanation of the evidence.  Many creationists still don't understand this.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on May 20 2008,12:29

Quote (Reginald Beasley @ May 20 2008,12:08)
The slow wheels of justice are churning as there was a prelim injuction hearing yesterday, here's a choice bit:

"
But in the state court PI hearing this morning, Judge Richard Lowe wasn’t nearly as convinced as Professor Wu. Judge Lowe asked Falzone why it was necessary to use Lennon’s actual performance of the song, rather than, say, having Stein say the lyrics himself or flashing the lyrics on the screen. To this, Falzone gave what we thought was a compelling and novel reply. Lennon’s performance, said Falzone, triggers a specific emotional response in the viewer’s mind — i.e. “Maybe Lennon’s right; maybe the world would be better off without religion” — and it’s that response that the film, and its use of “Imagine,” seeks to criticize.

Judge Lowe seemed skeptical, and decided to stay the original TRO pending his ruling, which means that “Expelled,” currently playing in theaters around the country, cannot be reproduced or otherwise distributed.
"

< http://blogs.wsj.com/law....and-ben >

Exactly one of the arguments I've been spouting the whole time - it's not necessary to actually use the song at all and the dishonesty of Premise will not do well for them in court.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for the update!
Posted by: Kristine on May 20 2008,12:41

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,11:07)
     
Quote (J-Dog @ May 20 2008,09:17)
           
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,10:35)
             
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
When you see him on interviews, he does seem rather robotic in his denunciations of "Darwinism".  He seems to have fixated on the notion that "Darwinism" must be able to explain everything in science if it is to be legitimate at all, and nothing in the world moves him away from such an unbearably stupid idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you try to put yourself into Stein's mindset (a horrible place, I know), this idea is not too surprising. The thing is, Stein and the rather childlike people he's now making a living off of consider 'Darwinism' to be the opposite of 'Christianity'. Since the two are 'rivals', they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything. USA! USA! USA!

It's the same as when they attack evolution by slandering Darwin. In religious apologetics, casting doubts on the character of the founder of a religion (or its followers) is one of the primary ways of 'disproving' a religion. So since they view Darwinism as a direct competitor for Jeebus's market share, they don't see why this wouldn't work to 'defeat materialism'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Outstanding Summary!

I think entire books, hell, sections of books, have been written that are not as lucid as what you just typed.  

After you sober up, you're gonna be amazed at what you just keyboarded!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stone cold sober, I swear. (I mean, I'm not Steve. ;) )

I know, I do half of my best writing under a fake name at a blog, where I can't even put it on my resume. How pitiful is that? :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Blogs aren’t for resumes. Blogs are to get references. ;)

There is < some talk > ‘round the Net < (first comment here) >, some of it < not new >, about Stein acting like he’s had a small stroke. He does sound like it to me.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I don't even know where to begin on this clip...

He sounds like he's either had a mild stroke or has decided to take up being a grizzled jazzman. He makes wild claims that Darwinists claim evolutionary theory explains planetary rotation and gravitational pull. He then comforts us because the economy of America will never sour.

This is the perfect example of a human being that insulates themselves against all evidence of anything, ever.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 20 2008,13:10

Quote (JohnW @ May 20 2008,10:23)
     
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,08:35)
It's the same as when they attack evolution by slandering Darwin. In religious apologetics, casting doubts on the character of the founder of a religion (or its followers) is one of the primary ways of 'disproving' a religion. So since they view Darwinism as a direct competitor for Jeebus's market share, they don't see why this wouldn't work to 'defeat materialism'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Another effect of the "apologetics" approach taken by many creationists is their extensive use of quotes (and of course, quote mining).  They're used to debates proceeding by exegesis of sacred texts - that's how it's done in bible study.  And because they don't understand science, they don't understand that science has no sacred texts, so looking for "gotcha" passages in Darwin or Haldane or Gould is a waste of time.

It also explains the continued popularity of the "Darwin deathbed confession" meme.  Even if it were true, it would make no difference to whether life evolved.  But if you see this as a battle between followers of Jesus and followers of anti-Jesus, the deathbed confession sounds like a devastating argument.

We don't accept modern evolutionary theory because the Prophet Darwin told us to.  We accept it because it's the best explanation of the evidence.  Many creationists still don't understand this.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Right. If you assume that Creationists are arguing against evolution with precisely the same methodology that they'd use to refute, say, Mormonism or Islam, then their behavior starts to make a lot more sense (in a way).

Creationists can't get past the idea that an idea can be a problem for religion without it being a religion itself. Thus, the root problem is that Creationists are arguing with an entirely separate means of evaluating reality from what scientists use. (Or indeed separate from any area of endeavor where physical reality matters.) This is a world where one flaw in the personality of a person can invalidate everything they ever said in their life, or any scientific theory they ever ascribed to. (What's been referred to as the 'silver bullet' school of IDC argumentation.) And it exactly explains the 'deathbed conversion' meme, since in religious apologetics, that WOULD invalidate a whole religion.

I'd say that they argue this way because it's what they're most used to, but don't forget that even if they did understand science, they'd never be able to win their case using real scientific argumentation. It's kind of all they've got. But again, people who understand science aren't really their target audience.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on May 20 2008,13:44

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,10:35)
   
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
When you see him on interviews, he does seem rather robotic in his denunciations of "Darwinism".  He seems to have fixated on the notion that "Darwinism" must be able to explain everything in science if it is to be legitimate at all, and nothing in the world moves him away from such an unbearably stupid idea.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you try to put yourself into Stein's mindset (a horrible place, I know), this idea is not too surprising. The thing is, Stein and the rather childlike people he's now making a living off of consider 'Darwinism' to be the opposite of 'Christianity'. Since the two are 'rivals', they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything. USA! USA! USA!

It's the same as when they attack evolution by slandering Darwin. In religious apologetics, casting doubts on the character of the founder of a religion (or its followers) is one of the primary ways of 'disproving' a religion. So since they view Darwinism as a direct competitor for Jeebus's market share, they don't see why this wouldn't work to 'defeat materialism'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Right.

Since evolution only exists to displace Christianity and to deny the obviousness of design in nature (the preachers say so (do rabbis?  thinking of Stein), hence it is true), it has to explain everything in the universe.  I know that in my upbringing the trump card against "evolution" was always "where did the universe itself come from?"  A good question (to which they have no answers) indeed, but the fact that evolution doesn't presume to address it explains why Stein is so wrong--like you indicate.

Still, when I was breaking away from religious connections, even though the familiar confusion of evolution as an all-encompassing origins myth was generally used in discussions, I could usually convince any who cared to follow the argument that evolution isn't an explanation for the origin of the universe, physics, or even the beginning of life itself (at least not the origins of the building blocks of life, and probably not early chemical self-assembly).  I'm not saying that these issues became disentangled in their minds, just that they could grasp the fact that these divisions exist in science.  These weren't Yale graduates, either.

I'm sure that Stein doesn't listen to his opponents, notably because, as he said in the interview aimed at theists, he is on a mission for god.  But the fact that he has learned almost nothing whatsoever from some of the more expert biologists and a host of intelligent bloggers means that he is either extraordinarily isolated from criticism (even more than most "open-minded" IDists are), incomparably incapable of learning anything about it, or some combination of the two.

A fog from a huge amount of prescription and OTC medications (he admitted to taking many legal drugs on Glenn Beck's show) could partially explain it.  Or not.  Denial seems to work equally well for many DI fellows, though none of them seems so wedded to some of the most ludicrous creationist claims ever, as Ben is.

Glen D
Posted by: RupertG on May 20 2008,13:48



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'd say that they argue this way because it's what they're most used to, but don't forget that even if they did understand science, they'd never be able to win their case using real scientific argumentation. It's kind of all they've got. But again, people who understand science aren't really their target audience.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And in arguing this way against science, they've lost the argument. If Expelled's thesis really was that science  is rejecting scientists for unscientific reasons, then it has to have a strong grounding in what science actually is. The moment Stein said that evolution can't explain gravity, that thesis crumbled to dust.

But since that wasn't the real message of the movie - or of ID - this doesn't matter to them or their audience. The real purpose of Expelled - and of ID - isn't science or theology, it's politics, in the sense of persuading people that if they support certain leaders then they'll have their heart's desire. And conversely, that those who disagree with those leaders are directly attacking the deepest beliefs of those people.

Counteracting poisonous politics is one area where science is woefully hopeless, and why whenever one head is lopped off the creationist hydra another pops up in its place. Until that is addressed, this will never change.

R
Posted by: JohnW on May 20 2008,14:29

Quote (RupertG @ May 20 2008,11:48)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I'd say that they argue this way because it's what they're most used to, but don't forget that even if they did understand science, they'd never be able to win their case using real scientific argumentation. It's kind of all they've got. But again, people who understand science aren't really their target audience.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And in arguing this way against science, they've lost the argument. If Expelled's thesis really was that science  is rejecting scientists for unscientific reasons, then it has to have a strong grounding in what science actually is. The moment Stein said that evolution can't explain gravity, that thesis crumbled to dust.

But since that wasn't the real message of the movie - or of ID - this doesn't matter to them or their audience. The real purpose of Expelled - and of ID - isn't science or theology, it's politics, in the sense of persuading people that if they support certain leaders then they'll have their heart's desire. And conversely, that those who disagree with those leaders are directly attacking the deepest beliefs of those people.

Counteracting poisonous politics is one area where science is woefully hopeless, and why whenever one head is lopped off the creationist hydra another pops up in its place. Until that is addressed, this will never change.

R
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They've lost the argument against scientists.  But I don't think they care about that any more.  Since Dover, the ID movement has shifted its focus.

It's all about the hearts and minds of average church-going conservatives - and average church-going conservatives, like most of the non-scientist population, are not very scientifically literate.  Religious apologetics is something their target audience understands pretty well, and they're already predisposed to see this debate in religious terms, not scientific ones.
Posted by: Doc Bill on May 20 2008,17:48

Re:  Expelled and John Lennon

Good argument, except that Expelled wasn't focused on criticizing Lennon's music.  Clearly, the use of "Imagine" in Expelled was for artistic effect, that is, they used the music without approval or paying royalties.

If Expelled had been about "music and religion" then they might have a case, but, alas, this is not the case.  I'm not a lawyer and I don't even play one on TV, but if I had to guess I'd IMAGINE that the Judge is looking at the Expelled lawyer thinking, "Fucktard."

What do I know.
Posted by: didymos on May 20 2008,19:21

Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 20 2008,11:44)

Since evolution only exists to displace Christianity and to deny the obviousness of design in nature (the preachers say so (do rabbis?  thinking of Stein), hence it is true)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Shmuley Boteach < certainly > < does >.


 
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 20 2008,11:44)

I'm sure that Stein doesn't listen to his opponents, notably because, as he said in the interview aimed at theists, he is on a mission for god.  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So Stein must view himself and reality something like this:


Darwinist Nazis.  I hate Darwinist Nazis.


(edited: broken quote)
(edited 11/4/2008: New Image Host)
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 21 2008,00:21

[quote=J-Dog,May 20 2008,09:17]  
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
... they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am soooo going to rip this off.

(With full citation of course)  Glenn Davidson, ATBC May 20, 2008 "Expelled: No Intelligence allowed"


Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 21 2008,00:37

[quote=Dr.GH,May 20 2008,22:21]
Quote (J-Dog @ May 20 2008,09:17)
   
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
... they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am soooo going to rip this off.

(With full citation of course)  Glenn Davidson, ATBC May 20, 2008 "Expelled: No Intelligence allowed"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, *I* wrote that. See the top post on this page.
Posted by: Dr.GH on May 21 2008,00:58

[quote=Arden Chatfield,May 20 2008,22:37]
Quote (Dr.GH @ May 20 2008,22:21)
 
Quote (J-Dog @ May 20 2008,09:17)
     
Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 19 2008,20:48)
... they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am soooo going to rip this off.

(With full citation of course)  Glenn Davidson, ATBC May 20, 2008 "Expelled: No Intelligence allowed"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, *I* wrote that. See the top post on this page.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


opps.  Got it.

I'll use it!  Get used to it.

Bwahahahhhahhahaha
Posted by: PTET on May 21 2008,06:10

Great thread BTW. w00t!
Quote (JohnW @ May 20 2008,12:23)
It also explains the continued popularity of the "Darwin deathbed confession" meme.  Even if it were true, it would make no difference to whether life evolved.  But if you see this as a battle between followers of Jesus and followers of anti-Jesus, the deathbed confession sounds like a devastating argument.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think this misunderestimates the power of the fundamentalist mind to warp any argument to support their position.

Here's Conservapedia on < Mother Theresa >:      

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
In August 2007, it came to light that she often questioned her faith in God and this doubt stayed with her until the time of her death. At one point she even stopped praying... It is widely acknowledged that her skepticism, while healthy in any truly faithful believer, made her works in the name of God much more meaningful as a symbol of her devotion to Him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Darwin's "doubts" invalidate Darwinism.

Theresa's "doubts" stengthen Christianity.

William Burroughs, < QFT >:-

"If you're doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit, not with the good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal."



[Edited to change "religious" to "fundamentalist". Apologies etc., etc.]
Posted by: Kristine on May 21 2008,09:00

More filing...

Ben Stein, < Creationist of the Month >.

< A great blog I just found > with a great subline:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
We share a common ancestor with other apes. Get over it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

:)
Posted by: Kristine on May 21 2008,12:03

Who died and made me librarian? Oh, well.

< Quick ruling on lawsuit promised. >
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
A judge has promised a fast decision in a lawsuit brought by Yoko Ono to remove the song Imagine from a movie challenging the concept of Darwinian evolution.

A lawyer for the film's distributors has warned the litigation could wreck the movie's political message.

US District Judge Sidney Stein said he will rule quickly in the case after both sides described the issues surrounding the song and movie in harsh terms during arguments.

Lawyer Anthony T. Falzone said the movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, was set to open in Canada on June 6 and DVD rights needed to be finalised by the end of May for distribution in October.

The movie is currently being shown in about 200 cinemas in the United States.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Good summary > from the WSJ's Law Blog. And here's an interesting quote:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< A lawyer for the movie's distributors has warned > that the litigation could wreck the movie's political message by preventing it from impacting viewers in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential campaign.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on May 23 2008,09:07

Working < this > into the Darwin-Hitler narrative is gonna present a challenge:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
McCain rejects televangelist Hagee's endorsement
10:55 PM CDT on Thursday, May 22, 2008

FROM WIRE REPORTS
Republican presidential candidate John McCain rejected the months-old endorsement of John Hagee on Thursday after an audio recording surfaced in which the San Antonio televangelist said Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust had been part of God's plan to chase the Jews from Europe and drive them to Palestine.

Mr. McCain called Mr. Hagee's remarks "crazy and unacceptable."

"I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well," Mr. McCain said in a statement issued Thursday.

Mr. Hagee, the head of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church and one of the nation's leading Christian supporters of Israel, quickly responded that he was withdrawing the endorsement and removing himself from an active role in the campaign.

Mr. McCain had sought Mr. Hagee's support for more than a year to shore up his credentials with the religious right. But controversy has dogged the endorsement since Mr. McCain announced it Feb. 27 at a news conference before the Texas primary.

Mr. Hagee has referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "the great whore" and called it a "false cult system" and linked Hitler to the church, suggesting that it helped shape his anti-Semitism. He has said he is driven by the belief that the creation of the state of Israel and the return of Jews to Palestine are God's will.

Audio of Mr. Hagee's sermon, from the late 1990s, was first posted last week by the liberal Web site Talk to Action.

In the sermon, Mr. Hagee said the Bible prophesied Hitler's brutality. "How is God going to bring them back to the land? The answer is fishers and hunters," Mr. Hagee said, referring to how Jews ended up in modern Israel. "A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and forces you. Hitler was a hunter."

Mr. Hagee continued: "That will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, 'My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the Land of Israel.' "

Some have compared Mr. Hagee's remarks with those of Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.. But Mr. McCain rejected the comparison, saying Mr. Hagee wasn't his pastor and that he didn't attend his church for 20 years.

The latest remarks from Mr. Hagee to surface may strike at the heart of Mr. McCain's efforts to reach a crucial group of voters, Jews, some of whom have viewed Mr. Obama with suspicion.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the country's largest branch of Judaism, said that while he did not consider Mr. Hagee anti-Semitic, he found a reading of the Bible that would include a prophecy of Hitler to be "obscene."

Mr. McCain has tried to distance himself from Mr. Hagee's views, saying he strongly condemned anti-Catholic rhetoric. Yet he had never rejected the endorsement.

"I'm glad to have his endorsement," he said on ABC's This Week in April. "I condemn remarks that are, in any way, viewed as anti-anything."

Also Thursday, Mr. McCain repudiated the support of Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher who has described Islam as an "anti-Christ religion" and the Muslim prophet Muhammad as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil," according to ABC News.

The New York Times, The Associated Press
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: deejay on May 23 2008,09:39



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If you try to put yourself into Stein's mindset (a horrible place, I know), this idea is not too surprising. The thing is, Stein and the rather childlike people he's now making a living off of consider 'Darwinism' to be the opposite of 'Christianity'. Since the two are 'rivals', they think Darwinism is supposed to explain all the same things as Christianity. And of course, since Christianity can be pressed into service to explain anything, they think they've scored a great rhetorical coup when they point out that Darwinism doesn't explain everything. USA! USA! USA!

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Hi Arden – I really appreciate this insight a lot as well.  I think it goes a long way towards describing the thinking of traditional creationists.  It also helps a lot with understanding Dembski’s rallying cries against materialism, and  Behe’s insistence on step-by-molecular-step descriptions of evolutionary histories.

The person I’m doing my best to figure out right now is good old Kevin Miller.  He may have run away from here, but the sad truth is that he was a lot more substantive in his posts here than he has ever been at his own blog.  It’s pretty lame; one of two credited screenwriters for Expelled is basically trolling at his own blog.  His posts are mostly just brief snippets of other people’s dishonest and/or substance-free endorsements of Expelled, and he’ll add virtually nothing of his own analysis of what are really just sound bites.  His commenters take him to task and press him for details, but they never come.  Instead, he’ll just post another sound bite that he knows will tick off his remaining readers, and the cycle continues anew.    

With fewer comments each time, though, I imagine his efforts will fade into oblivion. With Kevin, there may just not be all that much to figure out.
Posted by: Nullifidian on May 23 2008,12:30

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,13:10)
And it exactly explains the 'deathbed conversion' meme, since in religious apologetics, that WOULD invalidate a whole religion.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


New-ish poster, but a long time lurker.

Although in practice, a conversion to another religion (taking it as granted that creationists think of evolution as a 'religion') hasn't always meant the death of the religious sect. Shabbetai Zevi, my favourite Messianic claimant, found himself running up against another Messiah named Nehemiah ha-Kohen, who didn't scruple at snitching to the Sultan in Istanbul that Zevi entertained messianic delusions of putting the sultan's crown on his own head.

Zevi, seeing the danger that he was in, converted to Islam, which pleased the Sultan so much that Zevi was made an official in his court at an enormous salary. Zevi was well pleased with this turn of events too. The only people who were displeased were Zevi's followers, some of whom abandoned their messiah, but a great deal of people hung on and actually converted to Islam as well! He has followers hanging on in Turkey, outwardly practicing Islam, to this very day.

I once tried that same line of thought on a Campus Crusader, entertaining the idea of converting to Christianity because it was Darwin who "showed me the way" and it caused a truly wonderful level of cognitive dissonance. :-D
Posted by: ERV on May 23 2008,22:48

< Wait, what? >
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled has lost money. The company has laid off most staff, and cant at the moment afford a DVD (personal inside info!!)- therefore even less people will see the film
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Excuse me? A baking powder? SWEET!
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 24 2008,01:59

Theater counts as of just now, < at boxofficemojo >:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Rank LW Title Distributor Theater Count / Change Week #

21 20 < Expelled >: No Intelligence Allowed Rocky Mountain Pictures 83 -127 6
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




ETA: On the bright side (for < Expelled >), it could be worse.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
23 10 Redbelt Sony Classics 68 -864 4
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: paragwinn on May 24 2008,02:24

Quote (Kristine @ May 19 2008,17:11)
I apologize for my gaffe. And because I am so pure and wholesome, here's more < gossip on Stein >.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
regarding ben stein- he spoke at one of my company's functions a few years ago, and i was assigned to escort him from his limo to the function and back when he was done. he carried with him an enormous leather satchel that he refused to let anyone else touch or carry for him. right before he was to go on stage, he opens said satchel, and hand-to-god, it was FULL of perscription drugs. like at least 100 different bottles of drugs. he downed a handful of 'em before he got on stage. it was the most bizzare thing i've ever seen. believe it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

(From the comments.)

I should point fingers - I've been on Benadryl today. :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Could Stein's prescribing doctor beee......MICHAEL EGNOR??

Let's ask Colleen Reardon. < http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96sreardon.phtml >
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on May 24 2008,03:34

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,13:10)

This is a world where one flaw in the personality of a person can invalidate everything they ever said in their life, or any scientific theory they ever ascribed to. (What's been referred to as the 'silver bullet' school of IDC argumentation.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< "Magic bullet", not "silver bullet" >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I tend to think of SciCre argumentation, and even some of the ID argumentation, as a search for a "magic bullet". By this, I don't mean it in the sense that Ehrlich did when searching for a cure for syphilis. I mean it in the sense of werewolf movies. There, the magic bullet is simply a silver slug that will destroy the lycanthrope on contact. Those wielding the magic bullet need invest no other effort in dealing with the lycanthrope, are not required to be pure in spirit, and certainly have no need to *understand* lycanthropy in any deep sense. Similarly, the SciCre "professionals" are engaged in the peddling of "magic bullets", which retain their magic only so long as they aren't used on real lycanthropes. The magic bullet users, as Scott relates, remain secure in their faith that the evil lycanthropes can be held at bay or vanquished, right up until the time the magic bullet is fired -- and is found to have lost its virtue.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Needs an update that erases any distinction between SciCre and IDC, but I think it still holds up.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on May 24 2008,09:28

Magic bullshit, really.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on May 24 2008,09:51

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ May 24 2008,01:34)
 
Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 20 2008,13:10)

This is a world where one flaw in the personality of a person can invalidate everything they ever said in their life, or any scientific theory they ever ascribed to. (What's been referred to as the 'silver bullet' school of IDC argumentation.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< "Magic bullet", not "silver bullet" >

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I tend to think of SciCre argumentation, and even some of the ID argumentation, as a search for a "magic bullet". By this, I don't mean it in the sense that Ehrlich did when searching for a cure for syphilis. I mean it in the sense of werewolf movies. There, the magic bullet is simply a silver slug that will destroy the lycanthrope on contact. Those wielding the magic bullet need invest no other effort in dealing with the lycanthrope, are not required to be pure in spirit, and certainly have no need to *understand* lycanthropy in any deep sense. Similarly, the SciCre "professionals" are engaged in the peddling of "magic bullets", which retain their magic only so long as they aren't used on real lycanthropes. The magic bullet users, as Scott relates, remain secure in their faith that the evil lycanthropes can be held at bay or vanquished, right up until the time the magic bullet is fired -- and is found to have lost its virtue.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Needs an update that erases any distinction between SciCre and IDC, but I think it still holds up.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I stand corrected.

Tho it appears we're talking about two different kind of magic bullets that the IDCers are trying to create: one is the person who claims that because there's 'not enough dust' on the moon then that means the Earth and Moon are 6,000 years old (and Genesis is thus proven); a more 'grass roots' type of magic bullet is personality-based, like when people like Sal claim that Darwin kicked dogs, therefore the Earth and Moon are 6,000 years old (and Genesis is thus proven).
Posted by: Amadan on May 26 2008,10:02

Just came across this, apologies if anyone has encountered it before.



Like evolution, it organises and explains all that confusing data.

Quasi-edit (i.e. added after preview): My creaking recollection of Venn diagrams suggests that the circles should be enclosed in a rectange U representing the universe of ideas. Or perhaps UD representing the universe of Tard?
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 26 2008,10:10

Quote (Amadan @ May 26 2008,11:02)
Just came across this, apologies if anyone has encountered it before.



Like evolution, it organises and explains all that confusing data.

Quasi-edit (i.e. added after preview): My creaking recollection of Venn diagrams suggests that the circles should be enclosed in a rectange U representing the universe of ideas. Or perhaps UD representing the universe of Tard?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I believe there was a similar (or perhaps the same) diagram posted quite some time ago (on the BW, I think), but it's worth posting again from time to time.
Posted by: Grayman on May 29 2008,21:57

Based on the Boxofficemojo.com theater count as of May 29, Expelled will be without any theaters on Friday the 30th.
Posted by: ERV on May 29 2008,22:06

No, its still around here in the OK area.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on June 02 2008,10:46



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Yoko Ono Loses Bid to Block Use of `Imagine' in Film


NEW YORK (AP)  -- Yoko Ono has lost her Manhattan legal battle to block the use of John Lennon's song ``Imagine'' in a film challenging the theory of evolution.

Lennon's widow had sued the makers of ``Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,'' saying they used parts of the song without her permission.

In a decision Monday, federal Judge Sidney Stein said the filmmakers are protected under the ``fair use'' doctrine. That permits small parts of a copyrighted work to be used without an author's permission under certain circumstances.

The movie opened on U.S. screens in April; it's set for release in Canada on Friday and on DVD in October.

It presents a sympathetic view of intelligent design, the theory that the universe is too complex to be explained by evolution alone.

Ono's attorney did not immediately return a call for comment

< Ono loses lawsuit >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I can't say I really mind.  I just hope no one accepted the claim that Expelled was actually critiquing the song, when the movie was trashing atheists, and the song only wants to be rid of religion.

Still, it's 15 seconds, so I can see its being protected as "fair use" on grounds of brevity, and related content.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >
Posted by: Lou FCD on June 02 2008,10:54

I might as well be the first:

Interesting surname that Judge has...

:)

ETA:  Google isn't readily turning up a direct relationship, for the record.


Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 02 2008,11:04

Does this mean that 15 second slices of Expelled are now fair game? :) I mean, they can hardly complain...
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 02 2008,11:05

I'm guessing the opening in Canada will be pathetic considering the number of negative reviews available to potential viewers.
Posted by: Lowell on June 02 2008,11:46

Quote (Lou FCD @ June 02 2008,10:54)
I might as well be the first:

Interesting surname that Judge has...

:)

ETA:  Google isn't readily turning up a direct relationship, for the record.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yeah, they're not related, although it is interesting where Judge Stein went to law school. Yale, class of 1972. Ben Stein was valedictorian, class of '70.

< http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=2282 >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein, Sidney H.
Born 1945 in Passaic, NJ

Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U. S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Nominated by William J. Clinton on January 11, 1995, to a seat vacated by Pierre N. Leval; Confirmed by the Senate on March 17, 1995, and received commission on March 17, 1995.

Education:
New York University Graduate School of Education

Princeton University, A.B., 1967

Yale Law School, J.D., 1972

Professional Career:
New York Army National Guard, 1969-1975
Law clerk, Hon. Stanley Fuld, Chief judge, New York Court of Appeals, 1972-1973
Private practice, New York City, 1974-1995

Race or Ethnicity: White

Gender: Male
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on June 02 2008,12:11

Yeah, before this gets out of control, that was meant as a joke.

But just for the record, so there are no questions, I dug up 1930 and 1920 census returns for Ben's dad, Herbert.

Herbert and his sister Pearl were born in Michigan, abt 1917 and 1919 respectively, and as of 1930 there were no other siblings.

Their parents were David (b abt 1887 in Russia, imm. 1892(? it's hard to read) cit. 1900) and Jessie (b abt 1893 NY to Russian immigrants).

In 1920, the family of four lived in Detroit, but by April 1930 were living in Schenectady.

If Ben and Sidney were related, it would almost have to be somewhere before that.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 02 2008,12:12

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ June 02 2008,11:04)
Does this mean that 15 second slices of Expelled are now fair game? :) I mean, they can hardly complain...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Hmmm... >
Posted by: Lou FCD on June 02 2008,12:19

(As an OT aside, I'm a little frustrated with finding documents for my own family ATM and could use a break.  If there's anyone who needs a quick lookup done, feel free to PM me.)
Posted by: Glen Davidson on June 02 2008,12:42

In the more complete story, apparently Ono only lost the preliminary injunction:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Transformation trumps all. That’s the lesson we take away from today’s decision, authored by the SDNY’s Sidney Stein, in the case of Yoko Ono versus Premise Media, the producer of the film “Expelled.” Here’s the opinion denying Ono’s preliminary injunction motion.

Backstory: The film, starring journalist and actor Ben Stein (Columbia, ‘66; Yale law, ‘70), tries to make the point that American academia discriminates against people who espouse “intelligent design” theory — an alternative to evolution. In the course of ridiculing what they see as an academic world dominated by secular views, the filmmakers use a 15 second clip of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” (”Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too”). The purpose of using the clip, according to Premise’s lawyer, Stanford’s Anthony Falzone, is to criticize the song’s “overtly anti-religious message” as “dangerously naive.” (Past LB coverage of the case here and here.)

In batting down Ono’s PI motion, Judge Stein (no relation, as far as we know) said the plaintiffs failed to show “a clear likelihood of success on the merits” — one of the prongs of the PI analysis — because, “on the basis of the current record, defendants are likely to prevail on their affirmative defense of fair use.”


While conceding that “Expelled” is a commercial film, and that the copyrighted work, Lennon’s “Imagine,” is the kind of work that lies at the “core” of copyright protection, Judge Stein appeared to give credence to the defendants’ theory that the sequence of the movie that includes the 15 seconds of “Imagine” amounts to a “layered criticism and commentary of the song.” In other words, the movie-makers adequately “transformed” the work. Citing testimony, Judge Stein — who later in the opinion compares the case to a Second Circuit precedent called Blanch v. Koons — writes:

The Cold War-era images of marching soldiers, followed by the image of [Joseph] Stalin, express the filmmakers’ view that [”Imagine”’s] secular utopian vision ‘cannot be maintained without realization in a politicized form’ and that the form it will ultimately take is dictatorship. The movie thus uses the excerpt of “Imagine” to criticize what the filmmakers see as the naivete of John Lennon’s views.

Still pending is a parallel suit, filed in New York State court, by EMI Records, which says it owns the song recording — i.e. Lennon’s recorded performance, as distinct from the musical composition. Among other things, EMI claims that by using the song, Premise is harming EMI’s ability to license “Imagine,” which has only been licensed in one film, “The Killing Fields.”

However, in today’s opinion from federal court, Judge Stein wrote that Yoko Ono “proffered no evidence to date that permitting defendants to use a fifteen-second portion on of the song for a transformative purpose will usurp the market for licensing [“Imagine”] for traditional uses.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< WSJ blogs, including link to the judge's decision >

Glen Davidson
Posted by: Kristine on June 02 2008,16:49

Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you agree that Expelled < started out asking "if John Lennon was right > and concluding that he was wrong"? I thought this was a film about evolution and asking if Charles Darwin was right.

The description of this film is morphing all the time, chasing whatever publicity it gets.
Posted by: Lou FCD on June 02 2008,18:32

Quote (Kristine @ June 02 2008,17:49)
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you agree that Expelled < started out asking "if John Lennon was right > and concluding that he was wrong"? I thought this was a film about evolution and asking if Charles Darwin was right.

The description of this film is morphing all the time, chasing whatever publicity it gets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


...and this surprises you why?
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 02 2008,20:49

Quote (Kristine @ June 02 2008,14:49)
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you agree that Expelled < started out asking "if John Lennon was right > and concluding that he was wrong"? I thought this was a film about evolution and asking if Charles Darwin was right.

The description of this film is morphing all the time, chasing whatever publicity it gets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It reminds me of the Cheney-Bush justifications for invading Iraq- all bullshit all the time.
Posted by: Lou FCD on June 02 2008,21:32

Quote (Dr.GH @ June 02 2008,21:49)
Quote (Kristine @ June 02 2008,14:49)
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you agree that Expelled < started out asking "if John Lennon was right > and concluding that he was wrong"? I thought this was a film about evolution and asking if Charles Darwin was right.

The description of this film is morphing all the time, chasing whatever publicity it gets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It reminds me of the Cheney-Bush justifications for invading Iraq- all bullshit all the time.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It never was true, and always will be.
Posted by: Louis on June 03 2008,02:37

But wait, why would John Lennon's sung desire for "no religion" be at all relevant to a film that is criticising the unfair dominance of a specific set of scientific ideas in the academic world? I thought ID wasn't about religion. What's religion got to do with i......

{sound of penny dropping}

Oh I get it.

;-)

Louis
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on June 03 2008,04:34

Quote (Lou FCD @ June 02 2008,22:32)
Quote (Dr.GH @ June 02 2008,21:49)
 
Quote (Kristine @ June 02 2008,14:49)
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you agree that Expelled < started out asking "if John Lennon was right > and concluding that he was wrong"? I thought this was a film about evolution and asking if Charles Darwin was right.

The description of this film is morphing all the time, chasing whatever publicity it gets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It reminds me of the Cheney-Bush justifications for invading Iraq- all bullshit all the time.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It never was true, and always will be.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sig worthy. Dibs.
Posted by: Quidam on June 03 2008,09:44

Quote (Kristine @ June 02 2008,15:49)
Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you agree that Expelled < started out asking "if John Lennon was right > and concluding that he was wrong"? I thought this was a film about evolution and asking if Charles Darwin was right.

The description of this film is morphing all the time, chasing whatever publicity it gets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The film is about firmly conflating Evolution-Darwinsm-Science- Methodological Naturalism-Atheism-State Violence in the viewers mind.  That always was the goal and still is.  You only have to listen to Stein to realize when he says "Darwinism can't explain "Life, the Universe and everything" he is deliberately conflating those terms.

Fair use does not need to consider the quality of a  critique or commentary, merely whether that is what it is and whether the copright holder has suffered financially as a result.

As for cutting Expelled into 15 second clips - that is uneccessary.  The length of the clip is a secondary consideration. You would be perfectly entitled to produce a critique of the film and use clips of almost any length from the film to support your critique.   If the object was to show the film in its entirity so that people would not need to pay to see the original film then it would fail the fair use test
Posted by: Kristine on June 03 2008,10:44

I was being sarcastic, folks. :)

Excuse me if this has been posted before. "< But what else >?"


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled then goes on to interview a number of proponents of intelligent design. Each of them sounds smart, obviously more knowledgeable about science and the origin of life than I am, but the film fails to define exactly what these men think and what they're proposing. I understand they reject the theory of evolution. I understand that intelligent design involves a "designer." But what else? What would intelligent design research contribute to the body of science literature? How would intelligent design researchers test their claims? Unfortunately, the film doesn't bother to provide answers to these questions.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on June 03 2008,10:54

The < dishing continues >. I'm looking forward to Expelled's reception in Canada.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There is a claim, near the end, of wanting to make sure the promised freedom´s of America are upheld. Freedom of speech, freedom of independent thought, life, liberty…you know the drill. With that thesis, this is the best Stein can come up with? That a theory only recently modified from its original definition signals the beginning of the end for American freedom? You are joking, right? He points to the beginning of the Declaration of Independence which states all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" as evidence ID should be at least discussed, if not embraced.

Again, the narrative doesn´t hold up to intense scrutiny. Aside from the scientific advances since the declaration was signed and ratified in 1776, those words were used to keep rights from women, such as voting and land ownership. Other documents were the foundation for laws banning interracial marriage or allowing slavery. Since that time, Ben forgets, civilization has advanced to a point where we understand all men and women are created equal-for the most part. That one group shouldn´t have more rights than another. Just because the founders of the country believed in a God, of which there is no scientific proof, does not mean there is one.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And from the comments:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Others claim that this film's theatrical BO make it worth seeing on DVD. I disagree. As the Wikipedia documents, the producers hired four separate marketing companies to promote it. They toured the film nationwide to generate "buzz". And they even paid certain communities to see the film. One cannot judge this film's Week 1 box office unless the producers openly disclosed how much they spent to market and promote its release. The week 4 BO estimates are out: this film has suffered week-over-week BO drops of 53%, 51% and 55%. These are not the numbers of a film that has generated any significant word-of-mouth recommendations.

If you do decide to see this film at home, I strongly suggest you use your pause button early and often while watching. Look up the cases of the "Expelled Five" while watching. Note the distortions of the Darwin quote. Note how it's difficult to understand Dawkins's "Ultimate 747" point because Ben's response that demonstrates that he didn't understand.

Finally, I suggest you pause while Ben is getting his "standing ovation" -- and see if you're upset to know that the whole "lecture" was fiction, too.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on June 03 2008,14:14

Quote (Kristine @ June 03 2008,10:54)
The < dishing continues >. I'm looking forward to Expelled's reception in Canada.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Eh!  Here's a couple a Noted Canadian Intelligent Design hosers for you, eh... And let the NEW ICSD Conference begin.

And I never noticed before how much Bob McKenzie resembles a certain other Canadian...


Posted by: Kristine on June 03 2008,16:39

This is an article that touches on both Expelled and on the MMR controversy.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Exactitude may sound like good science—atomic clocks, sub-micron optical tweezers, and all that good stuff we use to keep satellites in orbit and Web sites streaming.  < But an obsessive fear of uncertainty is the opposite of science. >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From Slate.
Posted by: KimvdLinde on June 09 2008,14:24

Looks like Expelled is done in the theatres. They are not longer listed at mojo theatre count, nor is there any update since May 29 on the box-office amounts
Posted by: JLT on June 12 2008,14:47

< This must be a joke. > Please.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) will recognize Ben Stein with its “Freedom of Expression Award” during EMA’s Home Entertainment Awards ceremony June 24. [...]
Stein, a writer, actor, filmmaker, economist and lawyer, recently starred as the host of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary on intelligent design and its contention within the scientific community. The film hits DVD Oct. 21, from Vivendi Entertainment.
[...]
“Just being a conservative in Hollywood categorizes Ben Stein as courageous,” said Bo Andersen, president of the EMA. “But more, he has fearlessly articulated, as only he can, views that would be considered provocative by many and established himself a leading conservative voice in the nation. In his latest cinematic work, Ben Stein boldly and without equivocation, embraces a free speech stance and a different world view in the discussion of intelligent design versus evolution.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Kristine on June 12 2008,16:20

Quote (JLT @ June 12 2008,13:47)
< This must be a joke. > Please.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) will recognize Ben Stein with its “Freedom of Expression Award” during EMA’s Home Entertainment Awards ceremony June 24. [...]
Stein, a writer, actor, filmmaker, economist and lawyer, recently starred as the host of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary on intelligent design and its contention within the scientific community. The film hits DVD Oct. 21, from Vivendi Entertainment.
[...]
“Just being a conservative in Hollywood categorizes Ben Stein as courageous,” said Bo Andersen, president of the EMA. “But more, he has fearlessly articulated, as only he can, views that would be considered provocative by many and established himself a leading conservative voice in the nation. In his latest cinematic work, Ben Stein boldly and without equivocation, embraces a free speech stance and a different world view in the discussion of intelligent design versus evolution.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If it wasn't a joke before, it is now. :)
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on June 20 2008,15:13

Expelled is due to open in Canada in a week.  Charles McVety, (imagine a Canadian version of Jerry Falwell, but even more self-righteous), held a protest outside of the Royal Ontario Museum last week against the Darwin exhibit currently going on there.  

< Protesters rail against Darwin exhibition >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Charles McVety stood in front of a giant poster of Charles Darwin, and called the father of natural selection a giant racist.

"Today, we look up at this picture of Charles Darwin and ask that the truth be known," said the president of Canada Christian College to a multicoloured crowd of 50 prayerful protesters in front of the Royal Ontario Museum.

"Yes, he was a brilliant man. Yes, he had many insights. But, unfortunately, he also taught hatred and devaluation of life and death."

Waving pamphlets that suggest Darwin "showed a certain disdain for 'savages,'" and claiming "many evolutionists are outspoken racists," the protest was part of an odd campaign to stake out the higher ground for creationists, using the unlikely racism card.

The group, led by Dr. Mc-Vety, had come from a private screening of a documentary called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. In it, narrator and main character Ben Stein (the sometime actor/sometime economist) argues that the scientific establishment is "expelling" academics who even vaguely dissent from Darwinism in favour of intelligent design -- by pressuring them to leave their jobs or denying them tenure.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



The National Post article says there were 50 protesters there, but judging from < Larry Moran's pics > it looks as though there were about a dozen, tops.

Walt Ruloff seems to be using the film to push for so-called 'academic freedom' legislation here too:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Mr. Ruloff responded that he would love to get a private audience with Stephen Harper, and said he's already met with MPs to push for an academic freedom bill in Canada where, he insists, scientists are being persecuted, too.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Jason Spaceman on June 21 2008,12:54

Expelled opens here in Canada on June 27, this is the first review I've come across in a Canadian newspaper.  Needless to say Peter McKnight didn't much care for it (and that's putting it mildly):

< No intelligence allowed in Stein's film >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The makers of Expelled, including Ben Stein, have not let facts stand in the way of their anti-Darwin screed

Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, June 21, 2008

Although you're probably not aware of it, scientists, lobby groups, the media and the courts are all united in a massive conspiracy to destroy your freedom. But have no fear, freedom fighter Ben Stein is here.

That, in effect, is the thesis of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the new anti-science "documentary" which opens across Canada on June 27, was produced by Vancouver's Premise Media, and stars Stein, the lawyer, actor, game show host and speechwriter for former U.S. president Richard Nixon.

The subtitle of the film is wholly appropriate as there is precious little intelligence displayed in its more than 90 minutes. But the subtitle's reference to the content of the film was unwitting -- it was meant to refer to a giant conspiracy to banish intelligent design theory from the halls of academe and the culture as a whole.

Now, you might ask, what exactly is intelligent design? But don't ask the producers of the film, since they don't even bother to define it. Don't ask Stein, either: I did, but all I got from him was a suggestion that the meaning of the term comes through in the film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on June 21 2008,17:01

Kevin Miller 11 has been hyping the opening in Canada.  Looks like Canadians aren't buying this heaping bowl of dog poop called 'Expelled" either.  What's cool about the article above is the author talks about his conversation with Stein.  Is Stein playing dumb or is he really as dumb as he seems is my question.  

Kevin 11 has also instituted a new policy at his blog - if he doesn't like what you have to say your comments won't show up.  How cool is that?
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on June 21 2008,17:55

Here is another part of McKnight's review. . .



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That's not the worst of it. According to the film, Darwinism has led not only to atheism, but to something much worse: The Holocaust. Expelled intersperses clips of the Nazis with Stein's visit to Dachau, and Stein talks to several people who claim the Nazis were inspired by Darwin.

Nowhere does Stein mention the centuries of anti-Semitism before Darwin -- in fact, Expelled all but ignores anti-Semitism as a reason for the Holocaust. Consequently, the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement saying, "Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry."

When I asked Stein about this statement, his response revealed his hostility toward the Anti-Defamation League more than anything else, as he told me bluntly, "It's none of their f---ing business."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: bystander on June 21 2008,22:01

I would have been a fly on the wall during the interview, McKnight certainly did his homework.

I wonder if Stein is regretting the movie yet. This seems to be the first sighting of Stein outside of finance for quite awhile.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 21 2008,22:20

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ June 21 2008,17:01)
Kevin Miller 11 has been hyping the opening in Canada.  Looks like Canadians aren't buying this heaping bowl of dog poop called 'Expelled" either.  What's cool about the article above is the author talks about his conversation with Stein.  Is Stein playing dumb or is he really as dumb as he seems is my question.  

Kevin 11 has also instituted a new policy at his blog - if he doesn't like what you have to say your comments won't show up.  How cool is that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Read all about it... but not the censored comments, obviously!

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....omments >

Hypocritical TARD.
Posted by: stevestory on June 21 2008,22:24

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 21 2008,23:20)
Kevin 11 has also instituted a new policy at his blog - if he doesn't like what you have to say your comments won't show up.  How cool is that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That is standard policy on the creationist blogs. For obvious reasons.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 21 2008,22:33

Let's play nice now, Richard. You're blatantly misrepresenting my new editorial policy. As I've clearly stated on my blog more than once, I am merely deleting all off-topic comments and blatant thread hijacks. It has nothing to do with whether or not I like the content of your comment and everything to do with whether or not you are behaving like an asshole. As you'll note on my blog, I am still allowing all sorts of derogatory material through. In fact, I have not deleted a single comment since commencing my policy--during which I deleted several thread hijacks. In fact, even your latest comment got through.
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 21 2008,22:42

Sorry, Kevin, but you have demonstrated yourself by your actions and deeds to be both a liar and a fraud.

So, who gives a rat's ass about what policy you have on your blog?  Like, it matters?

Maybe you and Sternberg should go hang out in his office at the Smithsonian.  I think they have free Wi-Fi there.

Loser.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 21 2008,22:42

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 21 2008,22:33)
Let's play nice now, Richard. You're blatantly misrepresenting my new editorial policy. As I've clearly stated on my blog more than once, I am merely deleting all off-topic comments and blatant thread hijacks. It has nothing to do with whether or not I like the content of your comment and everything to do with whether or not you are behaving like an asshole. As you'll note on my blog, I am still allowing all sorts of derogatory material through. In fact, I have not deleted a single comment since commencing my policy--during which I deleted several thread hijacks. In fact, even your latest comment got through.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And who is the self declared arbiter of "off topic", and "hijacks"?

"Big science", meet "Big Kevin".
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 21 2008,22:49

Cross post:

Funny that, Kevin. Scientists just want science education to stay 'on topic', yet you wet your pants over it.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 22 2008,00:41

As I said on my blog, Rich, you're right. All scientists want science to remain on topic, including those who support Intelligent Design. Thanks for pointing that out.

As for you, Doc Bill, sounds like I touched a nerve. Ouch!
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 22 2008,01:04

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,00:41)
As I said on my blog, Rich, you're right. All scientists want science to remain on topic, including those who support Intelligent Design. Thanks for pointing that out.

As for you, Doc Bill, sounds like I touched a nerve. Ouch!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Which scientists would they be, Kevin?

Do you mean Behe who wants to redefine science to include astrology?

Don't worry, all your posts go through straight away on this 'Darwinist' site..
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 22 2008,01:34

Crosspost:

Did he say that? Substantiate or retract, please.

You don't need to be a philosophical naturalist to use methodological naturalism.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on June 22 2008,08:44

Just look at fundy, lying kevin 11's blog since he instituted the new anti-free speech policy.  not a single comment from anyone but tard 11.

And hey tard 11 how about that Canadian press?  Looks like they're on the bankroll of the American Big Science.  Ha ha fucking ha :-)
Posted by: ERV on June 22 2008,09:09

heh. Kevin still reads AtBC.

Ive deleted two comments on my blog(s) in the past two years.  They were threats, and I saved the IP#s, printed them off for the cops, and moved along.

Ive never deleted an 'off topic' post.

Why do you hate freedom so much, Kevin?
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 22 2008,10:35

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,00:41)
As for you, Doc Bill, sounds like I touched a nerve. Ouch!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, I'm not too keen on cockroaches either, Kev.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 22 2008,10:51

ERV: Now you're sounding just like George Bush. Are you going to accuse me of being part of Al Qaeda next?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 22 2008,10:52

Here's your substantiation, Rich: < http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....ink.php >
Posted by: midwifetoad on June 22 2008,10:58

Substantiation of what?
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 22 2008,12:46

Quote (midwifetoad @ June 22 2008,10:58)
Substantiation of what?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin the c*nsor asserts:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Yes, Behe as well as PZ Myers, who wants to redefine science to include atheism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



in the article PZ says..



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This does not mean that scientists can't be religious. We can encompass irrational beliefs without regret and without obligation—I can, actually, look at my kids in a different way than I would an experimental subject under my microscope. I also do not pretend that I view my children rationally and objectively, untainted by emotion or history, and I'm not ashamed of that at all. So, a scientist should have no problem demanding one standard of logic and evidence in the lab, and dropping that demand when they go to church on Sunday.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Kevin doesn't understand that methodological naturalism isn't philosophical naturalism. If we could study the supernatural, it would be natural.

PS. DARWIN MADE HITLER DO IT.
Posted by: Lou FCD on June 22 2008,14:01

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 22 2008,13:46)
PS. DARWIN MADE HITLER DO IT.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now Rich, don't be so over-the-top.  That Premise is so inane that if you made a movie out of it, not even the most completely moronic portion of society would...

oh.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 22 2008,16:32

Congrats, Rich. You've just demonstrated your ability for selective reading once again. Try this PZ quote on for size, from the same article: "As I was puzzling over how to answer such an odd question, I realized why I thought it was odd. The scientist and atheist positions are the same. It doesn't matter which hat I'm wearing, the answers won't change."
Posted by: midwifetoad on June 22 2008,16:42

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,16:32)
Congrats, Rich. You've just demonstrated your ability for selective reading once again. Try this PZ quote on for size, from the same article: "As I was puzzling over how to answer such an odd question, I realized why I thought it was odd. The scientist and atheist positions are the same. It doesn't matter which hat I'm wearing, the answers won't change."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But exactly what are you trying to substantiate?

Do you disagree with what follows your mined quote?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What should a scientist expect from an idea? That it be a reasonable advance in knowledge; that it be built on a foundation of evidence; that it be testable; that it should lead to new and useful questions and ideas.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on June 22 2008,16:50

Naughty Kevin's been hangin' with Sal.  Perhaps he needs a spanking?

ETA:  I can arrange that, see my sig.


Posted by: raguel on June 22 2008,16:52



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Congrats, Rich. You've just demonstrated your ability for selective reading once again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Sig-worthy IMO   :D
Posted by: ERV on June 22 2008,17:11

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,10:51)
ERV: Now you're sounding just like George Bush. Are you going to accuse me of being part of Al Qaeda next?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Retard, I was giving examples of the two times I have had to delete comments, contrary to your "I am merely deleting all off-topic comments and blatant thread hijacks" "All scientists want science to remain on topic, including those who support Intelligent Design" comments which attempted to imply that 'scientist' bloggers delete comments they dont like 'just like you'.

I dont.

Ive only deleted/'not approved' two posts*.  Ever.  And I get a hellovalot more hits/comments than you.  If I can handle it, you can.






*which occurred long before you crapped out 'EXPELLED', Mr. Center of the Universe.
Posted by: stevestory on June 22 2008,17:34

Kevin, if you ever get tired of being on the side of lies and censorship, we'll be here.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 22 2008,19:20

Okay Kevin. You say:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
PZ Myers, who wants to redefine science to include atheism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



which you think is the same as



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As I was puzzling over how to answer such an odd question, I realized why I thought it was odd. The scientist and atheist positions are the same. It doesn't matter which hat I'm wearing, the answers won't change
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Where is he redefining science, exactly? Perhaps you have 'selective understanding'. Probably Darwin's fault.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 22 2008,19:36

Rich: You're like the last little pig, always running "wee wee wee" all the way home. If you want to engage me on my blog, fine. But I'm not going to run back and forth between there and here with you anymore. And I'm definitely not going to help you promote ATBC on my blog.

As for my point about PZ, he'd be the last one to deny that he's conflating atheism and science. In fact, he encourages such behavior. So you're fighting a losing battle, Rich--again.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 22 2008,19:48

ERV: You called me a retard? I thought elementary school was out for the year.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 22 2008,19:50

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:36)
Rich: You're like the last little pig, always running "wee wee wee" all the way home. If you want to engage me on my blog, fine. But I'm not going to run back and forth between there and here with you anymore. And I'm definitely not going to help you promote ATBC on my blog.

As for my point about PZ, he'd be the last one to deny that he's conflating atheism and science. In fact, he encourages such behavior. So you're fighting a losing battle, Rich--again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Pull your censorship policy and we'll chat over there, Kevin. I've debated long creobots long enough to not invest time in commentary that might not see the light of day. PZ conflates nothing. And he certainly doesn't redefine anything. You had a bit of a quotemine, though, eh? Probably Darwin's fault.

PS - Kevin, if you think we use your blog to promote AtBC, you're more delusional than I thought. Getting a lot of commentary, recently?
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 22 2008,19:51

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:48)
ERV: You called me a retard? I thought elementary school was out for the year.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Reengineering the argument regarding design?
Posted by: ERV on June 22 2008,20:17

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 22 2008,19:51)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:48)
ERV: You called me a retard? I thought elementary school was out for the year.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Reengineering the argument regarding design?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ROFL!!! HES LIKE THE BOY FTK!!!

Can I keep him?  Please?? I promise Ill feed him and water him and play with him every day, honest mister!
Posted by: stevestory on June 22 2008,20:26

Quote (ERV @ June 22 2008,21:17)
Quote (Richardthughes @ June 22 2008,19:51)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:48)
ERV: You called me a retard? I thought elementary school was out for the year.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Reengineering the argument regarding design?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ROFL!!! HES LIKE THE BOY FTK!!!

Can I keep him?  Please?? I promise Ill feed him and water him and play with him every day, honest mister!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL. ERV is definitely invited to the 2008 Doverlicious Dovetacular Drinkathon or whatever the hell we're calling it.
Posted by: raguel on June 22 2008,21:00

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:36)
As for my point about PZ, he'd be the last one to deny that he's conflating atheism and science. In fact, he encourages such behavior.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


[URL=http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06

/what_should_a_scientist_think.php]http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....ink.php[/URL]




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There are a number of people, including many of the contributors to the Panda's Thumb, who are adamant that evolution must maintain a plausible deniability from atheism—that atheism is not a necessary consequence of accepting good science (a point with which I agree)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Given the above and the part MWT quoted earlier, Kevin is honoring the amusing creationist tradition of linking to articles that directly contradicts his point. /bow
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 22 2008,21:14

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 22 2008,10:46)
PS. DARWIN MADE HITLER DO IT.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Come on! You would have to be a lying sack of shit to say something thing that, let alone post it on the internet.  I cannot imagine the sort of putz that would publish it, or make a movie with that crap.

Well, the Disco boys, Ben Stein, and Kevie.  

Hey, there were two lesbians who tortured a five year-old to death just last week.

The ID fucks will probably do a movie about how that was scientists' fault because we are all about killing and murder.

Kevie, I wish you had the honesty to stop using OUR medicine because WE don't need you.

But, leech that you are, you will take advantage of OUR food, and OUR medicine.
Posted by: ERV on June 22 2008,21:17

Quote (stevestory @ June 22 2008,20:26)
LOL. ERV is definitely invited to the 2008 Doverlicious Dovetacular Drinkathon or whatever the hell we're calling it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Depends on if I can find a boarder for Kevin.  Doggie Daycare takes pit bulls, so Arnies fine, but I dunno what their policy is on Creationists.  They might not have someone on-site to clean up the Creationists steaming piles of crap 24/7.


 
Quote (raguel @ June 22 2008,21:00)
Given the above and the part MWT quoted earlier, Kevin is honoring the amusing creationist tradition of linking to articles that directly contradicts his point. /bow
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, everybody makes mistakes.  Read an article too fast or whatever.  What makes Creationists distinct is that they will never, ever, EVER say "Oops.  My bad. Sorry."
Posted by: ERV on June 22 2008,21:27

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:48)
ERV: You called me a retard? I thought elementary school was out for the year.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So lets get this straight--
Me calling you a retard because you cant follow a simple conversation=WHY IS EVERYONE SO MEAN TO ME **SQUUEEEEE!!**
You (a retard) calling me (an HIV-1 and cancer researcher) a Nazi=PARADIGM SHIFT!

God damn youre retarded!  LOL!  A masochistic retard, but hell, everyone has their kinks.  You go girl.
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 22 2008,22:05

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:48)
ERV: You called me a retard? I thought elementary school was out for the year.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, Kev, you're a retard by any description.

Mentally deficient.

Actually, since you're a deliberate retard, or a DR, you are an insult to genetic retards.

Kev-0, I had students like you and I flunked them.  Hey, the world needs gas pumpers and screen writers.  I don't tolerate stupid, Kev-0, and that means you.  City of Stupid, population YOU.

Really, you need to go hang around your own low kind and stop hanging around here, because, in case you haven't gotten the drift, you're an idiot and we've got enough idiots to deal with.

Oh, and if you're thinking that Doc Bill is Oh So Superior to poor little screenwriter Kev-0, then you've finally had a sensible thought.

Yeah, I'm Bill to the Dawk I have a PhD, I'm smarter than you 'cause I have a science degree.

Smarter than you.  (<--- memorize this, dude.)
Posted by: Lou FCD on June 22 2008,22:42

Alright, we're hanging on by a thread here.

Let's move back from just "you're a retard" and get back to "here's why your argument is retarded" and "here's where you lied your slimy ass off".

I trust we can all make the distinction, yes?

Thanks.
Posted by: raguel on June 22 2008,22:57

Quote (ERV @ June 22 2008,21:17)
Quote (stevestory @ June 22 2008,20:26)
LOL. ERV is definitely invited to the 2008 Doverlicious Dovetacular Drinkathon or whatever the hell we're calling it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Depends on if I can find a boarder for Kevin.  Doggie Daycare takes pit bulls, so Arnies fine, but I dunno what their policy is on Creationists.  They might not have someone on-site to clean up the Creationists steaming piles of crap 24/7.


 
Quote (raguel @ June 22 2008,21:00)
Given the above and the part MWT quoted earlier, Kevin is honoring the amusing creationist tradition of linking to articles that directly contradicts his point. /bow
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, everybody makes mistakes.  Read an article too fast or whatever.  What makes Creationists distinct is that they will never, ever, EVER say "Oops.  My bad. Sorry."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've certainly made a lot of mistakes; it's really the arrogance and stubbornness that kills me.  Despite my poor attempts at humor, this is beginning to grate on me. Over at IIDB, I was going round and round with a creationist about an AiG article concerning vestigial organs. I pointed out that it was dishonest in the sense it charged "evolutionists" with creating a "new,revisionist" definition of the word "vestigial". I c/p'd an excerpt from Origin of Species. He never did admit that the article was dishonest. Now some other looney jumps in and claims that I've been intellectually dishonest.   :angry:
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 22 2008,23:08

Feel free to tell Kevin on his blog. I doubt your comments will get through. He's taking his ball home with him.
Posted by: Lou FCD on June 23 2008,00:00

We all have our pet peeves, raguel.  I'd wager that lying dirtbag theocrats who disingenuously pretend their voodoo is science in order to circumvent the Constitution, rake on any sane person's nerves, and some scum buckets rake more than others for any given normal person with a brain in his or her head.

Not that I'm talking about anyone in particular, of course, but I've seen one or two about here from time to time, and I've been known to occasionally lose my cool same as the next person with a brain.

Take our friend Kevin, for instance.  Now, it's true that we should probably be professional and polite, despite his utterly willful ignorance, despite his asinine revisionist claims about Nazis, despite his lying, despite his moronic flop of a movie, despite his pandering to the basest instincts of the least thoughtful segment of society, despite his massively ironic and rampant censorship of dissenting opinion based on evidence on that piss poor excuse of a blog he has, despite his cowardice, despite  (did I mention willful ignorance and deception yet?)  

where was I?

Oh yeah.  Despite all that, we should probably treat him with all the respect he deserves, and yet sometimes people like Kevin just get under our skin with their willful ignorance and their asinine revisionist history claims about Nazis, and their lying, and their moronic flop movies, and their pandering to the basest instincts of the least thoughtful segment of society, and their massively ironic and rampant censorship of dissenting opinion based on evidence on the piss poor excuses of a blog they have, and their cowardice, ...

I lost my train of thought again.

Oh yeah, sometimes they just deserve to be mercilessly mocked, and it's hard to resist the temptation.  Don't feel too bad about it.  You're only human.

And when their film flops miserably, and then they open it in another country, like say Canada to just pick a country at random, and it flops even more miserably because the word is out that it's a total piece of steaming dog shit and even the target audience realizes what a huge pile of crap it is... well then the temptation may just be more than any mere mortal can stand.

Now, take Kevin and put tits on him, and change his name to FrackinUpTheChildren, and I'll probably step outside the board rules my self from time to time.

I understand these things, and I don't get angry when I have to move a comment or two to the Wall.  It's just part of life, and part of my job.  I don't take it personally, and I hope you don't either.

Cheers,

Lou
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on June 23 2008,07:15

Canadians just don't seem to be buying the outright lies promoted by Expelled anymore than their southern neighbors do.

Read more < here. >

Here's a funy bit of classic Steinery:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled is at its most risible when it tries to establish a direct line from Darwin to eugenics and genocide. Stein quotes from a passage in Darwin's writing that appears to endorse the notion that for a species to thrive the infirm must be culled. He omits the part where Darwin insists this would be "evil" and that man's care for the weak is "the noblest part of our nature." When I asked Stein about this on my radio show he deadpanned, "If any Darwin fans are listening and we have misquoted him we are sorry ? we don't mean to diss Darwin."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What tardery.
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2008,09:34

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,09:51)
ERV: Now you're sounding just like George Bush. Are you going to accuse me of being part of Al Qaeda next?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's called irony and sarcasm. You get it, or you don't.

Is Stein proud to be associated with the likes of Ken Ham, Kevin? I didn't ask about Ham's feelings regarding Stein.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 23 2008,09:59

still crying all the way home, rich? i haven't deleted a single comment of yours, and yet you continue to act as if I have. What gives? Is it the fact that I've proven you--and the rest of this crew--wrong yet again on my blog?
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 23 2008,10:05

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,09:59)
still crying all the way home, rich? i haven't deleted a single comment of yours, and yet you continue to act as if I have. What gives? Is it the fact that I've proven you--and the rest of this crew--wrong yet again on my blog?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why are you here Kevin?

You come here posting your posts, that appear without delay, just to say "I've proven you wrong".

Well, Kevin, you've proven everybody here right who said that you can't have an open blog and tell untruths. Just get used to the crossposting. You've declared your intent to delete posts you don't like and so they'll be posted here instead. Har har.

Kevin,
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
All off-topic comments and thread hijacks will be deleted from now on, no matter how praiseworthy. In addition, all comments will be held for approval prior to posting.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's odd how all the blogs peddling lies simply can't have an open comment policy.

Yet your comments here appear without delay.

You'd think that it would be the other way round. After all it's the "Darwinists" that are suppressing you right? If that were true then every "Darwinist" blog would moderate all comments before they appear. Yet it only seems to be your side that does so.

How very very odd.

Maybe somebody should make a film about it?
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2008,10:33

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,08:59)
still crying all the way home, rich? i haven't deleted a single comment of yours, and yet you continue to act as if I have. What gives? Is it the fact that I've proven you--and the rest of this crew--wrong yet again on my blog?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


BWAHAHAHAHAHA! :D

< I >
< can't >
< wait >!
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 23 2008,10:39

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,09:59)
Is it the fact that I've proven you--and the rest of this crew--wrong yet again on my blog?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A challenge.

Kevin, tell us how you've proven the "crew" wrong this time.

I mean, anybody can claim anything.

Back up your assertions with the facts of the matter.

I'm open minded. I'll read anything you have to say.

And then as you used the word "again" please re-cap the other instance where you proved the crew wrong.

And as you say "yet again" I believe that means you refer to more then the two instances I've addressed above.

So, please prove there are facts, rather then empty claims, behind your words.

List the things that you've *proven* to be wrong that the crew here have claimed.

Bet ya won't do it.
Posted by: ERV on June 23 2008,10:50

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ June 23 2008,10:05)
Kevin,
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
All off-topic comments and thread hijacks will be deleted from now on, no matter how praiseworthy. In addition, all comments will be held for approval prior to posting.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



It's odd how all the blogs peddling lies simply can't have an open comment policy.

Yet your comments here appear without delay.

You'd think that it would be the other way round. After all it's the "Darwinists" that are suppressing you right? If that were true then every "Darwinist" blog would moderate all comments before they appear. Yet it only seems to be your side that does so.

How very very odd.

Maybe somebody should make a film about it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the past 2 months, Ive gotten ~5 times as many comments as Kev.

Yet somehow, I can handle open comments, and he cant.  But I suppose I am a Nazi, so I guess Im just good at organizing things.  And I suppose I do just gas dissenters instead of deleting their comments.  That might be a factor.
Posted by: Louis on June 23 2008,11:01

Quote (Lou FCD @ June 23 2008,06:00)
[SNIP]

Oh yeah, sometimes they just deserve to be mercilessly mocked, and it's hard to resist the temptation.  Don't feel too bad about it.  You're only human.

[SNIP]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is rather insulting to those of us who adopt a position of PRINCIPLED mockery, and worse it ignores the very good arguments supporting principled mockery.

;-)

Louis

P.S. Tongue partially in cheek. Principled mockery = serious, insult/ignores = humour. Just F everyone's I, in case FTK misquotes me at her website or something. There is no temptation to mock, there is a decided need and philosophical imperative as well as a tactical necessity.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 23 2008,11:09

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,09:59)
still crying all the way home, rich? i haven't deleted a single comment of yours, and yet you continue to act as if I have. What gives? Is it the fact that I've proven you--and the rest of this crew--wrong yet again on my blog?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ah, the bald assertion. I didn't say you had. But you can, and perhaps have deleted other's comments - how would I know otherwise?

You've made a claim about PZ that appears to be untrue. As for 'my crew', I like these folks, but they're not mine.

Kevin, you got given a book by a discovery institute fellow, funded by the discovery institute, read it, then interviewed more discovery institute fellows and made a film that is one of the offensive and revisionist in recent history. And then Ben Stein can't work out why "Darwinism" doesn't explain gravity...
Posted by: J-Dog on June 23 2008,11:09

Quote (Louis @ June 23 2008,11:01)
Quote (Lou FCD @ June 23 2008,06:00)
[SNIP]

Oh yeah, sometimes they just deserve to be mercilessly mocked, and it's hard to resist the temptation.  Don't feel too bad about it.  You're only human.

[SNIP]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is rather insulting to those of us who adopt a position of PRINCIPLED mockery, and worse it ignores the very good arguments supporting principled mockery.

;-)

Louis

P.S. Tongue partially in cheek. Principled mockery = serious, insult/ignores = humour. Just F everyone's I, in case FTK misquotes me at her website or something. There is no temptation to mock, there is a decided need and philosophical imperative as well as a tactical necessity.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I prefer Pounding On Poor Keven with the metaphysical:

"Tard is as Tard does, as my Momma used to say."
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 23 2008,11:21

Rich: I'm confused. Which discovery institute fellow gave me which book? Produce some evidence or stop it with the bald assertions. I assume you are bald, btw, that's why you wear the tard hat.
Posted by: deejay on June 23 2008,11:25

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,12:21)
Rich: I'm confused. Which discovery institute fellow gave me which book? Produce some evidence or stop it with the bald assertions. I assume you are bald, btw, that's why you wear the tard hat.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Don't quit your day job, kevinmillerxi.  Whatever that is.
Posted by: Louis on June 23 2008,11:26

I want to know if I'm part of the crew and if so what I've been proven wrong about. Dammit if I'm wrong I wants to know about it! Was I asleep? I've never even been to Kevin's blog, I wouldn't so sully my computer.

Louis
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 23 2008,11:31

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,11:21)
Produce some evidence or stop it with the bald assertions.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Pot/Kettle situation developing.

Kevin, it's obvious you can read.

What things have "we" been proven wrong about? I would have thought you'd be wanting to prove your point?
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2008,11:31

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,10:21)
Rich: I'm confused. Which discovery institute fellow gave me which book? Produce some evidence or stop it with the bald assertions. I assume you are bald, btw, that's why you wear the tard hat.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Maybe it was one of these >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
One of the best books I read while researching "Expelled"...
The Devil's Delusion, written by mathematician, philosopher, and professional contrarian < David Berlinski > (who also happens to play a key role in Expelled).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have seen Rich. No baldy, he. Evidence hurts.
Posted by: Jason Spaceman on June 23 2008,11:36

< John Moore, from The National Pest, reviews Expelled >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
John Moore, National Post  
Published: Monday, June 23, 2008

You have to admire the integrity of conspiracy theories. They're great Mobius strips of self-contained false reasoning and evidence able to contort to meet any external challenge to the perfection of their closed loops. Sept. 11 deniers will insist a lack of plane wreckage on the apron of the Pentagon is proof the building was struck by a missile. Show them a photograph of an engine lying on the lawn and they'll exclaim "Aha! That was planted!"

And so it is with the conspiracy laid out in the new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed hosted by the droll economist/actor/game show host/Republican Ben Stein. Expelled posits that the entire scientific establishment is enslaved to the theory of evolution, and in order to protect the Darwinian temple it engages in an ongoing campaign to crush all challenges to its "religion." The principal victim of this rearguard action is the would-be challenging theory called Intelligent Design (ID).

ID is often referred to as Creationism light. In fact it's more Creationism in drag. Though its proponents claim scientific neutrality, they are usually overtly religious people affiliated with overtly religious institutions. They have written essays and books about why ID is science. And yet when all the sophistry is boiled down, the theory amounts to "living things are complicated. Some-one must have made them."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: deejay on June 23 2008,11:41

He's not only the tard club president, he's also a client.

Posted by: Richardthughes on June 23 2008,11:42

Isn't Richard Weikart's book "From Darwin to Hitler" your source of 'knowledge'? It's the only one I've seen you offer. He's a  senior discovery institute fellow:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Weikart >

You should have asked them for funding on your 'documentary'.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on June 23 2008,11:45

Quote (Jason Spaceman @ June 23 2008,11:36)
< John Moore, from The National Pest, reviews Expelled >:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
John Moore, National Post  
Published: Monday, June 23, 2008

You have to admire the integrity of conspiracy theories. They're great Mobius strips of self-contained false reasoning and evidence able to contort to meet any external challenge to the perfection of their closed loops. Sept. 11 deniers will insist a lack of plane wreckage on the apron of the Pentagon is proof the building was struck by a missile. Show them a photograph of an engine lying on the lawn and they'll exclaim "Aha! That was planted!"

And so it is with the conspiracy laid out in the new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed hosted by the droll economist/actor/game show host/Republican Ben Stein. Expelled posits that the entire scientific establishment is enslaved to the theory of evolution, and in order to protect the Darwinian temple it engages in an ongoing campaign to crush all challenges to its "religion." The principal victim of this rearguard action is the would-be challenging theory called Intelligent Design (ID).

ID is often referred to as Creationism light. In fact it's more Creationism in drag. Though its proponents claim scientific neutrality, they are usually overtly religious people affiliated with overtly religious institutions. They have written essays and books about why ID is science. And yet when all the sophistry is boiled down, the theory amounts to "living things are complicated. Some-one must have made them."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Another good line from the same review  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Complaining that science won't take ID seriously is like grieving the fact that mathematicians won't consider a flower pot to be a number.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Richardthughes on June 23 2008,12:06

For your sequel, Kevin:

< http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/06/christian-nazis.html#more >
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on June 23 2008,13:05

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 23 2008,11:42)
Isn't Richard Weikart's book "From Darwin to Hitler" your source of 'knowledge'? It's the only one I've seen you offer. He's a  senior discovery institute fellow:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Weikart >

You should have asked them for funding on your 'documentary'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


When Stein admitted he did very little research regarding science, intelligent design or "darwinism" he noted this was the ONLY book he read "cover to cover".  In fact the way Stein describes it, that book was his only source of information.

What a moron.

Hey Kevin11 while you're here, was Sternberg fired?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on June 23 2008,13:32

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 23 2008,10:06)
For your sequel, Kevin:

< http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/06/christian-nazis.html#more >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Please, Richard. That would just confuse the film unnecessarily.
Posted by: improvius on June 23 2008,13:47

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,12:21)
Rich: I'm confused. Which discovery institute fellow gave me which book? Produce some evidence or stop it with the bald assertions. I assume you are bald, btw, that's why you wear the tard hat.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm going to guess it was Berlinski.  Am I right?
Posted by: J-Dog on June 23 2008,13:48

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,11:21)
Rich: I'm confused. Which discovery institute fellow gave me which book? Produce some evidence or stop it with the bald assertions. I assume you are bald, btw, that's why you wear the tard hat.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You lose again, TardMan.  This is a recent picture of Rich, getting set to visit some ID scientists at their labs.


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on June 23 2008,13:52

Yep, Canadians aren't falling for this crap either.  The Torontoist ran < From Darwin To Dachau With Ben Stein >

Maybe Kevin eleven can explain how the American science establishment, librull atheists, media and other evil forces managed to somehow infect Canada with the dreaded Darwin conspiracy?

Oh maybe Canadians simply aren't as dumb as Kevin had hoped.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on June 23 2008,14:22

Quote (J-Dog @ June 23 2008,11:48)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2008,11:21)
Rich: I'm confused. Which discovery institute fellow gave me which book? Produce some evidence or stop it with the bald assertions. I assume you are bald, btw, that's why you wear the tard hat.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You lose again, TardMan.  This is a recent picture of Rich, getting set to visit some ID scientists at their labs.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Wrong again.

People, I've explained this before. This is the real Richard Hughes:


Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2008,14:33

Quote (Kristine @ June 23 2008,08:34)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,09:51)
ERV: Now you're sounding just like George Bush. Are you going to accuse me of being part of Al Qaeda next?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's called irony and sarcasm. You get it, or you don't.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oops, ERV. You accused Kevin Miller of < sounding like Ben Stein >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled is not a nuanced experience. It begins with a brief excerpt of Stein apparently giving a lecture on ID to an enthusiastic college crowd, during the course of which he repeats the word "liberty" approximately seven million times.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Girl, shame on you! :)
*edit - just to clarify, not Ken Miller*
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2008,14:37

Whoa!


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Why does some ordinary schmuck in some small town in Ohio write me a threatening letter about this? Why does a pathetic nobody in some town in Wisconsin write me a threatening letter?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought everyone was a child of God, Ben.

Hypocrite. :O
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 23 2008,14:41

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ June 23 2008,14:22)
People, I've explained this before. This is the real Richard Hughes:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Phhfffffttt.


I'd never cut bread that thick.
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 23 2008,17:04

Mr_Christopher

If somebody's going to stick up for old Kev-0 it might as well be me.

Somewhere in a Q&A Kev-0 wrote that he knew that Sternberg wasn't fired.  Probably the only honest thing Kev-0 has written in years, but there you have it.

That's why Kev-0 is a liar.  Kev-0 said the answer to that question was revealed in the film;  it was not.  Kev-0 wrote the screenplay, therefore, he knew at the time the answer to the question was not revealed.  Ergo.

If somebody's going to stick it to old Kev-0 it might as well be me.

Hey, Kev-0, I was going to read your screenplay to cure my insomnia but I fell asleep reading the title.

Hey, Kev-0, you're so dumb your IQ isn't even a number.  It's not even a letter.  It's a scribble.

Hey, Kev-0, if you could write then...nevermind, what's the point?

Hey, Kev-0, you're so dishonest that you even cheat on yourself by jacking off with your left hand.

Hey, Kev-0, here's Louis to add the stuff I missed. I missed a lot of stuff, but I don't miss you.
Posted by: American Saddlebred on June 23 2008,17:26

Quote (Kristine @ June 23 2008,14:37)
Whoa!


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Why does some ordinary schmuck in some small town in Ohio write me a threatening letter about this? Why does a pathetic nobody in some town in Wisconsin write me a threatening letter?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought everyone was a child of God, Ben.

Hypocrite. :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OMG YAY HE GOT MY LETTER <3!!!
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 23 2008,17:43

Quote (American Saddlebred @ June 23 2008,17:26)
Quote (Kristine @ June 23 2008,14:37)
Whoa!
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Why does some ordinary schmuck in some small town in Ohio write me a threatening letter about this? Why does a pathetic nobody in some town in Wisconsin write me a threatening letter?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought everyone was a child of God, Ben.

Hypocrite. :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OMG YAY HE GOT MY LETTER <3!!!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


DONT LET CARLSONJOK SEA YOU'RE PIKCHURE. HE'S GAY HOMOSEXSUAL FOUR HORSES.
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on June 23 2008,18:11

Quote (Doc Bill @ June 23 2008,18:04)
Hey, Kev-0, you're so dumb your IQ isn't even a number.  It's not even a letter.  It's a scribble.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think you're looking for "flower pot."
Posted by: carlsonjok on June 23 2008,18:39

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 23 2008,17:43)
     
Quote (American Saddlebred @ June 23 2008,17:26)

OMG YAY HE GOT MY LETTER <3!!!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


DONT LET CARLSONJOK SEA YOU'RE PIKCHURE. HE'S GAY HOMOSEXSUAL FOUR HORSES.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Meh. I'm not much for them high-falootin' gaited horses.  Give me a plain old quarter horse or it's spotted cousin any day of the week.


True story that only American Saddlebred (and probably Wes) will appreciate. A number of years ago I was on a organized trail ride out to Fort Reno on my AQHA gelding Jack (above left) and a person on a Paso Fino went past.  Paso Finos have an < unusual gait >. Old Jack glances quickly over at this horse going by, looks forward again, then does a double take with a  look on his face that can only be described as ZOMG!WTF?!? Priceless!  

*waits*

Well.....my horse friends think it is a funny story.

*waits some more*

I'll get my coat.
Posted by: Louis on June 23 2008,18:41

Quote (Doc Bill @ June 23 2008,23:04)
[SNIP]

Hey, Kev-0, here's Louis to add the stuff I missed. I missed a lot of stuff, but I don't miss you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


{Inserts generic abuse}*

Louis

*Sorry lads and ladies, I'm phoning this one in. FTKev  remains beneath my contempt. Why waste the effort of thinking up something vaguely original or ribald? I've read what I need to read from him to know what I need to know about him. Maybe FTKev is a sweet guy, maybe he'd be fun to have a beer with, maybe he's a dishonest creationist shill. I doubt he's worried about my opinion any more than I am his.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 23 2008,19:00

yeah how can you be contemptuous of street urchins or quadraplegic retarded inuit crack whores.

it's more like, for me, Ohhhhhh.  Wow.  Another dishonest creationist.  Poor Poor Poor bastard.
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2008,20:42

So, who's game for the MST3K version of < Expelled >?

We need two bots. (Somehow, I don't think that would be a problem, but we need two pro-science, wisecracking, intelligent bots - I'm think of Rich and Louis, but we could rotate.) I'll host, of course - I've always wanted to break out of my egg, and strip down, a la Sigourney Weaver, to my u*wear, and then...

unzip my flesh-and-brief tromp d'eoil suit to reveal my fatigue-patterened taffeta prom dress beneath. :)

(Way to interrupt the male ' bot gaze.)

Then I and the 'bots could yell, "It's just a jump to the left!" whenever Frank'n'Stein appears on screen.

Posted by: Henry J on June 23 2008,21:02



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Reengineering the argument regarding design?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



They have to do that every now and then; the anti-evo arguments keep mutating.

Henry
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on June 24 2008,13:35

FTKevin's new mantra is when Expelled is in the black it will somehow be transformed into something that is not a dishonest piece of shit.  

What he fails to realize is that no matter how much perfume you spray on a turd, or no matter how much you polish it, a turd is always just a turd.

In fact the more money it generates only proves how many ignorant, misguided people there are who fall for this kind of fecal matter in the form of a film.
Posted by: Kristine on June 24 2008,14:54

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ June 24 2008,12:35)
FTKevin's new mantra is when Expelled is in the black it will somehow be transformed into something that is not a dishonest piece of shit.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben Stein's new mantra is that when the economy is back in the black (any day now - continue to pay no attention to the subprime monster behind the curtain), he will < no longer feel like shit >.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There are, broadly, two types of Ben Stein column: the ones where he's clearly and obviously wrong, on the one hand, and the ones where it's pretty much impossible to work out what he's trying to say, on the other. This week's column is of the second type.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Expelled > is of the first type. :)

*edit to include  < this gem >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Comparison to Ben Stein is an insult to douchebags everywhere.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quotable! :D
Posted by: J-Dog on June 24 2008,20:30

Quote (Kristine @ June 24 2008,14:54)
*edit to include  < this gem >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Comparison to Ben Stein is an insult to douchebags everywhere.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Quotable! :D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good snag on the quote!  BTW - I can haz new icon 4 you now!  

Good look,  still mysterious, & sexy, yet a proper woman with head covering, and not the full hijab...
Posted by: Kristine on June 25 2008,10:58

Waddaya talkingabout? I dyed my hair green and gold. ;)

< At last, a story from Ben about how he became involved >, and a piece of work he - I mean it - is:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Despite a vast knowledge of history and trivia - his now defunct game show, Win Ben Stein's Money, was built on the premise that he could beat almost anyone in a fact showdown - Stein insists he, himself, knew nothing about the subject until 2005, when a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania public school district from teaching Intelligent Design. The judge dismissed it as "creationism in disguise" and declared any attempts to bring it into the classroom an example of "breathtaking inanity."

"I saw an article in The New Yorker about that," Stein said, "and I thought, ‘Now this is odd - it seems perfectly innocuous that the students be taught alternatives to Darwinism, and the whole might of the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and educational establishment came down on this poor little school board and beat them to a pulp. What nerve you bullies have to tell these people what they can and cannot teach.' I mean, it's a local school board, they're supposed to have the right to determine the curriculum.

"Then Walt Ruloff, the producer [of Expelled], who's Canadian, got in touch with me and said he wanted to do something about Darwinism and how it leads to Social Darwinism, which leads to Nazism and the Holocaust."

Stein, at this point, was interested.

He insists that, at first, any claims against the theory of evolution were met with skepticism on his part [But I thought he said he didn't know anything about the subject?], but when the time came to meet with some prominent scientists, as well as Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, Stein found he wasn't getting the answers he wanted.

After this, he went to visit a handful of ID representatives who were "extremely courteous and polite and did not make what seemed to be extravagant claims," so Stein decided he'd dig a little further, and along with a shovel he grabbed a camera crew.

While in the interview Stein insists that he just wants the film to show how society - especially the scientific community and Western academia - should accommodate alternative theories to evolution as long as they're well-researched and balanced, the approach and tone in Expelled is without question more severe.

Stein words his questions suggestively and readily interrupts his interview subjects, barges into the Smithsonian demanding an interview but quietly strolls through the hallways of the Intelligent Design headquarters. His voiceover drawls over black-and-white stock footage of everything from mad scientists to graphic images of the Holocaust, and the speech he gives at a university in Malibu cuts only after audiences witness the standing ovation Stein receives.

And yet, he isn't Michael Moore; he is a host and a narrator, not the director and editor.

So would Stein have done anything differently had he been given more creative control?

"Yes," he said. "I think I would've had more about the Holocaust and less about contemporary Darwinism and neo-Darwinism. And I wouldn't have had all that loud bass sound that goes on through much of the film, which I found a bit annoying."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

[Emphases mine.]
You mean your voice, Ben? You should be so hard on yourself. Your voice is a tinny, whiny tenor, so surely the annoyance cannot be your fault. :p
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ultimately, it seems that Stein - who is preparing to make another documentary, one which he predicts will be even more controversial than Expelled and make Americans in particular go crazy - is more interested in morality than in the scientific process, focused more on questions of religion than the nitty-gritty of cell structure.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gee, I want to be "controversial," but if I get criticized, or if my film is exposed to "alternatives," I'll get all hurt. You meanies! You meanies! Telling people what to do! Telling school boards what to teach!

Only Ben Stein gets to do that! Such as < in this interview >
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: Do you think those two theories can go hand-in-hand?

A: I think they do go hand-in-hand. My friend and yours, Charles Darwin, said as far as he could tell there was some part of existence that was created by design and some part created by accident. He wasn't sure how much there was.

Q: Scientists will tell you that Darwin never tried to explain the origin of life.

A: I completely agree. He wrote one letter about it. Bear in mind his followers, including powerful, well known atheists/Darwinists, say they can explain creation of life by Darwinist means. I think if we had Darwinism as Darwin propounded it, I don't think this movie would have been made.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I propose that we teach about gravity only as Newton propounded it. (And I think I just felt Darwin shudder in his grave. "My friend and yours"?)

Joshua Rosenau sums it up for me.
< Ben Stein, still a rat-bastard >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
He also claims not to have known that he misquoted Darwin in the movie, telling McKnight that he was "kind of dismayed if that's true." But in an interview with the National Post's John Moore, he waved it off, saying "If any Darwin fans are listening and we misquoted him we are sorry we don't meant to diss Darwin." Somehow, I think he meant to do exactly that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Texas Teach on June 25 2008,11:31



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"I saw an article in The New Yorker about that," Stein said, "and I thought, ‘Now this is odd - it seems perfectly innocuous that the students be taught alternatives to Darwinism, and the whole might of the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and educational establishment came down on this poor little school board and beat them to a pulp. What nerve you bullies have to tell these people what they can and cannot teach.' I mean, it's a local school board, they're supposed to have the right to determine the curriculum.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'm not quite clear on which bullies Ben doesn't want telling the little school board what they can teach.  Is it bullies like the parents of children in the school? Bullies like the science teachers?  Bullies like the DI?  I'm so confused.
Posted by: ERV on June 25 2008,12:26

Ben Steins involvement with EXPELLED is mutating.

I recall a few months ago, he was persuaded to join the PREMISE crew by an animation of the inner workings of a cell...  Wonder what happened to that story?
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on June 25 2008,13:00

Quote (ERV @ June 25 2008,12:26)
Ben Steins involvement with EXPELLED is mutating.

I recall a few months ago, he was persuaded to join the PREMISE crew by an animation of the inner workings of a cell...  Wonder what happened to that story?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That was just foreplay.  Stein said the darwin leads to killing jews book underwritten by the DI is what galvanized his desire to join the idiotic fringe.
Posted by: slpage on June 25 2008,14:25

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:36)
So you're fighting a losing battle, Rich--again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Losing battle...

Say - did you guys break even yet?

How do feel knowinng that you portrayed Crocker as a martyr when she was in reality an incompetent hack spewing creationist lies and nonsense in her classes?
Posted by: Kristine on June 25 2008,14:41

Quote (slpage @ June 25 2008,13:25)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,19:36)
So you're fighting a losing battle, Rich--again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Losing battle...

Say - did you guys break even yet?

How do feel knowinng that you portrayed Crocker as a martyr when she was in reality an incompetent hack spewing creationist lies and nonsense in her classes?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin Miller meant that, since the meanie Darwinist bullies keep oppressing ID advocates with evidence (for that is what Expelled is all about, no?), and since the cruel Darwinists keep denying that we're being mean, Darwinist Rich "loses" the battle by winning it.

I could be a Poe. Srsly. :)
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on June 27 2008,10:40

FTKevin is acting like he knows something about evolution/natural selection on his blog.  And now he's saying he wishes they had time to add people like Ken Miller to their propaganda film but the film was too short.  What a liar.  The Nova special on ID somehow managed to include both sides of the issue in a two hour slot.

Too funny.

Oh and the Canadian press continues to drag Expelled through the mud.
Posted by: Kristine on June 27 2008,11:06

Kevin, it's too late to wish you had made a good film after you've released an ideologically-motivated < stinker >.

There is no "debate" between good and bad filmmaking, good and crappy art (ironically, Hitler's aesthetic taste, if one can call it that, ran very close to today's evangelical kitsch), or science and pseudoscience.

Eat up.
Posted by: midwifetoad on June 28 2008,15:08



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If, on the other hand, design is true, materialist atheism is bunk. Materialist atheists know this perfectly well. That is why they persecute the design guys and cozy up to the “theistic” evolutionists.

And why Expelled was made and has no time for “theistic” evolutionism.

Now here is a quick test: If “theistic” evolution meant anything other than what I am describing above, ID theorist Mike Behe and I should be called theistic evolutionists - we accept conventional dating methods and common descent of living things But we think that God’s actions, if they exist, can be detected. They are indeed distinguishable from chance occurrences. This is the position affirmed by Scripture, tradition, and reason and denied by “theistic” evolution. And it is why we are called “creationists.”

Look, if God doesn’t exist, he doesn’t exist. But if he does exist, we’ll know about it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




All science so far.

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....houghts >
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 28 2008,20:16

I've come to the conclusion that Kev-0 wasn't involved with Expelled because he demonstrates that he knows so little about its production.

Mark Mathis, who apparently did work on Expelled, said and I quote:




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
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.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Funny, he didn't say the film didn't have room or ran out of time or had a crap screenwriter, although the latter appears to be the case.
Posted by: stevestory on June 28 2008,20:35

Quote (midwifetoad @ June 28 2008,16:08)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Look, if God doesn’t exist, he doesn’t exist. But if he does exist, we’ll know about it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is ridiculous arrogance, considering that we didn't even know Pluto existed 100 years ago.
Posted by: Texas Teach on June 28 2008,20:44

Quote (stevestory @ June 28 2008,20:35)
 
Quote (midwifetoad @ June 28 2008,16:08)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Look, if God doesn’t exist, he doesn’t exist. But if he does exist, we’ll know about it.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This is ridiculous arrogance, considering that we didn't even know Pluto existed 100 years ago.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's exactly the model the IDers are using.  Don't you remember how astronomers used to insist we teach the existence of Pluto to students for all those centuries, because eventually we'd find it?
Posted by: ERV on June 28 2008,20:56

Quote (Texas Teach @ June 28 2008,20:44)
That's exactly the model the IDers are using.  Don't you remember how astronomers used to insist we teach the existence of Pluto to students for all those centuries, because eventually we'd find it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My name for this argument is 'The super magic maybe machine argument'.

You make something up (eg humans have auras).  Then when people call BS on you, you proclaim that one day technology will PROVE you are right, just like we didnt know Pluto existed until we had better telescopes.

Futuristic super magic maybe machine is not evidence for a Designer.
Posted by: Kristine on June 30 2008,14:46

Quote (ERV @ June 28 2008,19:56)
Quote (Texas Teach @ June 28 2008,20:44)
That's exactly the model the IDers are using.  Don't you remember how astronomers used to insist we teach the existence of Pluto to students for all those centuries, because eventually we'd find it?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My name for this argument is 'The super magic maybe machine argument'.

You make something up (eg humans have auras).  Then when people call BS on you, you proclaim that one day technology will PROVE you are right, just like we didnt know Pluto existed until we had better telescopes.

Futuristic super magic maybe machine is not evidence for a Designer.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< And neither is the fact that Expelled sucked lemons in Canada >.

Geez, stick a fork in intelligent design. It's done. :)

I hear Ben's working on another crockumentary. *yawn*
Posted by: Chayanov on June 30 2008,15:03

Quote (Kristine @ June 30 2008,14:46)
Geez, stick a fork in intelligent design. It's done. :)

I hear Ben's working on another crockumentary. *yawn*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



"Ignored: Why Nobody Takes Me Seriously"
Posted by: JohnW on June 30 2008,16:26

Quote (Chayanov @ June 30 2008,13:03)
Quote (Kristine @ June 30 2008,14:46)
Geez, stick a fork in intelligent design. It's done. :)

I hear Ben's working on another crockumentary. *yawn*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



"Ignored: Why Nobody Takes Me Seriously"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought a better title would be

Shite: No Redeeming Features Allowed

Then I remembered that Ben just did that one.
Posted by: Kristine on July 03 2008,10:16

Oh, now < the story is > "I had long thought that Darwinism had a huge role to play in the mindset of the leaders of the Nazi party, and consequently a huge role to play in the Holocaust."
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"You cannot tell me for one minute that a court is competent to tell me what is science and what is not. A court is not divinely inspired. It's just some guy in a black robe."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I suppose that science is just some guy in a white robe?

A toast to ID, which is toast. *eyeroll*
Posted by: Lou FCD on July 03 2008,10:43

< Chris Comer has brought a federal lawsuit > against the Texas Education Agency and the Education Commissioner for her having been < Expelled > illegally.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
AUSTIN - A former state science curriculum director filed suit against the Texas Education Agency and Education Commissioner Robert Scott on Wednesday, alleging she was illegally fired for forwarding an e-mail about a lecture that was critical of the teaching of intelligent design in science classes.
Also Online

Christina Comer, who lost her job at the TEA last year, said in a suit filed in federal court in Austin that she was terminated for contravening an unconstitutional policy at the agency that required employees to be neutral on the subject of creationism - the biblical interpretation of the origin of humans.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



HT: < Greg Laden >


Posted by: Dr.GH on July 07 2008,14:41

From the Vancouver Sun:

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed ff Media gadfly Ben Stein is the co-writer and "host" of this strange documentary, which postulates that the teaching of "Intelligent Design" -- a variation of creationism -- has been blocked by a scientific community that can't look beyond Darwin's theory of evolution. The movie is mostly an attack rather than a defence, and it goes overboard when it starts to blame Darwinism for the Nazi death camps and other evils. Parental guidance. 97 min. Granville.
Posted by: Lou FCD on July 10 2008,13:24

I'm going to move this over here, and keep all the < Expelled > commentary in one place.

< From this thread >, which I'll now go close.

Quote (Peter Henderson @ July 10 2008,11:58)
Thought this video on expelled by Youtuber Thunderf00t might go down well on this forum:

< http://www.youtube.com/user/Thunderf00t >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Quote (Dr.GH @ July 10 2008,12:20)
Yep. It is remarkable how skilled they are at puting these things together. I hope their vacation goes well and the get back to trashing creationists real soon.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: Dr.GH on July 10 2008,14:13

There was a pro-creationist editorial promoting Expelled in the Ottawa Citizen written by a Rabbi. I am too disgusted to reply today.

< http://www.canada.com/ottawac....047&p=3 >


Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on July 10 2008,15:04

Could < this be the makings of a new documentary? > I tried to be in Stein's shoes for a while.

Shower, brb.
Posted by: midwifetoad on July 10 2008,15:16

Another one Expelled.

< http://www.philly.com/inquire....gs.html >
Posted by: Kristine on July 10 2008,15:32

Quote (midwifetoad @ July 10 2008,15:16)
Another one Expelled.

< http://www.philly.com/inquire....gs.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Whoa.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Not so fast, replies the seminary's leadership. The real issue, administrators say, is whether Enns violated the oath he took when he joined the faculty 14 years ago.

The oath requires all faculty members to pledge they will not "inculcate, teach or insinuate anything" contrary to the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith, the core creed of the Presbyterian faith.

That lengthy creed begins by proclaiming the "infallible truth" and "entire perfection" of Holy Scripture, whose sole author is God.

Westminster was created in 1929 after Princeton Theological Seminary, the flagship of Presbyterian scholarship in the United States, took a liberal turn. Westminster (whose teachers are all male) adopted the faculty oath in 1936.

"Our main concern is maintaining the historic theological integrity of the institution," board chair John H. White said in an interview Friday.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is any scientist  or science professor required to take an oath swearing to the infallible truth" and "entire perfection" of "Darwinism"? Anyone? :O
Posted by: Chayanov on July 10 2008,16:14

Quote (Kristine @ July 10 2008,15:32)
Whoa.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Not so fast, replies the seminary's leadership. The real issue, administrators say, is whether Enns violated the oath he took when he joined the faculty 14 years ago.

The oath requires all faculty members to pledge they will not "inculcate, teach or insinuate anything" contrary to the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith, the core creed of the Presbyterian faith.

That lengthy creed begins by proclaiming the "infallible truth" and "entire perfection" of Holy Scripture, whose sole author is God.

Westminster was created in 1929 after Princeton Theological Seminary, the flagship of Presbyterian scholarship in the United States, took a liberal turn. Westminster (whose teachers are all male) adopted the faculty oath in 1936.

"Our main concern is maintaining the historic theological integrity of the institution," board chair John H. White said in an interview Friday.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is any scientist  or science professor required to take an oath swearing to the infallible truth" and "entire perfection" of "Darwinism"? Anyone? :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
At issue is Enns' 2005 book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, written mainly for young Christians and Bible students wrestling with abundant modern scholarship showing apparent contradictions and inconsistencies in the Bible, especially the Old Testament.

Instead of rationalizing and explaining away the evidence of human storytelling in Scripture, Inspiration and Incarnation begins by urging readers to understand the Bible in the same way they perceive Jesus.

"Christ is both God and human," Enns declares in the introduction. "So is the Bible."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Darn kids just don't take religion on faith anymore.
Posted by: Quidam on July 10 2008,17:15



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The oath requires all faculty members to pledge they will not "inculcate, teach or insinuate anything" contrary to the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Obviously 1646 was the pinnacle of human achievement and knowledge

February 16 - First English Civil War - The Battle of Great Torrington, Devon, the last major battle of the conflict, is fought.
February 28 - Roger Scott is tried and whipped in Massachusetts for sleeping in church.
March 6 - Joseph Jenkes, in Massachusetts, receives the first colonial machine patent for a water wheel for his scythe mill.
May 5 - King Charles I surrenders his forces at Scotland.
May 30 - Spain and the Netherlands sign a temporary cease fire in the war.
June 25 - The New Model Army of Thomas Fairfax occupies Oxford.
October 28 - The first Protestant church assembly for natives is held in Massachusetts
November 4 - Massachusetts enacts the death penalty for denying that the Saints' Copybook is God's word.

Undated - The Westminster Confession of Faith is published.

Life expectancy was  43
Infant mortality was 320 per 1000 live births

Ahh, the good old days.
Posted by: Sol3a1 on July 10 2008,19:19

From Thunderf00t's video:

Boy did Ben Stein learn me there guys.

I never knew that Darwin was so crappy at explaining gravity and how the Universe of all things evolved.  He sold me!

Snake Oil!
Posted by: Amadan on July 14 2008,08:15

Sorry, I just can't stop laughing.

< The Walrus among the pigeons? >
Posted by: J-Dog on July 14 2008,09:02

Quote (Amadan @ July 14 2008,08:15)
Sorry, I just can't stop laughing.

< The Walrus among the pigeons? >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And on the flip side, we have Darwin's Deathbed Conversion.

To the top of the charts, with a bullet, kidz!
Posted by: Kristine on July 14 2008,09:42

I was just thinking of you, J-Dog, because I've < coined another term >.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This from a man who starred in a crockumentary of feigned underdoggedness about his and others' "suppression of speech" that was plastered all over this nation's screens in an effort to out-perform anything by Michael Moore.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now I think I should have said underdoggerel: n. A bogus claim of victimhood with populist appeal (e.g., "suppressed" creationism).
Posted by: J-Dog on July 14 2008,10:03

Quote (Kristine @ July 14 2008,09:42)
I was just thinking of you, J-Dog, because I've < coined another term >.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This from a man who starred in a crockumentary of feigned underdoggedness about his and others' "suppression of speech" that was plastered all over this nation's screens in an effort to out-perform anything by Michael Moore.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now I think I should have said underdoggerel: n. A bogus claim of victimhood with populist appeal (e.g., "suppressed" creationism).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks Kristine! ~!  It's So Sig Worthy! :)

XOXO!
Posted by: Louis on July 14 2008,10:26

Quote (Kristine @ July 14 2008,15:42)
I was just thinking of you, J-Dog, because I've < coined another term >.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This from a man who starred in a crockumentary of feigned underdoggedness about his and others' "suppression of speech" that was plastered all over this nation's screens in an effort to out-perform anything by Michael Moore.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now I think I should have said underdoggerel: n. A bogus claim of victimhood with populist appeal (e.g., "suppressed" creationism).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Underdoggerel? The puerile poetry of percieved persecution?

Louis
Posted by: EyeNoU on July 14 2008,10:40

Nice alliteration, Louis. Spiro Agnew couldn't top that.
Posted by: Louis on July 14 2008,11:11

Quote (EyeNoU @ July 14 2008,16:40)
Nice alliteration, Louis. Spiro Agnew couldn't top that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Spiro T Agnew? The world's favourite anagram?

Oh I wish I'd said that.

{You will, Oscar, you will}

Louis
Posted by: keiths on July 14 2008,11:44

Quote (Louis @ July 14 2008,09:11)
 
Quote (EyeNoU @ July 14 2008,16:40)
Nice alliteration, Louis. Spiro Agnew couldn't top that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Spiro T Agnew? The world's favourite anagram?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


To those pondering this, the classic anagram is of "Spiro Agnew" without the "T".

Unless you had something else in mind, Louis?
Posted by: dvunkannon on July 14 2008,12:12

Quote (Kristine @ July 03 2008,11:16)
I suppose that science is just some guy in a white robe?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What is wrong with this picture?

1- Jesus is 50 feet tall

2- Jesus is hitching for ride when He already has one.

3- Jesus is riding side saddle.

4- To accurately portray theistic evolution, the dinosaurs should be riding Jesus.
Posted by: Louis on July 14 2008,12:31

Quote (keiths @ July 14 2008,17:44)
Quote (Louis @ July 14 2008,09:11)
   
Quote (EyeNoU @ July 14 2008,16:40)
Nice alliteration, Louis. Spiro Agnew couldn't top that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Spiro T Agnew? The world's favourite anagram?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


To those pondering this, the classic anagram is of "Spiro Agnew" without the "T".

Unless you had something else in mind, Louis?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Absolutely!

Well.....possibly.

Louis
Posted by: dogdidit on July 14 2008,12:36

Quote (keiths @ July 14 2008,11:44)
     
Quote (Louis @ July 14 2008,09:11)
         
Quote (EyeNoU @ July 14 2008,16:40)
Nice alliteration, Louis. Spiro Agnew couldn't top that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Spiro T Agnew? The world's favourite anagram?

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


To those pondering this, the classic anagram is of "Spiro Agnew" without the "T".

Unless you had something else in mind, Louis?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh that. GROW A ... SPINE? PINES? SNIPE? Uh...

Here's fun:

< http://wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html >

Got 3,500 anagrams for "Spiro Agnew". Adding the "T" -- he never left home without it -- yielded over 16,000. A cursory glance at the 16,000 yielded "Orating Spew". Works for me...nattering nabob of negativity that I am. :)
Posted by: Lou FCD on July 14 2008,12:52

I'm rather fond of this one:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Pawn Orgies
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: celdd on July 15 2008,13:17

In case you missed it, you (with your closest 299 friends and $1800 to $2400) can still see Expelled!!

But you need to hurry - this offer is only good for this summer!

< For details see here. >

Kinda desperate if you ask me.  Why not wait for the DVD and play it in the church basement?
Posted by: carlsonjok on July 15 2008,13:30

Quote (celdd @ July 15 2008,13:17)
In case you missed it, you (with your closest 299 friends and $1800 to $2400) can still see Expelled!!

But you need to hurry - this offer is only good for this summer!

< For details see here. >

Kinda desperate if you ask me.  Why not wait for the DVD and play it in the church basement?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Because Nazi Darwinists goose-stepping just doesn't have the same impact on the small screen


Posted by: J-Dog on July 15 2008,13:32

Quote (celdd @ July 15 2008,13:17)
In case you missed it, you (with your closest 299 friends and $1800 to $2400) can still see Expelled!!

But you need to hurry - this offer is only good for this summer!

< For details see here. >

Kinda desperate if you ask me.  Why not wait for the DVD and play it in the church basement?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha!  Easy answer!

From the Review section, J. Matt Barber says "
“EXPELLED is earthshaking. I was absolutely blown away."

ASFAIK, you don't get a lot of BJAction™ in Church Basements...l
Posted by: Jake on July 15 2008,13:36



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
the persecution of fellow professionals who believe there is evidence to indicate intelligent design (God) in nature. They'll be shocked when they watch Ben uncover the stronghold an elite few with a particular worldview (Atheism) have over mainstream academia...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Expelled >

Wait, Im confused, I thought ID wasn't about squeezing Jesus into science?
Posted by: JohnW on July 16 2008,12:48

Quote (Jake @ July 15 2008,11:36)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
the persecution of fellow professionals who believe there is evidence to indicate intelligent design (God) in nature. They'll be shocked when they watch Ben uncover the stronghold an elite few with a particular worldview (Atheism) have over mainstream academia...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< Expelled >

Wait, Im confused, I thought ID wasn't about squeezing Jesus into science?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


At this stage, ID is about whatever ID needs to be about in order to maximise the separation of fools from their money.
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on July 17 2008,13:20

Ok, I've been busy for the last 3 weeks and pretty much offline so to speak.

Just catching up I see Expelled flopped in Canada, worse than in the US.  Check.  Kevin Miller is still spouting nonsense.  Check.  Ben Stein is still the most ignorant man in north america.  Check.

Have I missed anything else?

Chris
Posted by: Mr_Christopher on July 18 2008,18:02

Quick sign up for your DVD copy due at amazon in october!  See more < here >

And for those of you who suffered through this pig of a flick feel free to leave a review.
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on July 18 2008,19:08

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ July 17 2008,11:20)
Ok, I've been busy for the last 3 weeks and pretty much offline so to speak.

Just catching up I see Expelled flopped in Canada, worse than in the US.  Check.  Kevin Miller is still spouting nonsense.  Check.  Ben Stein is still the most ignorant man in north america.  Check.

Have I missed anything else?

Chris
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, some dirtbag sent an email to Myers threatening him with violence and got his wife canned from her job at the florists'. Oh yeah, that and Joy's still a loon and FTK's still an idiot.

So no, not much new.
Posted by: JonF on July 19 2008,08:18

It's B-A-A-A-A-C-K!

< http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,385344,00.html >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The controversial film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" will be re-released theatrically this summer across the United States to celebrate the film's legal victory over Yoko Ono, according to the documentary's producers. ...

"We had many individuals and groups who had planned to see the film, but decided not to because the cloud of doubt this lawsuit brought to the film," noted one of the film's producers, John Sullivan.

"We came out of the gate with strong momentum only to have our integrity questioned by this frivolous lawsuit. While we're thrilled with the film's having earned nearly $8 million during its first run; we've heard from enough people and groups who want to see it in their theaters that we've agreed to re-release it this time without an undeserved cloud over its head."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How does a lawsuit over content deter people from going to see a film? I guess it would increase the audience.
Posted by: Dr.GH on July 19 2008,13:42

I had missed < this Canadian review. >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Assembled by Nathan Frankowski, who did some Bush-lionizing on The Path to 9/11, this journey into ignorance is hosted by Ben Stein, a former Nixon speechwriter whose deadpan face was introduced in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Mr_Christopher on July 29 2008,18:31

Ahh and Denyse had such big expectations for Expelled in Canada.  Seems they saw much less of it than us and hated it more, if that's possible.  What's a canadian fundy to do?  I suppose this brought Denyse and Kevin Miller B closer in a spiritual yet consensual way.

I'm not sure why I'm bumping this, maybe I hate to see no one making fun of it anymore.

We need some new Ben Stein jokes.
Posted by: EyeNoU on July 29 2008,20:23

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ July 29 2008,18:31)
Ahh and Denyse had such big expectations for Expelled in Canada.  Seems they saw much less of it than us and hated it more, if that's possible.  What's a canadian fundy to do?  I suppose this brought Denyse and Kevin Miller B closer in a spiritual yet consensual way.

I'm not sure why I'm bumping this, maybe I hate to see no one making fun of it anymore.

We need some new Ben Stein jokes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben should revive his game show, only with a new twist. He could make the top prize an all expenses paid date with Jonathan Wells, and call the new show "Win Ben Stein's Moonie".......
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on Sep. 09 2008,17:28

Brace yourselves! Expelled!-dvd is coming! I got email from Disco Insitute:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Help Us Get Lawmakers Expelled.

We’re excited to be able to tell you that on October 21st Expelled: No Intelligence Allow, starring Ben Stein, will be released on DVD.  In Expelled, Stein  brilliantly exposed the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate science that challenges Darwin’s theory of evolution.

[...]

First

We would like to widely distribute the DVD to key policy makers, opinion makers and leaders throughout the country.  Such distribution takes more money than we have budget for right now. So, we’re looking for donations to help underwrite the cost of sending the DVD to these individuals.  Donations of any amount are welcome.  The cost of purchasing and distributing one DVD is about $25, so your donation of $100 will help us to send 4 DVDs.  We want to send out as many DVDs as possible Click here to donate now.



Second

If you run a church or school bookstore and would like to stock Expelled we can help you get a special wholesale price, if you pre-order 25 copies or more. By ordering together in quantity we may be able to get the cost per DVD reduced up to 50% off of the retail price.  This is a limited one time offer and we estimate the cost of 25 DVDs to be $300, plus shipping.  For bulk orders contact us at the e-mail or phone number below.



We have to move quickly to guarantee that the costs don’t go up.  The DVD is going into production soon, so orders must be placed and paid for by Wednesday, Sept. 17th.  Please contact Janine Dixon at jdixon@discovery.org, (206) 292-0401 x108 to start the order process.



Thank you for your support,



Robert Crowther

Director of Communications

Center for Science & Culture

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Order yours today. Stocks are limited.

It must be pure chance that I got my copy of Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial today.
Posted by: Henry J on Sep. 09 2008,17:33

Quick, somebody donate them a clue...
Posted by: J-Dog on Sep. 09 2008,20:29

Quote (Advocatus Diaboli @ Sep. 09 2008,17:28)
Brace yourselves! Expelled!-dvd is coming! I got email from Disco Insitute:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Help Us Get Lawmakers Expelled.

We’re excited to be able to tell you that on October 21st Expelled: No Intelligence Allow, starring Ben Stein, will be released on DVD.  In Expelled, Stein  brilliantly exposed the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate science that challenges Darwin’s theory of evolution.

[...]

First

We would like to widely distribute the DVD to key policy makers, opinion makers and leaders throughout the country.  Such distribution takes more money than we have budget for right now. So, we’re looking for donations to help underwrite the cost of sending the DVD to these individuals.  Donations of any amount are welcome.  The cost of purchasing and distributing one DVD is about $25, so your donation of $100 will help us to send 4 DVDs.  We want to send out as many DVDs as possible Click here to donate now.



Second

If you run a church or school bookstore and would like to stock Expelled we can help you get a special wholesale price, if you pre-order 25 copies or more. By ordering together in quantity we may be able to get the cost per DVD reduced up to 50% off of the retail price.  This is a limited one time offer and we estimate the cost of 25 DVDs to be $300, plus shipping.  For bulk orders contact us at the e-mail or phone number below.



We have to move quickly to guarantee that the costs don’t go up.  The DVD is going into production soon, so orders must be placed and paid for by Wednesday, Sept. 17th.  Please contact Janine Dixon at jdixon@discovery.org, (206) 292-0401 x108 to start the order process.



Thank you for your support,



Robert Crowther

Director of Communications

Center for Science & Culture

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Order yours today. Stocks are limited.

It must be pure chance that I got my copy of Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial today.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for the tip!

I think all my sock puppets are eager to help, and will gladly commit to 300+ cds for their church groups science clubs.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Sep. 10 2008,16:58

Ha!  I donated to the NCSE and got my Judgement Day DVD yesterday.  Watched it again enjoyed it even more than the first time.

The actor who portrayed Behe was most excellent, but I wonder if he'll get typecast playing morons.
Posted by: bystander on Sep. 10 2008,17:32

So what happened with the DI denying they had anything to do with the movie?

Part of the cost goes to support the Casey Luskin DI tour bus.
Posted by: bystander on Sep. 10 2008,17:35

We haven't heard from Sal or Kristine lately. I hope they haven't met, you know what happens when a moron and an anti-moron collide.
Posted by: Henry J on Sep. 10 2008,21:38



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
you know what happens when a moron and an anti-moron collide.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Is that worse than a materialist - antimaterialist reaction?

Henry
Posted by: Doc Bill on Sep. 10 2008,23:36

The result of a materialist/anti-materialist reaction is immaterial.
Posted by: bystander on Sep. 11 2008,01:06

Would the resultant particles be HEXons and Jeebons?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Oct. 07 2008,18:01

Hey folks, I'm sure you've missed me these past few months. I've definitely missed you. Just wanted to remind you to mark Oct. 21 on your calendar, because that's the day you'll be able to pick up your very own copy of "Expelled" on DVD.
Posted by: Wolfhound on Oct. 07 2008,19:15

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Oct. 07 2008,18:01)
Hey folks, I'm sure you've missed me these past few months. I've definitely missed you. Just wanted to remind you to mark Oct. 21 on your calendar, because that's the day you'll be able to pick up your very own copy of "Expelled" on DVD.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Naw, I have plenty of coasters, thanks, although I'll considered taking up skeet shooting if I can get free copies...
Posted by: deejay on Oct. 07 2008,21:07

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Oct. 07 2008,19:01)
I've definitely missed you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why?  Do you prefer your past humiliation to your current irrelevance?
Posted by: Dr.GH on Oct. 07 2008,21:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Oct. 07 2008,16:01)
Hey folks, I'm sure you've missed me these past few months. I've definitely missed you. Just wanted to remind you to mark Oct. 21 on your calendar, because that's the day you'll be able to pick up your very own copy of "Expelled" on DVD.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Silly boy.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Oct. 07 2008,22:58

Sorry, Kev-0, I've already spent my DVD budget this month ordering "Religulous" now showing in theaters across the country and picking up rave reviews.

"Religulous," a Lionsgate (real movie company) production.
Posted by: stevestory on Oct. 07 2008,23:06

Religulous...seems like I've heard of that...isn't that the anti-religion documentary that grossed twice as much per screen as Expelled in it's first weekend?

:D
Posted by: Spottedwind on Oct. 08 2008,09:36

Quote (deejay @ Oct. 07 2008,22:07)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Oct. 07 2008,19:01)
I've definitely missed you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why?  Do you prefer your past humiliation to your current irrelevance?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You sir/ma'am give me the happy.
Posted by: slpage on Oct. 08 2008,10:19

Does anyone know if Caroline Crocker's book about integrity in science has come out yet?


Also, it will be great fun to watch as Religulous surpasses 'Expelled' in earnings...
Posted by: JohnW on Oct. 08 2008,10:48

Quote (deejay @ Oct. 07 2008,19:07)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Oct. 07 2008,19:01)
I've definitely missed you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why?  Do you prefer your past humiliation to your current irrelevance?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"There's only one thing worse than being talked about..."
Posted by: deejay on Oct. 08 2008,11:55

Quote (JohnW @ Oct. 08 2008,11:48)
Quote (deejay @ Oct. 07 2008,19:07)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Oct. 07 2008,19:01)
I've definitely missed you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why?  Do you prefer your past humiliation to your current irrelevance?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"There's only one thing worse than being talked about..."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Indeed.  Kevin has much to learn from < jam doughnuts >.
Posted by: American Saddlebred on Oct. 08 2008,12:50

Quote (stevestory @ Oct. 07 2008,23:06)
Religulous...seems like I've heard of that...isn't that the anti-religion documentary that grossed twice as much per screen as Expelled in it's first weekend?

:D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Expelled was a HUUUGE success remember?  It was one of the top ten grossing documentaries of all time!!!11!!!
Posted by: Reed on Oct. 08 2008,12:54

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Oct. 07 2008,16:01)
Hey folks, I'm sure you've missed me these past few months. I've definitely missed you. Just wanted to remind you to mark Oct. 21 on your calendar, because that's the day you'll be able to pick up your very own copy of "Expelled" on DVD.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So Kevin, has the DVD version been updated to correct the more blatant errors ?

Like the obviously false claim that Sternberg was "fired" ?

Or the fact that Crocker was actively teaching creationist nonsense in a science class, rather than just mentioning id ?

Lemme guess...
1) We should all buy the DVD to find out.
2) If we do, we will find the answer is a big fat NO.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 08 2008,15:02

Religulous earned about a hundred thousand more in its first weekend than did Expelled, though it opened in less than half the number of theaters. It has a "Rotten Tomatoes" rank of 65%, compared to Expelled's 8%. It appears to have made back the production cost of $2.5 million in its first weekend. We have no idea whether Expelled even earned back its production and distribution costs yet, since no one seems willing to say just how much those cost, definitively.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 08 2008,23:16

Craig Hazen of Biola University has a review panning "Religulous", saying that it showed in a small theater and didn't attract a crowd...

I did a brief search to see if Hazen had boasted about numbers for "Expelled", but didn't see a smoking gun. Hazen should be made aware that "Religulous" will be making the numbers for "Expelled" look weak by comparison.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Oct. 08 2008,23:26

What is interesting about "Religulous" is how the producers had private screenings where they bussed in atheists and freethinkers and kicked out Christians and creationists.

Also, the producers had a contest to see who could buy the most tickets and they'd award that institution with a Prize of Great Value.

And, Bill Maher has been pandering to the atheist left like nobody's business on Fox TV interviews.

Oh, wait a second, that was "Expelled" and Kev-0's people who did all that.

Sorry, my bad.
Posted by: didymos on Oct. 09 2008,14:03

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 08 2008,21:16)
Craig Hazen of Biola University has a review panning "Religulous", saying that it showed in a small theater and didn't attract a crowd...

I did a brief search to see if Hazen had boasted about numbers for "Expelled", but didn't see a smoking gun. Hazen should be made aware that "Religulous" will be making the numbers for "Expelled" look weak by comparison.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



In case anyone was, like me, wondering who Craig Hazen is and how he's connected to "Expelled":

< "Expelled" Event Recap >
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Actor, economist, and social commenter Ben Stein visited Biola on March 27 to promote his new film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” and to receive the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth.

The gym was packed with 1,500 people, scientists, and journalists. Clips from the film were shown with commentary from the film producers. Stein encouraged the audience that truth will overcome, and that the battle for Intelligent Design “begins tonight.”

Caroline Crocker, former Professor of Biology at George Mason University spoke on her “expulsion” from teaching simply because she asked her students to consider all the options. Guillermo Gonzalez spoke on being denied tenure at Iowa State University because of his work in the field of intelligent design and his book, The Privileged Planet.

President Corey presented the award to Stein. The award has previously been given to Phillip E. Johnson in 2004 and Antony Flew in 2006 and is presented through the university’s Masters of Arts in Science and Religion (MASR) program.

For more information on the MASR program, please visit [ < http://www.biola.edu/scienceandreligion > ]www.biola.edu/scienceandreligion. The event was co-sponsored by the Christian Apologetics Program.

For more information on events like these, please visit www.biola.edu/apologetics.

Ben Stein is a lawyer, economist, former presidential speechwriter, author and social commentator. He has acted and made guest appearances in numerous movies, TV series, and TV commercials. His part as the boring teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off was recently ranked as one of the five most famous scenes in American film.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So, who's the director of Biola's M.A. Program in Christian Apologetics?

< Craig Hazen >:


Not only the director, but also the < founder >.

Here's the < description > of the MA Christian Apologetics program:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

In addition to biblical and theological studies, you are able to draw from disciplines as diverse as history, philosophy, science, the humanities, social science, and law, all with an eye toward demonstrating the truth of the Gospel and the Christian world view beyond a reasonable doubt.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He's also considered part of the < faculty > of the very pro-ID < MA Science and Religion program >, the other department that sponsored the Expelled event, and the stated goal of which is:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The new Master of Arts degree in Science and Religion is designed to provide scientifically literate individuals with the essential background in theology, history, and philosophy that is necessary to integrate evangelical Christianity with modern science.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



He was a < speaker > at their "Intelligent Design and the Future of Science" conference.

He's also the editor of the journal < Philosophia Christi >, and if you check the back issue contents, almost every issue includes articles about or directly related to ID, often by guys like Dembski, Johnson, and Behe.  Oh, and it's also where the Anthony Flew "conversion" interview got published.
Posted by: zodiaclove on Oct. 11 2008,08:14

Quote (theloneliestmonk @ April 04 2008,16:12)
yo
I can not agree with what you wrote really....
please explain further a bit more for me ;D


thank you
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


yo
I can not agree with what you wrote really....
please explain further a bit more for me ;D


thank you
Posted by: ERV on Oct. 11 2008,08:39

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 08 2008,15:02)
Religulous earned about a hundred thousand more in its first weekend than did Expelled, though it opened in less than half the number of theaters. It has a "Rotten Tomatoes" rank of 65%, compared to Expelled's 8%. It appears to have made back the production cost of $2.5 million in its first weekend. We have no idea whether Expelled even earned back its production and distribution costs yet, since no one seems willing to say just how much those cost, definitively.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dont forget-- Religulous is also rated R, not 'bring the whole family' PG like EXPELLED.

That being said, the theater last night was full.  Not Harry-Potter-packed, but full.  The audience ranged from teenagers to elderly couples (there were quite a few elderly couples-- it was so goddamned cute).

Religulous was nice.  I give it a solid B.
Posted by: Peter Henderson on Oct. 11 2008,10:17



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Religulous was nice.  I give it a solid B.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



AiG Doesn't like it:

< http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/10/02/a-religulous-movie >
Posted by: Leftfield on Oct. 11 2008,11:20

From the Expelled Event Recap, interesting how they seem to consider scientists and journalists to be a separate category from "people".


 
Quote (didymos @ Oct. 09 2008,14:03)
In case anyone was, like me, wondering who Craig Hazen is and how he's connected to "Expelled":

< "Expelled" Event Recap >
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

. . .

The gym was packed with 1,500 people, scientists, and journalists.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on Oct. 11 2008,11:49

Quote (Peter Henderson @ Oct. 11 2008,10:17)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Religulous was nice.  I give it a solid B.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



AiG Doesn't like it:

< http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/10/02/a-religulous-movie >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ken Ham must have given a really tardiliciously stinky performance if AiG's blog highlights this as wit and wisdom of Ham:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

As Maher interviews Ken in his office later, Ken is able to answer Maher’s questions well and rationally—even on the nature of God. Ken turns the tables on Maher by asking him a question he can’t answer: “Bill, are you God?” Maher is left with no answer other than “no” and then silence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Maher sure got served.
Posted by: J-Dog on Oct. 11 2008,12:40

Quote (Advocatus Diaboli @ Oct. 11 2008,11:49)
Quote (Peter Henderson @ Oct. 11 2008,10:17)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Religulous was nice.  I give it a solid B.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



AiG Doesn't like it:

< http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/10/02/a-religulous-movie >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ken Ham must have given a really tardiliciously stinky performance if AiG's blog highlights this as wit and wisdom of Ham:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

As Maher interviews Ken in his office later, Ken is able to answer Maher’s questions well and rationally—even on the nature of God. Ken turns the tables on Maher by asking him a question he can’t answer: “Bill, are you God?” Maher is left with no answer other than “no” and then silence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Maher sure got served.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sure did!  He should have saidyes, Ken I am.  Now Bow Down And Worship me you sinner!

Ah well.  Easy to say what he should have said after the fact
Posted by: Texas Teach on Oct. 11 2008,12:49

Quote (Advocatus Diaboli @ Oct. 11 2008,11:49)
 
Quote (Peter Henderson @ Oct. 11 2008,10:17)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Religulous was nice.  I give it a solid B.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



AiG Doesn't like it:

< http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/10/02/a-religulous-movie >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ken Ham must have given a really tardiliciously stinky performance if AiG's blog highlights this as wit and wisdom of Ham:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

As Maher interviews Ken in his office later, Ken is able to answer Maher’s questions well and rationally—even on the nature of God. Ken turns the tables on Maher by asking him a question he can’t answer: “Bill, are you God?” Maher is left with no answer other than “no” and then silence.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Maher sure got served.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What did we learn from Ghostbusters?  When someone asks you if you're a god, you say "Yes!".
Posted by: Nomad on Oct. 11 2008,17:22

This just in, web advertising for the DVD release of Expelled has been sighted.  Where, you ask?  On onenewsnow.com.  To those pharynguloids out there, yes, I did find this site from when PZ linked to a poll they were running.

To those unfamiliar with the site, which appears to be run by the AFA (a group I was not too familiar with, I'm just not up on my evangelical propaganda groups), here's a sampling of their headlines on the main page:

Billy Graham celebrates his 90th birthday
Atheists fight historical right of prayer (note: this article is actually about the fight against establishing a national day of prayer, nothing to do with the right to pray)
Fighting planned parenthood's intimidation tactics
Court imposes same sex 'marriage' on state (yes, they use scare quotes around the word marriage, and at least once again in another story)
Darwinists in denial? (the blurb reads: "The Discovery Institute says a group of Darwinists who are opposing efforts by the Texas State Board of Education to allow evolution to be debated in the classroom are clinging to 19th century science in the 21st century.")
Learning to share you faith without fear
Chinese government sours on Christian music


Okay I admit, I edited out some of the blander topics like whether Elizabeth dole was in danger of losing her senate seat.


The ad describes the movie as  "the movie the liberals don't want you to see", and mentions "dvd available".  Seems kind of stilted to me.  And a little awkward since it isn't actually available yet anyway, if you click on the link it goes through to the AFA's commerce site where they're taking pre orders.  Curiously enough they call the price a "suggested donation" but you're not given a choice to alter the amount of your donation so far as I can see.

I was kind of disappointed, I was hoping it was a pay per click ad system and that my clicking would add to the promotional tab for the movie.  It looks like the AFA is probably getting at least a portion of the profits from the sales instead.
Posted by: J-Dog on Oct. 13 2008,08:15

Quote (Nomad @ Oct. 11 2008,17:22)
This just in, web advertising for the DVD release of Expelled has been sighted.  Where, you ask?  On onenewsnow.com.  To those pharynguloids out there, yes, I did find this site from when PZ linked to a poll they were running.

To those unfamiliar with the site, which appears to be run by the AFA (a group I was not too familiar with, I'm just not up on my evangelical propaganda groups), here's a sampling of their headlines on the main page:

Billy Graham celebrates his 90th birthday
Atheists fight historical right of prayer (note: this article is actually about the fight against establishing a national day of prayer, nothing to do with the right to pray)
Fighting planned parenthood's intimidation tactics
Court imposes same sex 'marriage' on state (yes, they use scare quotes around the word marriage, and at least once again in another story)
Darwinists in denial? (the blurb reads: "The Discovery Institute says a group of Darwinists who are opposing efforts by the Texas State Board of Education to allow evolution to be debated in the classroom are clinging to 19th century science in the 21st century.")
Learning to share you faith without fear
Chinese government sours on Christian music


Okay I admit, I edited out some of the blander topics like whether Elizabeth dole was in danger of losing her senate seat.


The ad describes the movie as  "the movie the liberals don't want you to see", and mentions "dvd available".  Seems kind of stilted to me.  And a little awkward since it isn't actually available yet anyway, if you click on the link it goes through to the AFA's commerce site where they're taking pre orders.  Curiously enough they call the price a "suggested donation" but you're not given a choice to alter the amount of your donation so far as I can see.

I was kind of disappointed, I was hoping it was a pay per click ad system and that my clicking would add to the promotional tab for the movie.  It looks like the AFA is probably getting at least a portion of the profits from the sales instead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It would be a lot of fun if you could order 1,000 dvd's COD and send them to a certain houseboat in TX!

Hilarity By Design -
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 17 2008,20:26

At 16 days post-release, Religulous is pretty much comparable in performance to Expelled to date. The $70K difference in totals should be matched and exceeded by Religulous in tomorrow's box office. Various rankings show Religulous to be close to or slightly ahead of Expelled.

Yeah, I have no attachment to Religulous, but it does make a nice counter-case to the hype about Expelled. For every over-blown exaggeration made about Expelled, bringing up Religulous's better performance will puncture that nicely. The exaggerators likely will not want to extol Religulous, so they are faced with taking back the exaggeration or demonstrating themselves as hypocrites.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 18 2008,15:00

By entering the drawing for 10 free DVDs of "Expelled," you might receive biology's equivalent of "Reefer Madness," and deprive some gullible people of deceptive propaganda.  Anyway, here's the address:

< http://discovery.org/csc/expelled_giveaway.php >

Glen Davidson
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 18 2008,15:07

Anybody fill that out successfully? I got an error message about not having permission, and hitting back cleared the form.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 18 2008,15:14

Hm, it worked fine for me yesterday.  

I wonder if they ran into problems with the "wrong people" entering the drawing.

Anyhow, while no firm figures are in for Friday, Box Office Mojo estimates that Religulous is nearly $400,000 past the "top documentary of 2008" now:

Domestic Total as of Oct. 17, 2008: $8,072,000 (Estimate)

I don't like Religulous's tactics any better than I liked Expelled's.  And I wonder about the point of laughing at religion.  But I love it surpassing "Expelled," and they can thank Stein and company for pre-empting any complaints fundies' would have over the tactics.

Glen D
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 18 2008,15:50

Cross-posted from Pharyngula:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
By the way, here is a poll to crash:

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/ >

It's "Expelled," asking "Do you think Darwin's theories are outdated?"  Now forget the pedant's response, where you'd say "Of course they're outdated, that's why we don't call it 'Darwinism' like the lying propagandists do."  Partly they're counting on that, I suspect (that is, they know they're lying).

Right now it's 57% "yes," 14% "no," and 29% "maybe".  "No" should be at the top, in my estimation, since their point has always been to conflate "Darwin's theories" with modern evolutionary theory.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: bystander on Oct. 18 2008,17:21

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Oct. 19 2008,03:50)
Cross-posted from Pharyngula:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
By the way, here is a poll to crash:

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/ >

It's "Expelled," asking "Do you think Darwin's theories are outdated?"  Now forget the pedant's response, where you'd say "Of course they're outdated, that's why we don't call it 'Darwinism' like the lying propagandists do."  Partly they're counting on that, I suspect (that is, they know they're lying).

Right now it's 57% "yes," 14% "no," and 29% "maybe".  "No" should be at the top, in my estimation, since their point has always been to conflate "Darwin's theories" with modern evolutionary theory.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I just voted and it is suspiciously 50%/25%/25%. I wonder if it has been reset.
Posted by: bystander on Oct. 18 2008,17:27

I just hit refresh and I got the 57/14/29
Posted by: dnmlthr on Oct. 18 2008,17:43

Quote (bystander @ Oct. 18 2008,23:21)
I just voted and it is suspiciously 50%/25%/25%. I wonder if it has been reset.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How sad isn't rigging your own poll, if that's what they've done? < Sadder than this. >
Posted by: EyeNoU on Oct. 18 2008,17:53

Quote (bystander @ Oct. 18 2008,17:21)
Quote (Glen Davidson @ Oct. 19 2008,03:50)
Cross-posted from Pharyngula:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
By the way, here is a poll to crash:

< http://www.expelledthemovie.com/ >

It's "Expelled," asking "Do you think Darwin's theories are outdated?"  Now forget the pedant's response, where you'd say "Of course they're outdated, that's why we don't call it 'Darwinism' like the lying propagandists do."  Partly they're counting on that, I suspect (that is, they know they're lying).

Right now it's 57% "yes," 14% "no," and 29% "maybe".  "No" should be at the top, in my estimation, since their point has always been to conflate "Darwin's theories" with modern evolutionary theory.

Glen D
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I just voted and it is suspiciously 50%/25%/25%. I wonder if it has been reset.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I just voted and had the same result.
Posted by: Nomad on Oct. 18 2008,20:28

Quote (bystander @ Oct. 18 2008,17:27)
I just hit refresh and I got the 57/14/29
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Woah, I got the same thing.  First I got 50/25/25, then hit refresh and got 57/14/29.

How odd.
Posted by: Lowell on Oct. 19 2008,09:19

Quote (Nomad @ Oct. 18 2008,20:28)
Quote (bystander @ Oct. 18 2008,17:27)
I just hit refresh and I got the 57/14/29
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Woah, I got the same thing.  First I got 50/25/25, then hit refresh and got 57/14/29.

How odd.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Same here: 50%, 25%, 25%, then refreshed and 57%, 14%, 29%. Lame.
Posted by: EyeNoU on Oct. 19 2008,10:02

Quote (Lowell @ Oct. 19 2008,09:19)
Quote (Nomad @ Oct. 18 2008,20:28)
 
Quote (bystander @ Oct. 18 2008,17:27)
I just hit refresh and I got the 57/14/29
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Woah, I got the same thing.  First I got 50/25/25, then hit refresh and got 57/14/29.

How odd.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Same here: 50%, 25%, 25%, then refreshed and 57%, 14%, 29%. Lame.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I detect design!
Posted by: EyeNoU on Oct. 19 2008,10:04

The intelligent component seems to be missing, though.......
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 19 2008,10:52

Maybe Dembski and Marks < programmed > their poll counter for them in Matlab...


Posted by: bystander on Oct. 19 2008,15:56

unbelievable, they cannot even do an honest poll!
Posted by: BathTub on Oct. 20 2008,00:34

Hahaha, I got 50/25/25 as well, then refreshed and 57/14/29.
Posted by: ERV on Oct. 20 2008,16:23

lol!  Ive tried it at a few IPs with different answers (tried yes, no, and maybe)-- 50-25-25, 57-14-29 with all of them.

heeeeeeeeehehehehehehe!
Posted by: Nerull on Oct. 20 2008,16:31

Wow. Is there anything they don't lie about?
Posted by: bystander on Oct. 20 2008,16:56

Quote (ERV @ Oct. 21 2008,04:23)
lol!  Ive tried it at a few IPs with different answers (tried yes, no, and maybe)-- 50-25-25, 57-14-29 with all of them.

heeeeeeeeehehehehehehe!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


A true scientist, repeat experimentation.

If they were going to fake it, you think they would put a little code in it to vary it slightly.

Note the message about no1 documentary for 2008. Shouldn't they take that down now that the other documentary has passed it?
Posted by: didymos on Oct. 21 2008,14:44

< Someone > over at ERV's noticed this in the poll code:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<poll>
<question/>
<answer votes="4" barColor="#66CC33">Yes</answer>
<answer votes="1" barColor="#66CC33">No</answer>
<answer votes="2" barColor="#66CC33">Maybe</answer>
</poll>

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



57/14 = 4.0714286
29/14 = 2.0714286

So, so sad.  In other Expelled news, I left this < comment > over at ERV's:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Did anyone notice the animated ad for Expelled merch in the upper right corner? According to that, Berlinski is going to be doing Expelled: The Book. Great: all the vacuity of Expelled combined with all the smug pomposity and tortured prose of David Berlinski. Guaranteed to be the bestselling book of whatever genre in some year.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Funnily enough, if you go to the store, Expelled: The Book has either been expelled or currently fails to exist.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 21 2008,14:56

Well, that settles that. The "poll" may not be meaningful, but it is iinitialized, so we need to look elsewhere besides Dembski and Marks for the authorship.
Posted by: JohnW on Oct. 21 2008,15:58

Quote (didymos @ Oct. 21 2008,12:44)
Funnily enough, if you go to the store, Expelled: The Book has either been expelled or currently fails to exist.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Presumably the Darwinist Nazis burned every copy.
Posted by: didymos on Oct. 22 2008,03:31

They re-rigged it.  New "results" show up as:

Yes 61%
No 28%
Maybe 11%

The poll code now looks like:



---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------

<poll>
<question/>
<answer votes="72" barColor="#66CC33">Yes</answer>
<answer votes="30" barColor="#66CC33">No</answer>
<answer votes="13" barColor="#66CC33">Maybe</answer>
</poll>

---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------



If you notice, the displayed results add up to 100, whereas the rigged weightings add up to 115, so there's some other code to "massage the data".
Posted by: didymos on Oct. 22 2008,04:18

Hmm, interesting.  If you view the Expelled site's source, you'll find this URL in there:

< http://www.monarchdigimedia.com/ExpelledNew/poll.xml >

So, I went there and its code read:



---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------

<poll>
<question/>
<answer votes="83" barColor="#66CC33">Yes</answer>
<answer votes="38" barColor="#66CC33">No</answer>
<answer votes="15" barColor="#66CC33">Maybe</answer>
</poll>

---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------



I then cleared my cache and deleted the relevant cookies, and went back to get this:



---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------
<poll>
<question/>
<answer votes="84" barColor="#66CC33">Yes</answer>
<answer votes="40" barColor="#66CC33">No</answer>
<answer votes="15" barColor="#66CC33">Maybe</answer>
</poll>
---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------



then did a reload and found it'd changed again to 85/41/15 and then yet again almost immediately to 86/41/15, where it's now stayed for awhile. Back over at the expelledthemovie.com domain the results changed slightly to 61/29/11 (so it now adds up to 101%), yet their copy of the poll.xml file is still at 72/30/13.  

However, over at ERV's, a couple hours ago, a < commenter > noted getting these results:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Looks like they've fiddled with it now.

Yes 62%
No 26%
Maybe 12%

refreshing to

Yes 63%
No 26%
Maybe 11%

Posted by: noncarborundum | October 22, 2008 2:11 AM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I now have no idea what's actually going on there, other than the fact that it's still rigged like a < seven-masted > schooner.


ETA: the ratio math (rounded off):
current poll "results"
61/11 = 5.55
29/11 = 2.64

poll.xml at expelledthemovie.com:
72/13 = 5.54
30/13 =  2.31

poll.xml at monarchdigimedia.com:
86/15 = 5.73
41/15 =  2.73
Posted by: didymos on Oct. 22 2008,05:49

OK, so checked in again.  It is actually counting votes now, or so it appears anyway:

poll.xml at monarchdigimedia.com


---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------

<poll>
<question/>
<answer votes="88" barColor="#66CC33">Yes</answer>
<answer votes="47" barColor="#66CC33">No</answer>
<answer votes="16" barColor="#66CC33">Maybe</answer>
</poll>

---------------------CODE SAMPLE-------------------



Total votes = 151

Yes: 88/151 = .583
No: 47/151 = .311
Maybe: 16/151 = .106

Displayed results at expelledthemovie.com:

Yes: 58%
No:  31%
Maybe: 11%

ETA: So, looks like this may be a case where a variant form of < Hanlon's Razor > can be applied:  "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

ETAA: < Someone > over at ERV's figured it out too by different means. Somewhat earlier as well:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

I probed about in their .swf file with a decompiler and found they're using a piece of Flash/XML/PHP called DesignersPoll to operate that poll (this). DesignersPoll stores the results in an XML file on the server; this would be the poll.xml file that Thomas and Tophe have pointed out is extremely suspect. The 4/1/2 "voting" split in the earlier file gives us the 57%/14%/29% results of earler, and the 72/30/13 must give us the results it's currently displaying.

I'd be charitable enough to go by that old "malice/incompetence" adage and say the initial problem was merely an oversight; they put a few votes in as test data but failed to give the polling software permission to write to the XML file on their server (explaining the unchanging results), but the fact that they have clearly stepped in and manually changed the number of votes stored in poll.xml while still not fixing the problem that prevents the poll actually tallying real votes raises a big red flag in the "malice" column for me. Duplicitous through-and-through.

Posted by: MPG | October 22, 2008 6:35 AM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Texas Teach on Oct. 22 2008,17:01

It's the folks behind Expelled.  How about we attribute it to malice and incompetence?
Posted by: Dr.GH on Oct. 23 2008,00:58

Quote (Texas Teach @ Oct. 22 2008,15:01)
It's the folks behind Expelled.  How about we attribute it to malice and incompetence?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So...

They tried to cheat but then fucked it up so that we could all be amused for a few days at how stupid they are?

OK

Works for me. What a great bunch of fun (stupid fuck-up) guys.
Posted by: ERV on Oct. 23 2008,21:41

EXPELLED is on Netflix.  You can watch it online.

Also, Kahlua now comes in French Vanilla.
Posted by: Wolfhound on Oct. 24 2008,05:36

Jeez, it's just so hard to choose between the two...
Posted by: JMax on Oct. 27 2008,03:36

Did anyone else notice that they quote Ben Stein on the cover of his own movie?


Posted by: stevestory on Oct. 27 2008,04:00

Is that real? That is just too much!
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on Oct. 27 2008,04:43

I noticed early, but thought it is part of Stein's "humor".
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 27 2008,05:41

Quote (JMax @ Oct. 27 2008,03:36)
Did anyone else notice that they quote Ben Stein on the cover of his own movie?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Unbelievable.

I mean, can anybody credit that Ben Stein would only give four stars to Ben Stein?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 27 2008,07:04

My response to < whymrhymer >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

But the possibility behind "intelligent design" creationism was explored... we call it "the 19th century". Rev. Paley's proposals in his 1802 book, "Natural Theology", are the recognizable precursors to the particular arguments made by Michael Behe, William Dembski, Guillermo Gonzalez, and the rest of the "intelligent design" advocates. That's over two hundred years in which the advocates could have made a convincing case, if there were one to be made. It hasn't happened.

I was at one of the first "intelligent design" conferences sponsored by the Discovery Institute. The plain goal there was to get critics to cough up a confession that "intelligent design" qualified, <i>per se</i>, as a scientific endeavor. What we critics said there, over and over, was that we wanted to see an "intelligent design" hypothesis and a proposed means of testing it. They said that they were working on it. I have periodically asked various advocates about progress on that, and consistently have been told that they are still working on it. It seems to me that if they want to be considered to be doing science, that they should show that they are actually doing some science. It isn't a high bar to clear, if one actually has ideas that are scientific.

As for the "pure Darwinists" thing, what I tell people is that < I'm not Darwin-only, I'm science-only >.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: ERV on Oct. 27 2008,10:58

I watched EXPELLED this weekend.

Wow.

That was just awful.

If it were 5 minutes longer I would have shot myself in the head.

Shit.

< http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2008/10/a_movie_review.php >
Posted by: k.e.. on Oct. 27 2008,13:04

Quote (ERV @ Oct. 27 2008,18:58)
I watched EXPELLED this weekend.

Wow.

That was just awful.

If it were 5 minutes longer I would have shot myself in the head.

Shit.

< http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2008/10/a_movie_review.php >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Woa there girl!

Vanilla Kahlua, chocolate and a visit to the "Africa Bar" in Maputo, Mozambique or the "Q-Bar" in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania should cure that!

It works for me.

.....You said you were black right? Or was that your dog named Arden? Anyway even if your not, you could still be president....as long as your not a woman....ok that could still be ok as long as you like vanilla kahlua

X k.e.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Nov. 03 2008,11:53

I left one, probably my last ever, comment on Expelled's blog, pending "moderation".  Since they do expel comments, if not nearly as much as UD does, a copy goes here:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

November 3rd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
If a theory claims to be able to explain some phenomenon but does not generate even an attempt at an explanation, then it should be banished. Despite comparing sequences, molecular evolution has never addressed the question of how complex structures came to be. In effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so it should perish.

< http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_idfrombiochemistry.htm >

Yes, it’s the prominent IDist Behe who wants to banish evolution.

Of course he’s wrong about evolution’s explanatory ability, while ID has none whatsoever. By Behe’s standard, ID definitely deserves banishment, although I would not go that far.

To be sure, an idea like ID that never has–and never could–address the origin of complex structures has no business being called science.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Glen Davidson on Nov. 05 2008,17:32

Quote (Glen Davidson @ Nov. 03 2008,11:53)
I left one, probably my last ever, comment on Expelled's blog, pending "moderation".  Since they do expel comments, if not nearly as much as UD does, a copy goes here:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

November 3rd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
If a theory claims to be able to explain some phenomenon but does not generate even an attempt at an explanation, then it should be banished. Despite comparing sequences, molecular evolution has never addressed the question of how complex structures came to be. In effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so it should perish.

< http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_idfrombiochemistry.htm >

Yes, it’s the prominent IDist Behe who wants to banish evolution.

Of course he’s wrong about evolution’s explanatory ability, while ID has none whatsoever. By Behe’s standard, ID definitely deserves banishment, although I would not go that far.

To be sure, an idea like ID that never has–and never could–address the origin of complex structures has no business being called science.

Glen D
< http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7 >

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not that it's anything new or different, but I shouldn't let them off for not posting my comment.  It should have been #40, and two later comments have been published (at two different times) while mine was not:

< http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/ >

It's perhaps a possibility that they might yet publish my comment, when it will be lost among enough previous posts--a smothering operation that they've used in the past when they didn't want to absolutely censor.  I do doubt it, though, especially since most of the comments on the blog are quite favorable.

They seem to be more blatant in censoring than they were in the past, probably because they're trying to sell their dishonest product, and so do not want honest comments on their site (save a few to give the illusion that they're not doing what they illegitimately condemn).

Yes, it matters little enough, for they've long showed how sleazy their characters are.  But this censorship is a fitting end to a long string of lies.

Glen D
Posted by: Lowell on Nov. 06 2008,13:38

Glen D,

I read most of those expelled blog threads way back when. (I know, I've since learned not to mainline pure Tard like that.)

Just wanted to thank you for your herculean (or maybe sisyphean?) efforts to battle the idiocy there. You definitely helped me (a non-scientist) see through it.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Nov. 06 2008,20:27

Quote (Lowell @ Nov. 06 2008,13:38)
Glen D,

I read most of those expelled blog threads way back when. (I know, I've since learned not to mainline pure Tard like that.)

Just wanted to thank you for your herculean (or maybe sisyphean?) efforts to battle the idiocy there. You definitely helped me (a non-scientist) see through it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for saying so.  I'd hate to think that only Keith Eaton and JAD had read my comments, as thought is wasted on them.

Glen D
Posted by: stevestory on Nov. 06 2008,20:50

Quote (Lowell @ Nov. 06 2008,14:38)
Glen D,

I read most of those expelled blog threads way back when. (I know, I've since learned not to mainline pure Tard like that.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What's wrong with you? There's nothing wrong with mainlining pure uncut tard every day for several years.

By the way...um...do you have any change I can have....?
Posted by: Dr.GH on Nov. 09 2008,10:08

It isn't dead yet- it just stinks.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Subject: Fw: Want to See Ben Stein's Movie, "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed"?
Date: Nov 7, 2008 1:59 PM


Here's your chance, this Saturday, November 8th, at 7:00 pm at my house!  This movie, for those of you that don't know, is a brilliant, well-done look at intelligent design and it's rejection by academia.  It is not a movie on creation, per say, it is a movie on the science behind intelligent design.  I have heard nothing but praises about it and I am really looking forward to seeing it.  I would love it if some of you would join me.  Please RSVP if you are coming so I will know how many chairs to set up.

There will be popcorn here, but if you want something specific to snack on, feel free to bring enough to  share!!!!

Hope to hear from you soon.

Love,
Debbie
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



About 50 people were invited. I'll learn how many attended.
Posted by: khan on Nov. 09 2008,13:28



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This movie, for those of you that don't know, is a brilliant, well-done look at intelligent design and it's rejection by academia.  It is not a movie on creation, per say,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Fail.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
it is a movie on the science behind intelligent design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



World's shortest movies?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Nov. 09 2008,13:34

One blank frame would convey the message.
Posted by: Jim_Wynne on Nov. 09 2008,15:34

First, a brief review of the movie:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This movie, for those of you that don't know, is a brilliant, well-done look at intelligent design and it's rejection by academia.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And then:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...I am really looking forward to seeing it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 :O
Posted by: Lou FCD on Nov. 09 2008,16:24

Quote (Dr.GH @ Nov. 09 2008,11:08)
It isn't dead yet- it just stinks.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have heard nothing but praises about it and I am really looking forward to seeing it.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cloistered much?
Posted by: ERV on Nov. 09 2008,18:50

Went to see Religulous again today (different group of atheist friends hadnt seen it yet).

There were >30 people.

On a Sunday at noon.

In Oklahoma.

Over a month after it came out.

WHOO!
Posted by: deadman_932 on Nov. 09 2008,21:12

Quote (khan @ Nov. 09 2008,13:28)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
This movie, for those of you that don't know, is a brilliant, well-done look at intelligent design and it's rejection by academia.  It is not a movie on creation, per say,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Fail.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
it is a movie on the science behind intelligent design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



World's shortest movies?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your just ovarly critikle, purse hay, Ms. Cohn
Posted by: Dr.GH on Nov. 10 2008,22:12

Quote (Dr.GH @ Nov. 09 2008,08:08)
It isn't dead yet- it just stinks.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Subject: Fw: Want to See Ben Stein's Movie, "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed"?
Date: Nov 7, 2008 1:59 PM


Here's your chance, this Saturday, November 8th, at 7:00 pm at my house!  This movie, for those of you that don't know, is a brilliant, well-done look at intelligent design and it's rejection by academia.  It is not a movie on creation, per say, it is a movie on the science behind intelligent design.  I have heard nothing but praises about it and I am really looking forward to seeing it.  I would love it if some of you would join me.  Please RSVP if you are coming so I will know how many chairs to set up.

There will be popcorn here, but if you want something specific to snack on, feel free to bring enough to  share!!!!

Hope to hear from you soon.

Love,
Debbie
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



About 50 people were invited. I'll learn how many attended.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It turned out that the video watching party was postponed due to lack of interest.

There is hope yet.
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 11 2008,08:08

Quote (Dr.GH @ Nov. 10 2008,22:12)
Quote (Dr.GH @ Nov. 09 2008,08:08)
It isn't dead yet- it just stinks.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Subject: Fw: Want to See Ben Stein's Movie, "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed"?
Date: Nov 7, 2008 1:59 PM


Here's your chance, this Saturday, November 8th, at 7:00 pm at my house!  This movie, for those of you that don't know, is a brilliant, well-done look at intelligent design and it's rejection by academia.  It is not a movie on creation, per say, it is a movie on the science behind intelligent design.  I have heard nothing but praises about it and I am really looking forward to seeing it.  I would love it if some of you would join me.  Please RSVP if you are coming so I will know how many chairs to set up.

There will be popcorn here, but if you want something specific to snack on, feel free to bring enough to  share!!!!

Hope to hear from you soon.

Love,
Debbie
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



About 50 people were invited. I'll learn how many attended.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It turned out that the video watching party was postponed due to lack of interest.

There is hope yet.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Halle- effin -lujah!

Thanks for reporting back.
Posted by: Ptaylor on Nov. 12 2008,22:26

A positive review seen over < here >.
I was a little annoyed to see the average rating for the article was 5 out of 5, but amused to see my one vote bring the average down to 1.
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 13 2008,09:59

Thanks to PZ for this!

WIN AN EXPELLED DVD!*


< WIN EXPELLED DVD! >


* Second Prize of course is TWO Expelled DVD's...

edited
Posted by: Badger3k on Nov. 13 2008,10:32

Quote (J-Dog @ Nov. 13 2008,09:59)
Thanks to PZ for this!

A WIN AN EXPELLED DVD!*


< WIN EXPELLED DVD! >


* Second Prize of course is TWO Expelled DVD's...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I signed up for it - when do the missionaries come to my house?
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 13 2008,10:40

Quote (Badger3k @ Nov. 13 2008,10:32)
Quote (J-Dog @ Nov. 13 2008,09:59)
Thanks to PZ for this!

A WIN AN EXPELLED DVD!*


< WIN EXPELLED DVD! >


* Second Prize of course is TWO Expelled DVD's...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I signed up for it - when do the missionaries come to my house?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My puppet signed up.  I'm looking forward to the winning delivery to 1060 W Addison, Chicago, IL.

Well actually, I'm looking forward to when they tell Ben and his marketing knuckleheads about the attempted delivery...

< Deliver Expelled DVD To: >
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 19 2008,13:49

THOSE DISH0NEST LYING SACKS OF PUTRID CRAP!*

Noted DI Asswipe Rob Crowther just sent my puppet an email thanking him for signing their "academic freedom" petition. (I assume this is because I said I wanted their "free DVD").

Well, Rob, you piece of human excrement, no I did not, and neither did my puppet.  You are making it up, so stop.
I wonder if a puppet has any legal standing?



*I can't believe I am shocked by this!
Posted by: stevestory on Nov. 19 2008,13:59

Quote (Ptaylor @ Nov. 12 2008,23:26)
A positive review seen over < here >.
I was a little annoyed to see the average rating for the article was 5 out of 5, but amused to see my one vote bring the average down to 1.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That shouldn't be mathematically possible...
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 19 2008,14:25

Quote (stevestory @ Nov. 19 2008,13:59)
Quote (Ptaylor @ Nov. 12 2008,23:26)
A positive review seen over < here >.
I was a little annoyed to see the average rating for the article was 5 out of 5, but amused to see my one vote bring the average down to 1.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That shouldn't be mathematically possible...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


With The Designer, my son, all things are possible...
Posted by: Lowell on Nov. 19 2008,17:56

Some rich, creamy TARD from Patrick in < a discussion about Expelled! > I'm involved in on the Slate message board (the Fray):
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I feel free to reject things that I see as incorrect but that doesn't mean I automatically dismiss the evidence outright or erect a "Forbidden Zone", as in the Planet of the Apes. For example, I believe that evolution is incomplete and is built upon Newtonian physics when there are also Einsteinian or quantum mechanical forces. For example, just a week or two ago someone published a news article that mentioned how strands of DNA could seek each other out upon something like telepathy force of some kind, but this could not be explained simply by electromagnetism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Nov. 19 2008,18:06

More from Patrick on that thread!
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
No, I'm not going to look that up because I think I get your point (if not, erm, I'll look it up). You're probably fishing to state whether I should acknowledge whether Sternberg actually lost his job when Ben Stein said he did. You would suggest he didn't and that Stein lied. I don't know about it. But there's a host of other questions we can ask. Was Stein's information incorrect (e.g. did someone lie to him or simply present the wrong information)? Or simply, did Stein lie? Even if he did, that doesn't invalidate the main thesis: why are seemingly more scientists getting "Expelled"? And...if they didn't get expelled, then the question is still raised through mere implication (e.g. I don't think he ever used 'knowledge filter' but that's what he was aiming at), is there a knowledge filter? I think that's a good question to ask even if some of the material was incorrect.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


even if some of the material was incorrect?

Classic Tard. And this is the best ID has? Keep up the good work!

EDIT:

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I don't remember why he brought up the holocaust now. Lol. I'd have to go back and watch the video again (but I already returned it). I know there was a link between Origins as he suggests.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


LOL WTF that thread is a classic. And Patrick supported Expelled so much that he rented a copy!. Better not let the lads at UD know that Patrick.
Posted by: Ptaylor on Nov. 19 2008,21:30

Quote (stevestory @ Nov. 19 2008,13:59)
       
Quote (Ptaylor @ Nov. 12 2008,23:26)
A positive review seen over < here >.
I was a little annoyed to see the average rating for the article was 5 out of 5, but amused to see my one vote bring the average down to 1.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That shouldn't be mathematically possible...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, that's what I thought. My take on it is that possibly it had a default (zero votes) setting of five stars and that I was first to vote, making a 100% 1 star rating for a while. (Or evidence of a The Designer, as J-Dog suggests)

Speaking of ratings, I've noticed the vote count on customer reviews for Expelled at Amazon increasing by 3 or 4 each day lately, the majority of them being 5 stars. It's pushed the average up from 3 to 3.5 lately. I was going to say something wise-assy like anyone know a way of fixing that?, but phh - anyone reading a small sampling of the reviews will know pretty much straightaway what camp they're in.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Nov. 27 2008,10:41

Hey folks: You may enjoy this little interview  I did after an Expelled screening recently: <a href="[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I2SEkbQfR0" target="_blank">interview</a>]interview[/URL]
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 27 2008,10:45

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Nov. 27 2008,10:41)
Hey folks: You may enjoy this little interview  I did after an Expelled screening recently: <a href="[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I2SEkbQfR0" target="_blank">interview</a>]interview[/URL]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin you ignoramus - Please learn to link the right way.

Thank you.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Nov. 27 2008,11:06

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Nov. 27 2008,10:41)
Hey folks: You may enjoy this little interview  I did after an Expelled screening recently: <a href="[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I2SEkbQfR0" target="_blank">interview</a>]interview[/URL]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Expelled? What was that again? Some awful film I remember hearing about, now playing in a church basement near you? That the one?

Kevin, I look forwards to your next creative act. Don't forget to wipe afterwards.
Posted by: BopDiddy on Nov. 27 2008,14:26

Quote (J-Dog @ Nov. 27 2008,10:45)
   
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Nov. 27 2008,10:41)
Hey folks: You may enjoy this little interview  I did after an Expelled screening recently: <a href="[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I2SEkbQfR0" target="_blank">interview</a>]interview[/URL]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin you ignoramus - Please learn to link the right way.

Thank you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's a link example: < Expelled: the whole steaming turd >.  

Yup, the whole movie, at least while it lasts.

EDIT: Yes, it's the real thing, broken up into YouTube bits.  Yes, it's horrific!  Don't say I didn't warn you!
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on Nov. 27 2008,15:01

Quote (BopDiddy @ Nov. 27 2008,14:26)
 
Quote (J-Dog @ Nov. 27 2008,10:45)
       
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Nov. 27 2008,10:41)
Hey folks: You may enjoy this little interview  I did after an Expelled screening recently: <a href="[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I2SEkbQfR0" target="_blank">interview</a>]interview[/URL]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin you ignoramus - Please learn to link the right way.

Thank you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's a link example: < Expelled: the whole steaming turd >.  

Yup, the whole movie, at least while it lasts.

EDIT: Yes, it's the real thing, broken up into YouTube bits.  Yes, it's horrific!  Don't say I didn't warn you!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Watched the first 8 mins.

"What happened to doctor Sternberg was terrible"

- Stein.

So, what happened to him? Do I find out later in the film?
Posted by: BopDiddy on Nov. 27 2008,15:08

Quote (Advocatus Diaboli @ Nov. 27 2008,15:01)
Quote (BopDiddy @ Nov. 27 2008,14:26)
   
Quote (J-Dog @ Nov. 27 2008,10:45)
         
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Nov. 27 2008,10:41)
Hey folks: You may enjoy this little interview  I did after an Expelled screening recently: <a href="[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I2SEkbQfR0" target="_blank">interview</a>]interview[/URL]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin you ignoramus - Please learn to link the right way.

Thank you.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's a link example: < Expelled: the whole steaming turd >.  

Yup, the whole movie, at least while it lasts.

EDIT: Yes, it's the real thing, broken up into YouTube bits.  Yes, it's horrific!  Don't say I didn't warn you!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Watched the first 8 mins.

"What happened to doctor Sternberg was terrible"

- Stein.

So, what happened to him? Do I find out later in the film?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Turns out he appeared in a third-rate documentary starring a fourth-rate eye drop salesman written by a man with a self-admitted dearth of scientific training or understanding.

Yes, what happened to Dr Sternberg was terrible.  He will get his retribution in the afterlife, however, if I understood the movie correctly.
Posted by: lkeithlu on Nov. 30 2008,12:31

I agree-the first 8 minutes was pretty bad. I am so glad I do not have to pay money to see it. To be honest, I can't handle any more than 8 minutes at a time, but I feel obligated to see it.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Dec. 03 2008,14:29

< Win Ben Stein's mind >





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I've been accused of refusing to review Ben Stein's documentary "Expelled," a defense of Creationism, because of my belief in the theory of evolution. Here is my response.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one "result" of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. "As a Jew," he says, "I wanted to see for myself." We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. "It's difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place," he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Roger didn't like it.
Posted by: Henry J on Dec. 03 2008,14:44



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Win Ben Stein's mind
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No thanks. I don't want it. ;)
Posted by: Kristine on Dec. 03 2008,15:02

Yeah, among my many other objections, < this > occurred to me, too.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It isn't even subtle. Take its treatment of Dawkins, who throughout his interviews with Stein is honest, plain-spoken, and courteous. As Stein goes to interview him for the last time, we see a makeup artist carefully patting on rouge and dusting Dawkins' face. After he is prepared and composed, after the shine has been taken off his nose, here comes plain, down-to-earth, workaday Ben Stein. So we get the vain Dawkins with his effete makeup, talking to the ordinary Joe.

I have done television interviews for more than 40 years. I have been on both ends of the questions. I have news for you. Everyone is made up before going on television. If they are not, depending on their complexions, they will look sunburned, red-splotched, oily, pale as a fish belly, orange, mottled, ashen, or too dark to be lighted in the same shot with a lighter skin. There is not a person reading this right now who should go on camera without some kind of makeup. Even the obligatory "shocked neighbors" standing in their front yards after a murder usually have some powder brushed on by the camera person. Was Ben Stein wearing makeup? Of course he was. Did he whisper to his camera crew to roll while Dawkins was being made up? Of course he did. Otherwise, no camera operator on earth would have taped that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I was going to ask Mark Mathis why no footage of Ben's dressing room maquillage, and why the boil on Ben Stein's neck was the one doing all the talking and wearing the tennis shoes, but in the heat of that Q&A I forgot. ;)



*edited to hopefully fix image


Posted by: Texas Teach on Dec. 03 2008,17:28

Quote (midwifetoad @ Dec. 03 2008,14:29)
Win Ben Stein's mind
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Second Prize: Ben Stein's body
Posted by: Henry J on Dec. 03 2008,19:15

Third prize - lifetime supply of "Clear Eyes"?
Posted by: Lowell on Dec. 04 2008,17:04

O'Bleary has a post up on UD reporting on her < interview with Expelled! producer Walt Ruloff >

Why didn't the film do better commercially? You guessed it: the Darwinists.

Why didn't it contain more evidence of intelligent design? It's difficult to understand O'Leary's point here (surprise, surprise), but it has something to do with the producers being "discouraged from understanding what happens when one uncovers evidence against materialism. So even when they are making a film about it, they don’t get it."

In other words, that's the Darwinists' fault, too. You rotten Darwinists couldn't even let poor Walt make a good movie. That's just mean!
Posted by: Henry J on Dec. 05 2008,11:24



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Why didn't the film do better commercially? You guessed it: the Darwinists.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah; the "Darwinistas" had recruited all the people who pay attention to reality, which left only people who don't pay attention to reality to "design" the movie, which left them with one of those bad designs that serves as evidence for evilution.
Posted by: Kristine on Dec. 05 2008,11:51

Didn't she also once say that Darwinists were responsible for shopping malls? Well, I can't stand shopping malls, and I hate shopping.

I'm such a friggin' materialist. ;)
Posted by: Marion Delgado on Dec. 05 2008,22:19

I saw the movie, very great, very convincing.

HOWEVER it DID lack any John A Davison presence.


Remember: teach BOTH SIDES .. ID *AND* Davisonian evolution.

In my opinion, even junior high kids nowadays can figure this stuff out for themselves. If you don't believe me, ask one to program your VCR sometime!
Posted by: Kristine on Dec. 08 2008,14:37

Quote (Texas Teach @ Dec. 03 2008,17:28)
Quote (midwifetoad @ Dec. 03 2008,14:29)
Win Ben Stein's mind
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Second Prize: Ben Stein's body
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The *ahem* booby prize?

Just asking. :)


Posted by: BopDiddy on Dec. 16 2008,11:40

And the prize for the fifth worst movie of 2008 goes to Expelled!

From < The Onion's A.V. Club >:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There are terrible movies, and then there are terrible movies that cause harm to society by feeding into its ignorance. Nathan Frankowski's odious anti-evolution documentary belongs in the latter category. Even those who buy the thesis that star Ben Stein puts forward—that creationists are being unfairly locked out of the scientific establishment—should be disappointed by how Expelled spends almost no time explaining the specifics of intelligent-design theory, or presenting well-researched data to establish it as a legitimate challenger to evolution science. Instead, Frankowski and Stein rely on the same old Michael Moore-style cheap shots to prop up their pathetically shallow case. Few moments in cinema in 2008 were as shameless and disgusting as the Expelled sequence where Stein solemnly visits a Nazi death camp and unsubtly links "survival of the fittest" theory to the Holocaust. Don't worry, Darwinists: If the "bad as Hitler" argument is the best that ID pushers can muster, you have nothing to worry about.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: pough on Dec. 16 2008,12:52

Good news, everyone! The piano sound used in Expelled's soundtrack is available to everyone! (Well, for a fee.) So for those of us hoping to work on Expelled II: The Reckoning, this is a great opportunity!

< http://www.imperfectsamples.com/website....nts.php >

Seriously, though, that is a very nice sample library and the guy who made and sells it is really cool. I'm neither trying to sell it or make fun of it, per se. I just think it's kinda funny that the main endorsement is the musician who did Expelled. My main online-reading interests are music and science; this is where they collided. Thought I'd share. ;)
Posted by: Nerull on Dec. 16 2008,16:05

Quote (Marion Delgado @ Dec. 05 2008,23:19)
In my opinion, even junior high kids nowadays can figure this stuff out for themselves. If you don't believe me, ask one to program your VCR sometime!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What's a VCR? Is that like a DVD player?

:D
Posted by: Butterworthd on Dec. 29 2008,21:51

You guys have more fun on this site.  I wonder if they had this much discussion when they put Galileo under house arrest when he argued against Celestial Spheres.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Dec. 31 2008,02:32

The relevant analogy would be how much discussion Galileo was allowed when placed under house arrest.

It's always amusing when promoters of religious intolerance try to put on the mantle of Galileo or impugn science with the actions of religious dogmatists in that case. It combines cognitive deficiencies and historical ignorance into a compact, though unattractive, package.
Posted by: stevestory on Dec. 31 2008,07:46

Quote (Lowell @ Dec. 04 2008,18:04)
O'Bleary has a post up on UD reporting on her < interview with Expelled! producer Walt Ruloff >

Why didn't the film do better commercially? You guessed it: the Darwinists.

Why didn't it contain more evidence of intelligent design? It's difficult to understand O'Leary's point here (surprise, surprise), but it has something to do with the producers being "discouraged from understanding what happens when one uncovers evidence against materialism. So even when they are making a film about it, they don’t get it."

In other words, that's the Darwinists' fault, too. You rotten Darwinists couldn't even let poor Walt make a good movie. That's just mean!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


one hesitates to make fun of the mentally retarded....
Posted by: Butterworthd on Dec. 31 2008,08:47

I can't disagree.  I just find that more people are cursing the darkness than are lighting candles.  You know that one candle can drive away a lot of darkness.  
The candle I lit was subspace since I disliked the concept of the Laws of Physics; like it was written in a book somewhere in heaven.  But now that I have real insights I can't get a discussion started.  Like Galileo I would like to have my day in court.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Jan. 01 2009,09:37

Congrats to Ruloff and kevineleven!  Expelled made the list of Worst Films of 2008 at < Rotten Tomatoes! >
Posted by: Lou FCD on Jan. 01 2009,10:07

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ Jan. 01 2009,10:37)
Congrats to Ruloff and kevineleven!  Expelled made the list of Worst Films of 2008 at < Rotten Tomatoes! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm two pages into the comments on the list, and though there's a lot of "omg! that shouldn't be on the list, this film was much better/worse" kind of stuff, not one person has so much as mentioned Expelled.

ETA: First mention (page 4):



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
By the way, Boy in Striped Pajamas... seriously, worst?

Yeah, College, Repo, Love Guru, Expelled, Hottie & the Nottie (eeewww), and Postal are all horrible. Uwe Boll is the devil. Film buffs (like myself) hate him, and video game nuts (like myself) hate him. I hate Uwe.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 01 2009,12:31

Quote (Butterworthd @ Dec. 31 2008,08:47)
I can't disagree.  I just find that more people are cursing the darkness than are lighting candles.  You know that one candle can drive away a lot of darkness.  
The candle I lit was subspace since I disliked the concept of the Laws of Physics; like it was written in a book somewhere in heaven.  But now that I have real insights I can't get a discussion started.  Like Galileo I would like to have my day in court.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does anyone have a sensible parsing of the above?
Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 01 2009,12:45

I don't think Butterworthd has English as his first language.
Posted by: Nerull on Jan. 01 2009,13:50

Presumably he has some grand new ideas about physics, but the magical keyboard fairies prevent from from typing them.
Posted by: Glenn Branch on Jan. 01 2009,23:51

A list, with links, of worst-movies-of-2008 lists containing Expelled is < here > on the NCSE website.
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 02 2009,03:04

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Jan. 01 2009,18:31)
Quote (Butterworthd @ Dec. 31 2008,08:47)
I can't disagree.  I just find that more people are cursing the darkness than are lighting candles.  You know that one candle can drive away a lot of darkness.  
The candle I lit was subspace since I disliked the concept of the Laws of Physics; like it was written in a book somewhere in heaven.  But now that I have real insights I can't get a discussion started.  Like Galileo I would like to have my day in court.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does anyone have a sensible parsing of the above?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Parsed partially as: But, like, dude, have you ever really, ya know, looked at your hands? They can touch everything but themselves. Woah.

And also as: Curse you scientists! You laughed at me, well you laughed at Gallileo too you know!

Call me an old cynic but why do I suspect our chum would benefit from analysis using < this >* wonderful tool, with we are all no doubt familiar. Let's hope I'm wrong...

Louis

*To save clicks, it's John Baez's crackpot index. Someone may be unfamiliar with it, so it is linked to shine a candle on that small piece of darkness that may reside within the unfamiliar reader.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Jan. 02 2009,09:13

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Jan. 01 2009,13:31)
Quote (Butterworthd @ Dec. 31 2008,08:47)
I can't disagree.  I just find that more people are cursing the darkness than are lighting candles.  You know that one candle can drive away a lot of darkness.  
The candle I lit was subspace since I disliked the concept of the Laws of Physics; like it was written in a book somewhere in heaven.  But now that I have real insights I can't get a discussion started.  Like Galileo I would like to have my day in court.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does anyone have a sensible parsing of the above?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I took it that he was taking the piss, but I didn't really get it. I just figured I was in the darkness and my subspace light goggles were malfunctioning.
Posted by: Butterworthd on Jan. 02 2009,10:09

I placed all of my thoughts down on a web site < New Concepts in Physics and Biology > for those who are interested.
Posted by: Sealawr on Jan. 02 2009,12:51

Opening sequence of letters from Butterworth's site:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I want to present an entirely new view of the universe.  One that is compatible with Newton's, Einstein's, Schrödinger's, Dirac's and Maxwell's Laws, Theories and Equations.  It is based upon subspace particles, spinning singularities that are infinite on the insides and small on the outsides.

Here's a theory that is simple, understandable and not buried under a ton of mathematics.  Besides explaining physics there is an explanation on how life began.  Its all in the subspace.

I've spent 40 years on this quest and I will give you what I know on this web site.  If you want to support me, buy my books.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Damn!  He blows the lid off the Baez index and scores a Denyse as well.
Posted by: KCdgw on Jan. 02 2009,13:59



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Buy a book before the Thought Police discover it and close down this site.


Lastly these thoughts are my own and are not endorsed by any university or scientific program.  I have been dismissed as an engineer looking for ether but I have proven my case here.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Wow.

KC
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Jan. 02 2009,14:27

Quote (KCdgw @ Jan. 02 2009,13:59)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Buy a book before the Thought Police discover it and close down this site.


Lastly these thoughts are my own and are not endorsed by any university or scientific program.  I have been dismissed as an engineer looking for ether but I have proven my case here.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Wow.

KC
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In the old days, prior to the proliferation of tard on the intertubes, university faculty members would routinely get letters or pamphlets from folks like this. Claims to have overturned evolution, or discovered a general theory of everything, would show up in the mailbox regularly.

I'm glad that progress in communication has allowed this sort of thing to be shared more widely!
Posted by: Amadan on Jan. 02 2009,18:51



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have been dismissed as an engineer looking for ether but I have proven my case here.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ah. < I see >.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Jan. 04 2009,08:18

Opps.  Ruloff has managed to piss of an Australian philosopher:

< Expelled producer admits lying to atheist interviewees >

John is upset (poor fellow) by < this interview > with Ruloff (Expelled's producer).  In particular, the background to "Crossroads", the film about science and faith he told PZed et al. he was making:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
He acknowledged in 2004 he became "just really excited" about censorship in the scientific community. "So I thought we need to do something: We could make a movie."

Ruloff spoke quickly and enthusiastically, as we shared French fries and drank cranberry juice in a rustic restaurant.

While taking a course at evangelical Regent College in Vancouver (foreground of photo), Ruloff met a like-minded American, John Sullivan.

Together they decided to help finance a film that would show that scientific closed-mindedness has led to proponents of intelligent design being "expelled" from the academy.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This might raise a titter or two, though:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The first version of Expelled leaned heavily on computer-generated images of cells, illustrating how their development relied on more than random mutation.

But alas, Ruloff said, "When we first watched that movie it was verrrrry boring."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: 1of63 on Jan. 04 2009,13:56



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I want to present an entirely new view of the universe.  One that is compatible with Newton's, Einstein's, Schrödinger's, Dirac's and Maxwell's Laws, Theories and Equations.  It is based upon subspace particles, spinning singularities that are infinite on the insides and small on the outsides.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bigger on the inside than the outside?  Sounds like someone has been taking Dr Who's TARDIS altogether too seriously.  Perhaps we could call these tiny, spinning subspace singularities 'TARDons'?
Posted by: RupertG on Jan. 04 2009,19:23

At least we know officially now that the thinking behind Expelled was "we don't really care whether it's accurate or fair, we just want to pick a fight". Which is classic propaganda, after all, so it's nice of them to be honest about that.

R

(also, this post made in a desperate attempt to move this thread onto the next page, so every visit here is no longer greeted with "Win Ben Stein's mind" - "Second prize, win Ben Stein's body". The images are getting disturbing.)
Posted by: khan on Jan. 04 2009,19:57

Quote (RupertG @ Jan. 04 2009,20:23)
At least we know officially now that the thinking behind Expelled was "we don't really care whether it's accurate or fair, we just want to pick a fight". Which is classic propaganda, after all, so it's nice of them to be honest about that.

R

(also, this post made in a desperate attempt to move this thread onto the next page, so every visit here is no longer greeted with "*******". The images are getting disturbing.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'll help.

Edited in sympathy for the sensitive.
Posted by: RupertG on Jan. 05 2009,14:05

Thank you.

The fact that your quote of my post includes the sentences in question and has now placed them at the top of the new page that your very post created, ready to continue in their duty for another few months, at the very moment I had hoped for release, is a delicious, almost Nietzchian irony that I look forward to discussing in-depth with my therapists in the secure wing of St Tardissimus' Hospital for the Deeply Wrong.

Yours,

Dr Dr Napoleon Bonaparte, PhD, PhD, PhD.

(PS - Which way to Waterloo?)
Posted by: khan on Jan. 05 2009,15:16

Just for you: I edited.
Posted by: keiths on Jan. 05 2009,15:30

Quote (khan @ Jan. 05 2009,13:16)
Just for you: I edited.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course, what your edit actually accomplishes is to guarantee that from now on Rupert will think of Ben Stein's body every time he sees a string of asterisks.
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 05 2009,17:22

Nein, Stein! Yamma-ramma-ding-dong's latest NY Times < belch >, fix'd for him:
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
ABOUT two years ago, a little delegation from a major investment bank creationist cabal arrived at my home in Beverly Hills. These nice young people were from the bank’s “wealth management Disco 'Tute's "social control division.” I told them straight away that I didn’t have anywhere near enough wealth mojo to make their trip film worth their time, but they smilingly insisted that we could help each other [like Stalin and Hitler making kissy with the peace doc?].

They told me that if I invested a certain sum hubris with them, they would make sure that a large chunk of it was managed by a money manager script writer of stupendous acumen. This The Genius [Upstairs], so they said, never lost money. He did better in up markets than in down markets, but even in down markets he did well. They said he used a strategy of buying stocks designing flagella and hedging with options making blood clot [and he forgave all your sins, too!]...

I thanked them for their time and promptly looked up Bernard Madoff Charles Darwin online. Nothing I saw was even a bit convincing that he had made a breakthrough in financial men's fashion theory. Besides, [he didn't explain why the planets don't fall down, and] this large financial firm Christian Reconstructionist front was going to charge me pay me roughly 2 percent [of the box office gross] to put my money [where my mouth is] with Mr. Madoff’s firm Ruloff's scam. I could invest my few shekels with Warren Buffett Teh Designer for no management fee at all...

My point is not that I was so smart. I am not and I was not. Mistakes are a big part of my life. My point is that, as humans, we seem unable to learn from our mistakes very well.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Truest thing that tie-and-tenny-runners ever said.
Posted by: RupertG on Jan. 06 2009,15:19

Quote (keiths @ Jan. 05 2009,15:30)
Quote (khan @ Jan. 05 2009,13:16)
Just for you: I edited.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Of course, what your edit actually accomplishes is to guarantee that from now on Rupert will think of Ben Stein's body every time he sees a string of asterisks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's OK - there's no way that I'll ever associate five stars with anything to do with movies and Ben Stein.

Thank you. My sanity digs its fingernails into the cliff face once more...

R
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 06 2009,16:34

< Another unhappy viewer >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So it sounds to me as though Stein and friends are determined to expand the definition of science until the word becomes completely meaningless. They want to change the definition I gave above, so that "truth"  becomes the essential criteria, i.e., so that theories like that of God forming the Earth in such a way that it appears to have been formed by natural processes becomes accepted as a "scientific" theory. As the decision [Kitzmiller] says:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
It is notable that defense experts’ own mission, which mirrors that of the IDM itself, is to change the ground rules of science to allow supernatural causation of the natural world, which the Supreme Court in Edwards and the court in McLean correctly recognized as an inherently religious concept.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stein then talks a lot about morality, giving himself and his buddies a pat on the back for being such fine moral paragons of uprightness and propriety [Yeah, tell that to everyone who < took Ben Stein's adVICE about the stock market > in 2007], but Scientific American points out that Stein very selectively cuts and slices and shaves off portions of his Charles Darwin quote to make it appear that Darwin was saying something that he simply wasn't saying at all. And Stein wasn't going around the country speaking to large, enthusiastic audiences. In the film, he is seen speaking to a one-time audience consisting of real supporters, but also of many paid "extras." Very importantly, the scientists interviewed for the film appear to have been interviewed under false pretenses.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That speculative hedge-film by Ruloff, Stein, Smith, Mathis & A**ociates doesn't seem to be paying off. ;)
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Jan. 10 2009,13:40

Hey, we can all be selective readers. Check out the hundreds of satisfied customers on Amazon.com. Winge away, but there is more than one school of thought on Expelled.

Speaking of which, if you hated Expelled, you're going to love my latest film:

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uffWtjtXQb4 >
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 10 2009,13:52

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 10 2009,13:40)
Hey, we can all be selective readers. Check out the hundreds of satisfied customers on Amazon.com. Winge away, but there is more than one school of thought on Expelled.

Speaking of which, if you hated Expelled, you're going to love my latest film:

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uffWtjtXQb4 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, your new flick looks much more factual than Expelled, and clearly the acting is a step up.  I'm surprised you couldn't get funding to film it at Dachau however.
Posted by: creeky belly on Jan. 10 2009,13:58



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Hey, we can all be selective readers. Check out the hundreds of satisfied customers on Amazon.com. Winge away, but there is more than one school of thought on Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



LOL, spoken like a true snake oil salesman.
Posted by: dnmlthr on Jan. 10 2009,14:33

Coming here trolling for hits on what seems to be a half assed home video like so many others on youtube is sadder than a million dead puppies. Don't you have any real friends you can spam with this stuff?
Posted by: jeffox on Jan. 10 2009,16:24

Ya ya, I'm sure you (and the producers of Expelled) made a ton of money.  Ha ha.
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on Jan. 10 2009,17:12

Quote (jeffox @ Jan. 10 2009,16:24)
Ya ya, I'm sure you (and the producers of Expelled) made a ton of money.  Ha ha.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Come on. That's just cruel.
Posted by: jeffox on Jan. 10 2009,17:30

Twas writ:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Come on. That's just cruel.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Oh, ya ya.  :)   ;)
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 10 2009,17:39

Quote (Advocatus Diaboli @ Jan. 10 2009,23:12)
Quote (jeffox @ Jan. 10 2009,16:24)
Ya ya, I'm sure you (and the producers of Expelled) made a ton of money.  Ha ha.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Come on. That's just cruel.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But so DELICIOUSLY true.

{sigh} Schadenfreude is such a cruel mistress.

Anyway, why does Kevvo expect us to be surprised? We know:

a) That there are at least several hundred thousand* creationists in the USA, not a single one of them capable of the critical thought required/informed enough to dismantle the laughable dross that is Expelled.

b) Preaching to the choir isn't exactly hard.

c) The cost of DVDs isn't exactly a high proportion of people's income (we should expect that at least hundreds of people would buy it).

d) It isn't difficult to set up a few dozen Amazon accounts and tout the virtues of one's own work.

Given the above factors and a few others besides is it such a surprise that Amazon has had hundreds of positive comments regarding this video nasty?

"Creationists like creationist propaganda movie that's light on facts and heavy on bullshit! News at eleven. Dog bites man etc".

Yawn! Wake me for the second reel of something decent.

Louis

*Doubtless a gross underestimate!
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Jan. 11 2009,11:19

Louis: I never figured you to be prone to such wild flights of fancy. Do you seriously think someone would go to the extent of creating hundreds of fake accounts on Amazon and then review books and movies for months and years beforehand just so that when Expelled came out we could give it a positive review? Give me a break. I really expected more from you. Even a brief glance at the evidence would show you're off your rocker.

As far as I can see, the only real conspiracy on Amazon was PZ Myers and his little pack of Darbots running over to slag the film as soon as the DVD was announced. But they were quickly overwhelmed by those who had actually seen the film--and liked it.

Tsk Tsk. I know it's hard to take, Louis, and that your admittedly agile mind is scrambling to find some way--any way--to explain away the obvious data. Life would be so simple if we could simply write off everyone who disagrees with us as stupid or ignorant. But even though that may be true in a few cases, applying such a theory on a broad scale runs smack into the *overwhelming* contrary evidence. If you care about evidence, that is, not just the little snippets of data that support your dark, binary view of the world.

As for you, dnmlthr, the only thing sad here is a group of miscreants winging away for months and months on a discussion thread about a film they hated. In the words of William Shatner, "Get a life!"
Posted by: Ignatious on Jan. 11 2009,11:25

Wow, you sure touched a nerve.

Louis, ftw. =P
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Jan. 11 2009,11:27

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,11:19)
If you care about evidence, that is, not just the little snippets of data that support your dark, binary view of the world.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Y'know what, kevin11, for somebody who is allegedly in the movie bidness, you need to learn more about the other meanings of "projection".

Just sayin'
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Jan. 11 2009,11:48

just provin my point here albatrossity, just sayin...
Posted by: Wolfhound on Jan. 11 2009,11:55

What a whining little titty baby Kevin is!  I'd be buttsore, too, I suppose, if my bastard lovechild of a propaganda piece got the shitcan reviews that his did, making the Year's Worst lists, and deservedly so.  I'd wish a well earned Razzie on it if only I thought Kev & Co wouldn't then try to put the blurb "Award Winning!" on the DVD case after that.

Given that the Christians are such an overhwelming majority in the this country, it's a bit hard to push the "liberal atheist conspiracy" schtick to rationalize away the pathetic box office revenue this pissant pornography earned.  The only people who "loved" this POS were the already existing zombie godbots.  Frankly, I'm surprised enough of them are literate enough to write their crank reviews on Amazon.  Which then makes one reflect upon Louis' Theory of Infinite Sockpuppets.  Hmmm...
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 11 2009,11:59

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,17:19)
Louis: I never figured you to be prone to such wild flights of fancy. Do you seriously think someone would go to the extent of creating hundreds of fake accounts on Amazon and then review books and movies for months and years beforehand just so that when Expelled came out we could give it a positive review? Give me a break. I really expected more from you. Even a brief glance at the evidence would show you're off your rocker.

As far as I can see, the only real conspiracy on Amazon was PZ Myers and his little pack of Darbots running over to slag the film as soon as the DVD was announced. But they were quickly overwhelmed by those who had actually seen the film--and liked it.

Tsk Tsk. I know it's hard to take, Louis, and that your admittedly agile mind is scrambling to find some way--any way--to explain away the obvious data. Life would be so simple if we could simply write off everyone who disagrees with us as stupid or ignorant. But even though that may be true in a few cases, applying such a theory on a broad scale runs smack into the *overwhelming* contrary evidence. If you care about evidence, that is, not just the little snippets of data that support your dark, binary view of the world.

As for you, dnmlthr, the only thing sad here is a group of miscreants winging away for months and months on a discussion thread about a film they hated. In the words of William Shatner, "Get a life!"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


SWING and a miss!

Oopsie Kevvo, you can has reasoning and reading for basic comprehension fail.

What I said was that "Given the above factors and a few others besides is it such a surprise that Amazon has had hundreds of positive comments regarding this video nasty?", this is a probabilistic statement, not an absolutist statement. Learn to tell the difference and one day you may be able to manage simple tasks.

PZ and friends' poll crashing proves my point*. It's easy to do this. I make no claim that this was what was done in the case of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"** (after all how could I? I have no evidence) my point was, is, and remains that it is easy to do this, NOT that this was done. It is why I take internet polls/reviews of this nature with a great big pinch of salt. Such media are too easily manipulated.

Bear in mind that (as I mentioned) there are also >>100s of creationists in the USA. I'd be shocked and amazed if your vile piece of dishonest propaganda...oops sorry....shitty failure of a movie....oops sorry again...asinine bullshit*** mindlessly vomited forth from the odious orifices of the perpetually deluded failed to get ~100s of positive comments on Amazon. I would be utterly staggered if the delusional chaps and chappesses behind the DI/UD/your production staff etc etc and their ilk (which must number at least a few hundred) did not find your crap-filled choir preaching in some way enjoyable/good and some fraction of them said so.

Added in edit: To use terms you might understand: Many Nazis liked Nazi propaganda and said so.

Hence the comments about "Dog bites man" etc. Your assurance that there are multiple views about that feculent televisual trash you produced is not news. It is utterly unsurprising. Whoring for your latest video by illogical references to the "controversy" surrounding a former video is part of why you, and your movie, are mocked. Said whoring is also a manifestation of one of many reasons you don't understand why you are mocked.

Do try to keep up.

Louis

*Incidentally not something I a) care about or b) approve of in the manner you think. It's low hanging fruit. PZ's reasons are his own, I seem to remember he mentioned something along the lines of demonstrating the pointlessness of these sorts of poor polls however. Like FTK you seem incapable of thinking outside of "team terms". This really, really, REALLY isn't about which "side" you're on. My view of the world is not in any way binary, your misunderstanding of my view of the world is. The problem, in this instance, ain't mine.

**Is it time again to note the amazing, and utterly un-self-aware, irony in this title?

***See previous comments regarding the distinction between lies and bullshit.




Posted by: Louis on Jan. 11 2009,11:59

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ Jan. 11 2009,17:27)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,11:19)
If you care about evidence, that is, not just the little snippets of data that support your dark, binary view of the world.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Y'know what, kevin11, for somebody who is allegedly in the movie bidness, you need to learn more about the other meanings of "projection".

Just sayin'
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Seconded.

Louis
Posted by: Wolfhound on Jan. 11 2009,12:04

< Ow!  That's gotta' hurt! >
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 11 2009,12:06

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,17:48)
just provin my point here albatrossity, just sayin...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You barely have a point, and what little point is there is grossly in error.

Just saying...

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 11 2009,12:22

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,11:48)
just provin my point here albatrossity, just sayin...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin, can you read?
 
Quote (Lowell @ Dec. 04 2008,17:04)
O'Bleary has a post up on UD reporting on her < interview with Expelled! producer Walt Ruloff >

Why didn't the film do better commercially? You guessed it: the Darwinists.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"The Darwinists" control everything; but "Darwinism" is on the "brink of collapse." The film "did well" because Darwinism is on the brink of collapse; the film didn't fulfill its potential because the Darwinists control everything. Marriage is only between a man and a woman, but we demand free love between science and religion - because religion is science - and science is religion.

I have it on message, don't I? Maybe it's Denyse you have a problem with.

Oh, and I didn't lose the money that Ben Stein apparently did, because I didn't buy U.S. stock when he told his audience to. Ouch. (He thinks investing in Canada is unpatriotic, did you know that?)
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 11 2009,12:36

Quote (creeky belly @ Jan. 10 2009,13:58)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Hey, we can all be selective readers. Check out the hundreds of satisfied customers on Amazon.com. Winge away, but there is more than one school of thought on Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



LOL, spoken like a true snake oil salesman.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Um...

247 "five star votes" to 158 "one star" votes? And how many people are shopping on Amazon.com at any one time?

Guys, does it really matter how many of the reviews are duplicates?

Nice example of exaptation in the Sith video BTW. :)
Posted by: Tony M Nyphot on Jan. 11 2009,12:47

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,10:19)
Even a brief glance at the evidence would show you're off your rocker.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is there an award for Most Ironic Statement of the Millennium?
           
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,10:19)
As far as I can see, the only real conspiracy on Amazon was PZ Myers and his little pack of Darbots running over to slag the film as soon as the DVD was announced.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I assume PZ and his crew are also responsible for the underwhelming consensus at < Rotten Tomatoes >:



Edited to subtract
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Jan. 11 2009,13:42

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,11:48)
just provin my point here albatrossity, just sayin...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


kevin, you "prove your point" every time you post here.

Unfortunately, it's not the point that you think it is.
Posted by: jeffox on Jan. 11 2009,14:53

Oh ya ya, they made soooo much money that there's now word of a sequel in the air!!!  

Of course, there will be a few minor changes:

ACspelled:  The Highway to Tard!



Coming soon to a church near YOU!

:O  :p   :O   :p
Posted by: jeffox on Jan. 11 2009,14:55

My sincere apologies to the band.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 11 2009,15:18

Since we all know that nobody was "expelled" in Expelled, and that Kev-0's screenplay was a pack o' lies, if only they had waited a year they would have had a bone fide Expell-o-rama person.

Caroline Crocker.

No longer "executive director" of the IDEA clubs.  

Expelled!

By creationists.  Go figger.
Posted by: RupertG on Jan. 11 2009,16:48

Hey, Kevin!

Happy making propaganda? Does it matter to you that you were hired to say things that even the people hiring you won't defend?

I know, I know, it's just PR. Man's gotta eat.

But wouldn't you rather be doing something else?

R
Posted by: ERV on Jan. 11 2009,17:28

No, if he were just doing it for a job, we would still respect him-- Eg, Michael Edmondson (the Dick-Dawk guy).  I love Edmondson.

XI is just a tool.
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 11 2009,18:10

< Past the popcorn >, Kevin interviewed by Greg Wright. They just don't understand!      

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: So with your first screenwriting experience, After…, I’d like to get at some of the things there that perhaps reviewers didn’t understand.

KM: Sure.

Q:I had a chance to talk with Cunningham [who also directed After…] during the press tour for The Seeker, and I totally spaced about the fact that I could have talked to him about After…, which had just come out on DVD. But in talking to David, it sounded like he just feels like he’s been through the wringer with his last two projects.

KM: Well, I don’t want to speak for David, but The Seeker did get pretty unfavorable reviews, and the boxoffice was not what everyone had hoped. And that’s never a fun thing to go through. And in terms of After…, we released on DVD. Our hope initially was for a theatrical release, but we were thankful to at least get distribution; and as to the reviews, After… is the kind of movie that challenges you, for sure. And I think a lot of people just weren’t up for the challenge.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wow! Condescend much?
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: One site in particular, Plume Noir, had some fairly nasty things to say [about Kevin's film After...]:

         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The film takes elements such as guilt, kidnapping, pedophilia, pregnancy, extreme sports, Stalin, torture chambers, atomic radiation, ghosts, and techno, mixes them and throws them in your face like some cheap drink. I really don’t know what went through the screenwriter’s mind, but I suspect he may have taken some acid while exploring some dark underground in Lichtenstein.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


KM: Yeah. It’s interesting. You know, it’s funny, because I’ve written some pretty harsh reviews in my life. I’ll tell you something; I really laid into a writer at DC Comics for some issues of Green Lantern, and I ended up getting an email from him because his uncle had seen my review. And that didn’t feel very good. I should have known better at the time, but I think that I was sort of so frustrated at the state of the comic book industry as a whole that I unloaded on him, where I was really unloading on, to me, a bigger issue. I apologized. So when a guy like that writes something like [the review at Plume Noir], I hear somebody just trying to sound clever. I’m pretty easy to access on the Internet, and he could have very easily contacted me and asked if I had done acid before writing the film and I would have very gladly given him the answer (which is “no”). The other point is that After… is a good case in point of how a good idea at the beginning—a good high concept—sometimes, by the time it reaches the screen, isn’t quite how you thought it would be. When David and I initially got together on After…, it had nothing to do with suicide. My pitch to David was, “Let’s do Point Break in the world of urban exploration.” That’s where we started. So when you see what we ended up with, you may be surprised. But that’s because you can’t see the dozens of drafts we wrote along the way. I could write a book on how we got there. I’m proud of what we achieved with After…, but the final product is definitely a lot different from what I originally envisioned. Not in terms of quality, just the overall tone of the film. It’s a lot darker.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, I wish I could have seen the drafts of Expelled, too. In fact, I wish PZ could have seen the film. But it was pretty funny to Mark Mathis's face when Dawkins stood up in the audience afterward. I don't know how to top that when Dawkins comes back next March. Maybe we'll all take in a movie at the MOA? I hear the night-vision goggles have been put away.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Q: It’s incredibly difficult to make even a mediocre film.

KM: I think it’s incredibly difficult to make a movie, period, because you have so many different opinions in the mix. Getting money is probably the most difficult part. So I always go back to that line from Young Guns, Billy the Kid saying, “There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip.” To me, that describes the whole process. So any time you get a good movie, you know, it’s just short of a miracle.

Q: Yes, it’s a real triumph.

KM: It is. And then, like you say, I think people are pretty vicious toward people who end up making a bad movie. But it’s often just a combination of small errors or things going wrong, as opposed to just one person.

Q: And even when you’re not happy with what you ended up with [May I ask why you're even on this subject if everything's going so well?], the principles involved in backing the film financially dictate that you have to get some kind of return on investment. So you’ve got pressure there to get distribution for a film that its makers might not even be all that proud of.

KM: Oh, definitely. Because that’s what it comes down to, right? This is a business, after all. It’s for making money. And that said, you know, it’s funny. After…, for me, is a movie that gets better and better. I’ve seen the final cut now five times, and I think it’s a movie that gets better with repeated viewings, to tell you the truth; and I’m not sure why that is. And I’m not sure if that’s just true for me, the screenwriter, or what. As I said earlier, After… is the kind of film that challenges the viewer in many ways—visually and structurally. Some people enjoy that kind of challenge, but most people just want to watch something that affirms what they already believe. So when you make a film like After…, you’re already playing to a limited audience. But that’s fine with me, because even though After… may give some people headaches and drive other people crazy, there are other people who simply love the film and respect the chances David took with the material. All you can do as a writer and filmmaker is be true to your vision. How people respond to it is out of your control.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I love my film. It gets better every time I watch it. But you should have seen the dailies! People can't handle my work. My reviewers don't understand. They weren't up to the challenge. Yeah, it's all about money - even if I didn't make much. My films did well, even if people didn't go to them. You don't have control over how people react!

Flipping bizarre interview, I must say.

Well, < Greg Wright didn't like Expelled >.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
When it comes to its subject matter, though, Expelled fumbles the ball quite a bit. In the interests of entertainment and of simplifying its argument, it never bothers to tell us much about I.D., its tenets, its history, or its connections to Creationism. It oversimplifies the “opposition,” too, conflating activist atheists with practicing scientists who object on purely scientific grounds, and failing to distinguish between “Darwin,” “social Darwinism,” and “Darwinian evolution” as merely one branch of evolutionary biology. It also conveniently ignores voices in the debate who represent something of a middle ground.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin, you really need to get your "friends" on message!
       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein's motion picture documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,< hardly set any attendance records > in that nothing blew up and everyone remained fully clothed (admittedly the prospect of a naked Ben Stein is a horrifying thought).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And that's from a sympathizer!
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 11 2009,19:25

Quote (Louis @ Jan. 11 2009,11:59)
SWING and a miss!

Oopsie Kevvo, you can has reasoning and reading for basic comprehension fail.

What I said was that "Given the above factors and a few others besides is it such a surprise that Amazon has had hundreds of positive comments regarding this video nasty?", this is a probabilistic statement, not an absolutist statement. Learn to tell the difference and one day you may be able to manage simple tasks.

PZ and friends' poll crashing proves my point*. It's easy to do this. I make no claim that this was what was done in the case of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"** (after all how could I? I have no evidence) my point was, is, and remains that it is easy to do this, NOT that this was done. It is why I take internet polls/reviews of this nature with a great big pinch of salt. Such media are too easily manipulated.

Bear in mind that (as I mentioned) there are also >>100s of creationists in the USA. I'd be shocked and amazed if your vile piece of dishonest propaganda...oops sorry....shitty failure of a movie....oops sorry again...asinine bullshit*** mindlessly vomited forth from the odious orifices of the perpetually deluded failed to get ~100s of positive comments on Amazon. I would be utterly staggered if the delusional chaps and chappesses behind the DI/UD/your production staff etc etc and their ilk (which must number at least a few hundred) did not find your crap-filled choir preaching in some way enjoyable/good and some fraction of them said so.

Added in edit: To use terms you might understand: Many Nazis liked Nazi propaganda and said so.

Hence the comments about "Dog bites man" etc. Your assurance that there are multiple views about that feculent televisual trash you produced is not news. It is utterly unsurprising. Whoring for your latest video by illogical references to the "controversy" surrounding a former video is part of why you, and your movie, are mocked. Said whoring is also a manifestation of one of many reasons you don't understand why you are mocked.

Do try to keep up.

Louis

*Incidentally not something I a) care about or b) approve of in the manner you think. It's low hanging fruit. PZ's reasons are his own, I seem to remember he mentioned something along the lines of demonstrating the pointlessness of these sorts of poor polls however. Like FTK you seem incapable of thinking outside of "team terms". This really, really, REALLY isn't about which "side" you're on. My view of the world is not in any way binary, your misunderstanding of my view of the world is. The problem, in this instance, ain't mine.

**Is it time again to note the amazing, and utterly un-self-aware, irony in this title?

***See previous comments regarding the distinction between lies and bullshit.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


POTW!!!**

LOUIS GETS IT!*

* IMO of course....

**  Kevin 11 must re-read this -(Maybe next time Kev- might want to consider using the KY first...):  What I said was that "Given the above factors and a few others besides is it such a surprise that Amazon has had hundreds of positive comments regarding this video nasty?", this is a probabilistic statement, not an absolutist statement. Learn to tell the difference and one day you may be able to manage simple tasks.
Posted by: RupertG on Jan. 11 2009,19:27

"A naked Ben Stein..."

>twitch<        >twitch<      

....the voices, the voices are back.....

(gets hat)

R
Posted by: deejay on Jan. 11 2009,21:29

Bravo, Louis, but of course with the usual caveat about degree of difficulty when it comes to debating Kevin.

Meanwhile, I'll just snatch a piece of particularly low-hanging fruit.  Here's Kevin again on After... :

How exactly does
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
a good idea at the beginning—a good high concept
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


pair up with
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
My pitch to David was, “Let’s do < Point Break > in the world of urban exploration.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


???WTFWTF???!!oneoneone???

Given that the movie was set in Moscow, what exactly was the plan here?  Patrick Swayze robbing the toilet paper store while wearing a Gorbachev mask?  Keanu Reeves as the free-spirited KGB agent assigned to track him down? John C. McGinley as the gulag-rehabilitated company man futilely trying to get Reeves to do it by the book?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Then again, maybe it's just too high concept for me to get.
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 11 2009,23:23

Ye gods, now Ben Stein is contradicting himself again in the NY Times, this time claiming that < no one could have known > that the levees on the subprime mortgage sewage pit would fail. This despite the fact that Peter Schiff < handed Stein his own ass > (beginning 3:09) a year and a half ago on Faux News about the economy.

Geez, maybe if Ben Stein was willing to be open-minded, a la Expelled :p , about random variables, he'd know that regression analysis can be used for prediction and hypothesis testing, but geez, we all know that only Nazi-commie-atheists who want to kill babies believe in randomness!

And here he is, appealing to randomness anyway, saying that the market is unpredictable. We're only people! We're only human! We make mistakes (like telling people to invest in stocks on their way down in the video above, Ben?) Economists are not gods! And neither are scientists/climate change experts! (Louis excepted, of course.) :) Yeah, well, the best economists that I've encountered don't have a problem with evolution for some strange Enlightenment reason. And as for Stein saying that experts aren't always smart, I note that despite his being 99.99% wrong on the economy for the past two years he doesn't include himself in his list of dumb people.

Do you guys read < Ben Stein Watch >? This is a blog that's piggy-bank-backed on < crystals >. ;)
Posted by: Sealawr on Jan. 12 2009,00:03



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Courtesy of the Discovery Institute and a national publicist, Greg attended a private screening of the final cut of Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




The above noted in the interests of full disclosure at the base of Greg Wright's "friendly" review of Expelled.

Wow.  Just wow.  Money doesn't buy loyalty like it used to in the old days.
Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 12 2009,01:06

Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 12 2009,00:23)
Ye gods, now Ben Stein is contradicting himself again in the NY Times, this time claiming that < no one could have known > that the levees on the subprime mortgage sewage pit would fail. This despite the fact that Peter Schiff < handed Stein his own ass > (beginning 3:09) a year and a half ago on Faux News about the economy.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sure, nobody could have predicted it. Nobody like Nouriel Roubini, Dean Baker, Paul Krugman, Ian Shepherdson, Mark Zandi...
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 12 2009,03:35

Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 12 2009,05:23)
[SNIP]

Economists are not gods! And neither are scientists/climate change experts! (Louis excepted, of course.) :) Y

[SNIP]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Even though tongue in cheek I reject this incredibly insulting statement utterly. ;-)

Gods are after all, as far as anyone can tell, utterly fictional. I am most definitely real. In fact I know I'm real because, in order to prove that I am as real as anything, I am touching myself right now....

....Wait, I'm not sure that's what I meant, erm, I seem to have made some kind of error, why are those police cars pulling up outside my building?

Curses! Me and my inappropriate choice of idiom, tchoh!

Louis

P.S. Anyway, I can't be god because god is omniscient and therefore infallible. I am married and thus have at least three women in my life who could tell you without equivocation that I am very frequently wrong. QED really. ;-)
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 12 2009,03:59

Quote (J-Dog @ Jan. 12 2009,01:25)
[SNIP]

POTW!!!**

LOUIS GETS IT!*

* IMO of course....

**  Kevin 11 must re-read this -(Maybe next time Kev- might want to consider using the KY first...):  What I said was that "Given the above factors and a few others besides is it such a surprise that Amazon has had hundreds of positive comments regarding this video nasty?", this is a probabilistic statement, not an absolutist statement. Learn to tell the difference and one day you may be able to manage simple tasks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


{Blushes}

Oh you are most kind. Even the nomination is such an honour. I'd like to thank my Mum, my friend Barry, God, Arden's Mum...oh there's just so many of you. It's been too long, this should have happened earlier, 70 years...

{breaks down into incoherent screams and tears}

Louis
Posted by: Lou FCD on Jan. 12 2009,05:26

Quote (Louis @ Jan. 11 2009,12:59)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 11 2009,17:19)
Louis: I never figured you to be prone to such wild flights of fancy. Do you seriously think someone would go to the extent of creating hundreds of fake accounts on Amazon and then review books and movies for months and years beforehand just so that when Expelled came out we could give it a positive review? Give me a break. I really expected more from you. Even a brief glance at the evidence would show you're off your rocker.

As far as I can see, the only real conspiracy on Amazon was PZ Myers and his little pack of Darbots running over to slag the film as soon as the DVD was announced. But they were quickly overwhelmed by those who had actually seen the film--and liked it.

Tsk Tsk. I know it's hard to take, Louis, and that your admittedly agile mind is scrambling to find some way--any way--to explain away the obvious data. Life would be so simple if we could simply write off everyone who disagrees with us as stupid or ignorant. But even though that may be true in a few cases, applying such a theory on a broad scale runs smack into the *overwhelming* contrary evidence. If you care about evidence, that is, not just the little snippets of data that support your dark, binary view of the world.

As for you, dnmlthr, the only thing sad here is a group of miscreants winging away for months and months on a discussion thread about a film they hated. In the words of William Shatner, "Get a life!"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


SWING and a miss!

Oopsie Kevvo, you can has reasoning and reading for basic comprehension fail.

What I said was that "Given the above factors and a few others besides is it such a surprise that Amazon has had hundreds of positive comments regarding this video nasty?", this is a probabilistic statement, not an absolutist statement. Learn to tell the difference and one day you may be able to manage simple tasks.

PZ and friends' poll crashing proves my point*. It's easy to do this. I make no claim that this was what was done in the case of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"** (after all how could I? I have no evidence) my point was, is, and remains that it is easy to do this, NOT that this was done. It is why I take internet polls/reviews of this nature with a great big pinch of salt. Such media are too easily manipulated.

Bear in mind that (as I mentioned) there are also >>100s of creationists in the USA. I'd be shocked and amazed if your vile piece of dishonest propaganda...oops sorry....shitty failure of a movie....oops sorry again...asinine bullshit*** mindlessly vomited forth from the odious orifices of the perpetually deluded failed to get ~100s of positive comments on Amazon. I would be utterly staggered if the delusional chaps and chappesses behind the DI/UD/your production staff etc etc and their ilk (which must number at least a few hundred) did not find your crap-filled choir preaching in some way enjoyable/good and some fraction of them said so.

Added in edit: To use terms you might understand: Many Nazis liked Nazi propaganda and said so.

Hence the comments about "Dog bites man" etc. Your assurance that there are multiple views about that feculent televisual trash you produced is not news. It is utterly unsurprising. Whoring for your latest video by illogical references to the "controversy" surrounding a former video is part of why you, and your movie, are mocked. Said whoring is also a manifestation of one of many reasons you don't understand why you are mocked.

Do try to keep up.

Louis

*Incidentally not something I a) care about or b) approve of in the manner you think. It's low hanging fruit. PZ's reasons are his own, I seem to remember he mentioned something along the lines of demonstrating the pointlessness of these sorts of poor polls however. Like FTK you seem incapable of thinking outside of "team terms". This really, really, REALLY isn't about which "side" you're on. My view of the world is not in any way binary, your misunderstanding of my view of the world is. The problem, in this instance, ain't mine.

**Is it time again to note the amazing, and utterly un-self-aware, irony in this title?

***See previous comments regarding the distinction between lies and bullshit.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sweet.
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 12 2009,05:37

Quote (Lou FCD @ Jan. 12 2009,11:26)
[SNIP]

[/quote]
Sweet.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


FINALLY!

Now I can put my world domination plans into action:

Step 1: An AtBC POTW (it may even last for a few hours!)
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit (and world domination).

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 12 2009,07:50

Would you settle for a shimmy? :)
Posted by: midwifetoad on Jan. 12 2009,09:00

Quote (Louis @ Jan. 12 2009,05:37)
Quote (Lou FCD @ Jan. 12 2009,11:26)
[SNIP]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sweet.[/quote]
FINALLY!

Now I can put my world domination plans into action:

Step 1: An AtBC POTW (it may even last for a few hours!)
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit (and world domination).

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good rule of thumb: if you covet POTW, make fun of Expelled.

I did.
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 12 2009,11:13

Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 12 2009,07:50)
Would you settle for a shimmy? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good God Intelligent Designer Kristine!

Don't spoil the poor boy!  Your offer of a shimmy is the best offer he's had all day, week, year, this century forever!

There's just no telling what he'll do for 2 shimmies...
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 12 2009,11:25

Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 12 2009,13:50)
Would you settle for a shimmy? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


{Faints}

Louis
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 12 2009,11:25

Quote (J-Dog @ Jan. 12 2009,17:13)
Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 12 2009,07:50)
Would you settle for a shimmy? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good God Intelligent Designer Kristine!

Don't spoil the poor boy!  Your offer of a shimmy is the best offer he's had all day, week, year, this century forever!

There's just no telling what he'll do for 2 shimmies...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


{Faints again}

Louis
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 12 2009,11:26

Quote (midwifetoad @ Jan. 12 2009,15:00)
Quote (Louis @ Jan. 12 2009,05:37)
Quote (Lou FCD @ Jan. 12 2009,11:26)
[SNIP]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sweet.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


FINALLY!

Now I can put my world domination plans into action:

Step 1: An AtBC POTW (it may even last for a few hours!)
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit (and world domination).

Louis[/quote]
Good rule of thumb: if you covet POTW, make fun of Expelled.

I did.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I find your point valuable and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

;-)

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 12 2009,12:57

< Bwa ha ha! > :D
THE BEAST 50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 2008
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
32. Ben Stein

Charges: Daddy got him a job as a lawyer and speechwriter for Nixon; since then his ethics have slid. Whether misrepresenting Democratic policies on Fox News or dry-humping free market mythology in The American Spectator, Stein's brand of conservatism is as credible as a memoir on Oprah’s reading list. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, his 2008 anti-science propaganda film, would have made Leni Riefenstahl blush. He intentionally misquoted Darwin to link the theory of evolution to the Holocaust, earning the diehard Zionist a firm rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League, to which he replied, “It's none of their fucking business.” In his cinematic quest to paint a handful of fact-deficient creationist teachers as the oppressed soldiers of free speech, Stein willfully misrepresented himself to interview subjects, butchered their words with creative editing and infringed on a multitude of copyrights.

Exhibit A: Used portions of John Lennon's “Imagine” in his movie without permission or irony.

Sentence: ClearEyes replaced with a virulent strain of antibiotic-resistant staph.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Some names are missing. We need a 50 Most Ignored Loathsome People in America list. :)
Posted by: khan on Jan. 12 2009,13:14



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
speechwriter for Nixon; since then his ethics have slid.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



'Nuff said.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Jan. 13 2009,21:34

Hate to burst your little bubble, ERV, but Edmondson was as much a part of the Premise team as anyone. He worked out of the Premise office, he was on the Premise payroll, "Beware the Believers" was overseen by the same producers as Expelled. I was responsible for bringing Matt Chandler onto the project as writer, and I even did the research and wrote the original scripts on which the rap was based. So if you love Edmondson, you kind of have to love the entire Premise team--including me. :)
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 13 2009,21:40

Uh, no, Kev-0.

You're a dick.

Which is an insult to dicks, but you get my point since you're semi-literate.
Posted by: khan on Jan. 13 2009,22:08

Quote (Doc Bill @ Jan. 13 2009,22:40)
Uh, no, Kev-0.

You're a dick.

Which is an insult to dicks, but you get my point since you're semi-literate.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


sub-literate, terra cotta toothed imbecile with violent tendencies

--Brett Butler
Posted by: deejay on Jan. 13 2009,23:53

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 13 2009,22:34)
... I even did the research...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cue Dorothy Parker -

You can lead a whore to culture, but...
Posted by: Lou FCD on Jan. 14 2009,02:02

I'd still like to know which of the people in < Expelled > was actually expelled from anything, and what they were expelled from.

Care to answer this yet, Kevin?
Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 14 2009,02:30

Stein didn't just advocate ID years after scientists explained that it was crap, didn't just advise buying stocks right before the market lost 40% of its value, check out Ben's prognostications on the housing market in 2007:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Tell Ben Stein, IT AIN'T SUBPRIME

NYT columnist Ben Stein tells everyone that they being Chicken Littles because they are worried about the fallout from the subprime meltdown. Mr. Stein calculates that of the $10.4 trillion in outstanding mortgages, only about 13 percent or $1.35 trillion is subprime. Of this, only about 5 percent, or $67 billion is actually in foreclosure. If the losses on foreclosed loans is 50 percent then we're talking about $33 to $34 billion. That's not a lot of money in a $14 trillion economy.

The problem is that the Chicken Littles are a bit better at logic than Mr. Stein. The subprimes are melting down because house prices are worth less than mortgages. This is leading to rapidly increasing default rates in the Alt-A and prime markets as well. It does not make a lot of sense to payoff a $600,000 mortgage on a home that's worth $400,000.
...
--Dean Baker

Posted by Dean Baker on August 13, 2007
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



All you chicken littles, worried about some kind of 'mortgage crisis'. You're so silly!
Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 14 2009,03:00

Though to be fair, I've read a few of Stein's economic columns, and they're actually not all bad. He's been very wrong at times, but not as mind-numbingly wrong as when he's reading from a Kevin Miller script. In his own writing, he at least makes arguments, instead of shouting "Hitler! Hitler!" at productive scientists.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Jan. 14 2009,03:18

It amazes me that anyone, anywhere gives a flying crap about what Stein says about anything.

Credibility? 0

I'd ask a blind man for his opinion on eyewash before I'd ask Stein's.

It kind of puzzled me today, in a similar vein, when on NPR they had two economists on debating the President Elect's fiscal plans. One was from some liberal think tank and one was some former member of the Bush administration. I guess that was for a comical counterpoint. It was very Laurel and Hardy-esque.

Seriously, who gives a rat's ass what a Bush administration economist thinks about fiscal policy at this point? It's about like asking Dembski on to talk about evolution. Why would you bother except for comedic effect?
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 14 2009,04:46

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 14 2009,03:34)
Hate to burst your little bubble, ERV, but Edmondson was as much a part of the Premise team as anyone. He worked out of the Premise office, he was on the Premise payroll, "Beware the Believers" was overseen by the same producers as Expelled. I was responsible for bringing Matt Chandler onto the project as writer, and I even did the research and wrote the original scripts on which the rap was based. So if you love Edmondson, you kind of have to love the entire Premise team--including me. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So Kevvo, to return to one of your favourite invidious comparisons:  "So if you love Edmondson Germany, you kind of have to love the entire Premise team--including me Hitler. :)"

Does the starkly fallacious nature of your {ahem} "logic" stand out at you yet?

Dumb, unthinking and misguidedly smug about it: these aren't traits you wish to advertise Kevvo. I wonder why you do. Trolling is a real life phenomenon as well as an online one. Doesn't a grown man, presumably like yourself, have better things to do than to odiously oleaginate his self satisfaction with a demonstrably false propaganda piece all over various media?

Louis
Posted by: midwifetoad on Jan. 14 2009,07:22



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Seriously, who gives a rat's ass what a Bush administration economist thinks about fiscal policy at this point? It's about like asking Dembski on to talk about evolution. Why would you bother except for comedic effect?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'd be a bit more impressed with the incoming administration if key members of congress -- still in office -- weren't on tape from two years ago telling us the icebergs were just an illusion and Freddie and Fannie were just fine.
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 14 2009,12:40

Quote (deejay @ Jan. 13 2009,23:53)
   
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 13 2009,22:34)
... I even did the research...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cue Dorothy Parker -

You can lead a whore to culture, but...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You < cannot > make him < think >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Hakani’ is a film produced by the American fundamentalist missionary organisation Youth With a Mission.

It claims to be the “true story” of a Brazilian Indian child called Hakani who was supposedly buried alive by her tribe, the Suruwaha.

In fact, the film was faked – and even the missionaries who produced it ‘admit there is no way to verify what they say happened‘.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Interesting. < More controversy >.

Director David Cunningham's father founded Youth with a Mission, BTW. Geez, we "Darwinists" could learn a thing or two about "networking."

Guess who studied at the University of...wait for it...< Waterloo >!
Posted by: Lou FCD on Jan. 14 2009,18:18

Quote (midwifetoad @ Jan. 14 2009,08:22)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Seriously, who gives a rat's ass what a Bush administration economist thinks about fiscal policy at this point? It's about like asking Dembski on to talk about evolution. Why would you bother except for comedic effect?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'd be a bit more impressed with the incoming administration if key members of congress -- still in office -- weren't on tape from two years ago telling us the icebergs were just an illusion and Freddie and Fannie were just fine.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, I'm not an economist. I don't know if the good sounding stuff coming from the incoming administration will do jack squat about improving the economy.

But one needn't be an economist to see where the outgoing administration's policies have led. I don't know what we need, but I do know that I don't want no more of what we've had, and I'm not sure why anyone who helped put us where we are isn't laughed right off the radio.
Posted by: ERV on Jan. 14 2009,18:49

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 13 2009,21:34)
Hate to burst your little bubble, ERV, but Edmondson was as much a part of the Premise team as anyone. He worked out of the Premise office, he was on the Premise payroll, "Beware the Believers" was overseen by the same producers as Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*puts on her sunglasses and smiles*
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 14 2009,19:15

Quote (ERV @ Jan. 14 2009,18:49)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 13 2009,21:34)
Hate to burst your little bubble, ERV, but Edmondson was as much a part of the Premise team as anyone. He worked out of the Premise office, he was on the Premise payroll, "Beware the Believers" was overseen by the same producers as Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*puts on her sunglasses and smiles*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cheshire Cat smile, or Shark smile???
Posted by: khan on Jan. 14 2009,19:17

Quote (J-Dog @ Jan. 14 2009,20:15)
Quote (ERV @ Jan. 14 2009,18:49)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 13 2009,21:34)
Hate to burst your little bubble, ERV, but Edmondson was as much a part of the Premise team as anyone. He worked out of the Premise office, he was on the Premise payroll, "Beware the Believers" was overseen by the same producers as Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*puts on her sunglasses and smiles*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cheshire Cat smile, or Shark smile???
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I recall something referred to as CEG: Canary Eating Grin (from a cartoon cat).
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Jan. 15 2009,21:34

Louis,

If you insist on bringing up the Nazis, at least get your analogy straight. What I said about Edmondson is more akin to: "If you love Leni Reifenstahl, you kind of have to love the entire Third Reich--including Hitler." (Not that I'm equating Edmondson to Reifenstahl, Premise to the Third Reich, or me to Hitler)

Does the starkly fallacious nature of your {ahem} "logic" stand out at [sic] you yet?

Dumb, unthinking and misguidedly smug--sounds like a bad case of projection, Louis.

As for me being a troll, you've devoted an entire thread to tearing apart Expelled and assasinating the character of everyone involved. If I'm a troll, what does that make you guys? I consider myself more of an honored guest.


K
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 15 2009,21:42

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 15 2009,21:34)
Louis,

If you insist on bringing up the Nazis, at least get your analogy straight. What I said about Edmondson is more akin to: "If you love Leni Reifenstahl, you kind of have to love the entire Third Reich--including Hitler." (Not that I'm equating Edmondson to Reifenstahl, Premise to the Third Reich, or me to Hitler)

Does the starkly fallacious nature of your {ahem} "logic" stand out at [sic] you yet?

Dumb, unthinking and misguidedly smug--sounds like a bad case of projection, Louis.

As for me being a troll, you've devoted an entire thread to tearing apart Expelled and assasinating the character of everyone involved. If I'm a troll, what does that make you guys? I consider myself more of an honored guest.


K
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin you ARE an ignorant moron.

If you are addressing anything to Louis, please have the decency to do it at a normal hour - it's 3:37 am in London right now!
Posted by: Lou FCD on Jan. 15 2009,21:59

Silly J-Dog. If Kevin had one shred of decency, he wouldn't have been involved with < Expelled >.

Save your breath.
Posted by: khan on Jan. 15 2009,22:07

Quote (Lou FCD @ Jan. 15 2009,22:59)
Silly J-Dog. If Kevin had one shred of decency, he wouldn't have been involved with < Expelled >.

Save your breath.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's difficult to claim any shred of decency once you've sold your integrity to lying liars.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 15 2009,22:42

Damn, someone already called Kev-0 an ignorant moron.

Yes, Kev-0 you are ignorant as in uneducated.  Purposefully stupid, I'd say.

And, yes, in case you're interested, I'm a whole lot more educated and smarter than you. So, don't even go there unless you have a Ph.D. which you don't.

Why you bother posting on this site is beyond me.  There's nothing to be gained other than your continued humiliation.  

But, while you're here and so terribly interested in all the stuff we do, perhaps you'd like to tell us about how Caroline Crocker got Expelled by the Discovery Institute.

Fascinating story, Kev-0, don't you think?
Posted by: Badger3k on Jan. 15 2009,23:42

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 13 2009,21:34)
Hate to burst your little bubble, ERV, but Edmondson was as much a part of the Premise team as anyone. He worked out of the Premise office, he was on the Premise payroll, "Beware the Believers" was overseen by the same producers as Expelled. I was responsible for bringing Matt Chandler onto the project as writer, and I even did the research and wrote the original scripts on which the rap was based. So if you love Edmondson, you kind of have to love the entire Premise team--including me. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


After re-reading this again today while looking for the last post I read, I have to say, WTF?  One thing does not logically follow.  I can like, say, Tony Romo (I don't, btw), while simultaneously thinking his team is a bunch of good-for-nothing drug-using posers with delusions of adequacy.  I've watched many movies - let's take the latest crappy Star Wars - I've liked (to watch) Natalie Portman, but hated her partner in crime, the wooden kid.  It's like watching Scooby-Doo and liking Scooby, but hating Scrappy.  You get the idea.

Sorry, but liking, respect...things like that aren't like water or man-seed, you don't get to bathe in the splatter and feel like a king.  There's no splash effect on respect.  You either have it or you don't.

Damn, is there anyone I didn't offend in that?  :O
(it's been that kind of day, I guess)
Posted by: Reed on Jan. 16 2009,00:49

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 15 2009,19:34)
As for me being a troll, you've devoted an entire thread to tearing apart Expelled and assasinating the character of everyone involved.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hahaha. Let's see, your little propaganda movie
- Equated science with nazism.
- Implied that the scientific community was engaged in an active conspiracy to suppress the advancement of human knowledge.
- Accused various people and institutions unjustly "expelling" various people, by grossly misrepresenting the circumstances involved.

...but you think the name calling here is character assassination ?

Ah well, at least you got a < glowing review > from Roger Ebert.
Posted by: Bueller_007 on Jan. 16 2009,01:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 15 2009,20:34)
Louis,

If you insist on bringing up the Nazis, at least get your analogy straight. What I said about Edmondson is more akin to: "If you love Leni Reifenstahl, you kind of have to love the entire Third Reich--including Hitler." (Not that I'm equating Edmondson to Reifenstahl, Premise to the Third Reich, or me to Hitler)

Does the starkly fallacious nature of your {ahem} "logic" stand out at [sic] you yet?

Dumb, unthinking and misguidedly smug--sounds like a bad case of projection, Louis.

As for me being a troll, you've devoted an entire thread to tearing apart Expelled and assasinating the character of everyone involved. If I'm a troll, what does that make you guys? I consider myself more of an honored guest.


K
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Holy crap!  A chance to interact with a real-life Expello-tard.

I really liked your movie.  The best part was the lying.
Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 16 2009,01:53

Quote (Bueller_007 @ Jan. 16 2009,02:13)
I really liked your movie.  The best part was the lying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


there were other parts?
Posted by: jeffox on Jan. 16 2009,02:29

kevinmiller wrote:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As for me being a troll, you've devoted an entire thread to tearing apart Expelled and assasinating the character of everyone involved. If I'm a troll, what does that make you guys? I consider myself more of an honored guest.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I am reminded of the lyrics to a Steely Dan tune.  It goes something like this:  

Show biz kids making movies of themselves
You know they don't give a fuck about anybody else

Just how much money did your film lose, anyway?

Ha ha.  Keep in mind, sometimes people who lose a lot of money in the film industry wake up with a horse's head in their bed.  Just be careful who you owe.
:O
Ha ha.
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 16 2009,05:27

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 16 2009,03:34)
Louis,

If you insist on bringing up the Nazis, at least get your analogy straight. What I said about Edmondson is more akin to: "If you love Leni Reifenstahl, you kind of have to love the entire Third Reich--including Hitler." (Not that I'm equating Edmondson to Reifenstahl, Premise to the Third Reich, or me to Hitler)

Does the starkly fallacious nature of your {ahem} "logic" stand out at [sic] you yet?

Dumb, unthinking and misguidedly smug--sounds like a bad case of projection, Louis.

As for me being a troll, you've devoted an entire thread to tearing apart Expelled and assasinating the character of everyone involved. If I'm a troll, what does that make you guys? I consider myself more of an honored guest.


K
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevvo, Kevvo, Kevvo,

As per usual, your understanding is at the "yoghurt" level.

My mentioning if the Nazis is what we here in the adult world call "a joke". I am mocking you, get used to the feeling. The reason for me mentioning Nazis is because in your woefully inaccurate propaganda piece you, and your eternally clueless chums, made invidious comparisons with Nazis left and right. The analogy wasn't meant to be accurate mapping of "you" onto "nazi" or any such thing (in fact its very inaccuracy highlights this part nicely), it was a) meant to highlight the dishonest smearing of the majority of working scientists that you did in the movie and b) to highlight the illogic of your asinine cliam that if you love one thing about X you must love other things about X. So another swing and a miss from you Kevvo. You're doing SO well! Way to avoid the substantial point and focus on your own misunderstanding!

As for the trolling/projection comments: I think you'll find whining about character assassination by someone who a) doesn't even have the first clue about the scientific subject he made a movie about (and allegedly "researched") and b) made a series of cowardly and dishonest accusations about working scientists simply because you don't like some aspect of science, is so hypocritical it borders on irony. Frankly Kevvo, anyone with the minimum reasoning ability of a houseplant (and this is a set of people that clearly doesn't include you, houseplants are to you and your IDeological ilk what Einstein is to cheese) realises that this whine on your part is yet another swing and a miss. Doesn't that make you out? I was never too familiar with the rules of baseball.

Trolling is a behavioural phenomenon in which a person/persons do/say something to deliberately illicit a negative reaction and to distract from relevant effort. Like I said, this is not a phenomenon restricted to the internet that named it so. Your movie is as obnoxious a piece of trolling as anything else. If "Expelled" was well thought out, accurate, honest and presented a sound scientific case it would have been a useful contribution to any discussion. It wasn't any of these things.

Your personal behaviour on THIS website has been to interject meaningless pablum and whine about us meanies whilst failing to present one single defence of the ideas and claims in your movie. That is, at the very least indicative of your rather pathetic mindset, and at the worst deliberately disruptive (ergo: trolling). In fact, just like your odious movie, you deliberately try to avoid substantive claims/implications and instead focus on nonsensical whines about how very, very persecuted you are by a piece of the online universe that doesn't intrude into your life one iota. Another swing and a miss from you Kevvo. 4 strikes? (Three of them just in this post!) Dude, even a UKian who doesn't play baseball is becoming suspicious!

Oh and by the way, when your best retort to any critique is the playground-esque "I know you are you said you are but what am I", my advice is to give up because you're clearly too pathetic for words. And I do mean give up on everything, life included. As a grown man you really shouldn't be that pathetically infantile. Your suicidal method of choice should probably not involve a drug overdose as those evil Darwinian medics and pharmaceutical scientists are bound to have got their science wrong because there wasn't enough Jesus in it. I suggest a good high cliff and some jagged rocks. That Newton was a God fearing man after all.*

Lastly, and of course most amusingly, you complain about a tiny segment of the internet, where a few people have come together to share their individual ideas and opinions, has set up a thread to excoriate a demonstrably false and dishonest propaganda piece (that would be your movie, keep up). Wow, for a supposed advocate of the "little guy" and "free speech" you seem to have missed the point somewhere along the line. Golly Gosh Mr Big Hollywood Man how're us jes' plain folks to compete?

{KABLOOM}

Oops sorry, my irony meter just blew up....again.

You, and the Expelled team, made a movie that was distributed across the USA. In it you made, amongst a series of invidious comparisons and gross misrepresentations, a number of claims. Those claims (and the concomitant comparisons etc) have been dissected, refuted and thoroughly destroyed. To be fair, since there wasn't a single original part of your movie, the work was done before you shat it onto the movie screens, but I digress. Do you seriously expect it NOT to be criticised in any manner? Is our tiny corner of the online world (unadvertised in any meaningful manner, not backed by a budget of millions etc) so threatening to you? I suggest growing a thicker skin if you are to continue in public life.

Honoured guest? Who invited you? Who honoured you? Oopsie. Another swing and a miss. 5 in total? Not good at all methinks. You're welcome here, and of course welcome to contribute like any other person, and, also like any other person, it's your ideas that will determine how you are treated. And Kevvo, thus far, your ideas are getting you mocked. A lot.

Lastly, and for the record: I support Intelligent Design Creationists and other Creationists of all stripes. Yes you read me correctly. Let me elaborate. I support your right to your opinion, to express that opinion freely and to make whatever movies etc you think you need to, however disgustingly dishonest they might be. I support your right to criticise that which you think needs criticising and attempt to change that which you think needs changing. Just like I would support these things for anyone. This doesn't exempt you from critique, this doesn;t exempt you from mockery, and this doesn't mean (in some faux relativist way) that all claims are equal. What it means is that your entitlement to express them is equal to anyone else's.

Do I need to point out that this doesn't include inserting demonstrable non-science (and nonsense) into school/university science curricula? ID creationism (and it's elder brethren species of creationism) are simply not scientific. They might, just, be philosophical or theological ideologies (but to be fair they fail to even manage those exceedingly low criteria) and therefore usefully included in curricula discussing those topics, but science they ain't. No matter what special pleading you make. They barely even make the Cargo Cult appearance of science, despite the best efforts of their perpetually deluded adherents. When IDC starts making testable predictions that aren't accurately lampooned by The Flying Spaghetti Monster then it will be taken more seriously. Until then it remains what it has thus far been demonstrated to be: the latest in a series of sociopolitical gambits to force a specific religious world view into science as if it were science, which as has been demonstrated time and again, it isn't.

Oh and Kevvo, just a piece of advice, don't bring a rubber chicken to a gunfight. In a battle of wits you are so demonstrably unarmed as to be distressingly pathetic. Now go away or say something worth reading please.

Louis


*For the hard of thought, yes Kevvo and chums this would be you, I am absolutely not advocating Kevvo rid this world of his asinine presence. This is what we call "humour" and "hyperbole". Look them up, they really are quite fun.
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 16 2009,05:32

Quote (stevestory @ Jan. 16 2009,07:53)
Quote (Bueller_007 @ Jan. 16 2009,02:13)
I really liked your movie.  The best part was the lying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


there were other parts?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No.

And I've watched it. Twice. With a notepad.

Louis

P.S. I didn't pay to watch it though. Hey Kevvo, get your friend Dembski to set Homeland Security on me. Tee Hee.
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 16 2009,07:27

Beautiful post Louis (sniff)...

So that's why we put up with you and keep you around!

But srsly - excellent take down - well said, er typed....
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 16 2009,08:26

Quote (J-Dog @ Jan. 16 2009,13:27)
Beautiful post Louis (sniff)...

So that's why we put up with you and keep you around!

But srsly - excellent take down - well said, er typed....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thankyewthankyew.

Be nice to Kevvo though, it doesn't matter that he has a tantrum at ~3am UK time, waking up and knocking the dishonest little propaganda shill about whilst I have coffee is a amusing.

Or at least it is currently amusing. If it ceases to be so, then I'll cease to play with Kevvo.

Louis
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Jan. 17 2009,11:07

Quantity over quality, hey Louis? I guess when you’re wrong; barking really loud will fool most of the folks most of the time. Right J-dog? "Yeah, Louis. You're so cool. I really loved it when you said..."

Keep it at the third grade level, keep playing to the peanut gallery, and who knows? Maybe Kristine might honor you with a shimmy (shudder at the thought). But wouldn't it be simpler to admit that your Germany/Nazi analogy was inaccurate and that anonymous character assassination is your forte? And now you're bragging about pirating a copy of Expelled? You're turning out to be a real class act, Louis. I'm glad at least SOMEONE is standing up there on the moral high ground...
Posted by: Lowell on Jan. 17 2009,11:31

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,11:07)
But wouldn't it be simpler to admit that your Germany/Nazi analogy was inaccurate and that anonymous character assassination is your forte?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bwah, hah, hah, hah, hah!

You've got to be fucking kidding me!
Posted by: carlsonjok on Jan. 17 2009,11:39

Quote (Lowell @ Jan. 17 2009,11:31)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,11:07)
But wouldn't it be simpler to admit that your Germany/Nazi analogy was inaccurate and that anonymous character assassination is your forte?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bwah, hah, hah, hah, hah!

You've got to be fucking kidding me!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HA HA THIS IS KEVINELEVEN



Hey Kevin?  Self awareness?  Ur doin it rong!
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 17 2009,13:29

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,17:07)
Quantity over quality, hey Louis? I guess when you’re wrong; barking really loud will fool most of the folks most of the time. Right J-dog? "Yeah, Louis. You're so cool. I really loved it when you said..."

Keep it at the third grade level, keep playing to the peanut gallery, and who knows? Maybe Kristine might honor you with a shimmy (shudder at the thought). But wouldn't it be simpler to admit that your Germany/Nazi analogy was inaccurate and that anonymous character assassination is your forte? And now you're bragging about pirating a copy of Expelled? You're turning out to be a real class act, Louis. I'm glad at least SOMEONE is standing up there on the moral high ground...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Okie dokie Kevvo,

I was going to explain all the whiny errors in your asinine little post, in fact I did, but then I grasped a central fact: not only don't you care, you cannot understand, so I deleted it and plumbed for this instead. So to keep things very brief, I'm going to reiterate one simple point, and expand on one other point.

1) The "Nazi" analogy. As explained before it was DELIBERATELY badly mapped. The bad mapping serves to highlight the illogic. Just like it does not logically follow that to love one piece of Edmondson's work you must therefore love the entire Expelled team and therefore you, it does not follow that if you love Germany you must love Hitler. The fact that "Germany" is a collective noun and "Edmondson" isn't, is entirely irrelevant to the fact the process of logic you are advocating is fallacious. The exact mapping of one element of your analogy onto one element of mine isn't the issue I was highlighting (in fact as I said, bad mapping highlighted your poor logic even better) it's the format of the analogy itself that's flawed. I'm not sure I can put this more simply for you. Your belief or understanding of this is unimportant. Your opinion of me doesn't matter.

2) Sorry but where did I say I had a pirated copy of Expelled? Are you accusing me, in writing, of the internationally recognised crime of video piracy? Is that not in and of itself a baseless and libellous accusation since you have no evidence to support said claim?

I said I didn't pay to watch it, and this is the truth, I didn't. Now, can you think of any way, other than criminal piracy, I might get to see a movie (twice) without paying a single penny? I'll give you some time. Perhaps you can give some examples when you apologise for your libellous remarks about my (undemonstrable) criminality.

So then where to go from here? I know, I've an idea! Since you've decided to treat we here at AtBC with your presence how about we get specific. How about we ignore all this other stuff and you actually get down to brass tacks. You said you did some of the research for Expelled, how about you present some of it for analysis, see if it stands up to scrutiny? That will be a nice substantial thing (note: this thing called "substance", that's what you're avoiding).

Like I said Kevvo, don't bring a rubber chicken to a gunfight. You really don't have the intellectual muscle for this sort of thing.

Louis
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Jan. 17 2009,13:46

You know, I just got around to watching this movie.

Bizarre.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 17 2009,13:51

Kev-0!  In order to have one's character assassinated one has to have character in the first place.

You have demonstrated and admitted that you are dishonest and that you perpetrated lies in your screen play for Expelled.  Remember the teeth-pulling thread in which you stated that Sternberg was, in fact, not expelled?

Character is demonstrated when you stand up in a planning meeting and say, "Wait a second, Sternberg wasn't expelled.  Nor was Crocker or Gonzalez.  It would be dishonest to present it otherwise."

Of course, you would have no longer been the screenwriter, but you would have demonstrated character.

Rather what you did, Kev-0, was to sit down in the planning meeting and conspire to lead the viewer to believe that Sternberg, Crocker and Gonzalez were persecuted and expelled.  (Crocker has since, however, been expelled by the Discovery Institute, but that will have to wait for Expelled II)

So, Kev-0, the bottom line is that you are dishonest and a liar.  Lying is intending to mislead and dishonesty is falsely claiming otherwise.  Your character hasn't been assassinated, it's been revealed.  Your actions do seem to bug you which is the only reason I can imagine that you come around here to have your nose rubbed in it.
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 17 2009,14:31

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Jan. 17 2009,19:46)
You know, I just got around to watching this movie.

Bizarre.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I particularly liked the bit with the Nazis......oh no, wait, I didn't.

Louis
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Jan. 17 2009,15:00

Doc Bill:

You're right, there's a lot of character being revealed in this thread--yours included. But you do raise an interesting question: Why do I keep coming back here? I was asking myself the same thing last night. I guess it comes down to three things:

1) Plain, old curiosity. I don't know you people, so I'm not overly concerned with what you think about me or Expelled (I have my own thoughts on both subjects), but I'm always open to criticism (and some of what I've read here is certainly valid), and frankly, I'm always curious to hear what some of you will come up with next.

2) I love a challenge, and a few of you definitely provide that.

3) Something that really irked me during the time I worked on Expelled was the fact that people who occupied the various sides of this debate were more interested in hunkering down in their chosen corner and talking ABOUT the people who disagreed with them rather than actually trying to engage the other side(s). I identified this thread as one of those places where people were hunkering down, so I thought I'd crash the party. I realize that's never going to get me voted Mr. Popularity, but at least it gives me the satisfaction of knowing I'm not one of those people.

That said, there's only so many times we can go around the same Mulberry bush. So perhaps it's time I brought my sojourn here to an end. All in favor?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 17 2009,15:29

We know just how averse you are to < talking about someone else >.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Jan. 17 2009,15:32

Look Miller, your film was a load of shit. You are a dishonest hack at best.

Why would anyone miss you? I won't.
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 17 2009,15:52

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,21:00)
Doc Bill:

You're right, there's a lot of character being revealed in this thread--yours included. But you do raise an interesting question: Why do I keep coming back here? I was asking myself the same thing last night. I guess it comes down to three things:

1) Plain, old curiosity. I don't know you people, so I'm not overly concerned with what you think about me or Expelled (I have my own thoughts on both subjects), but I'm always open to criticism (and some of what I've read here is certainly valid), and frankly, I'm always curious to hear what some of you will come up with next.

2) I love a challenge, and a few of you definitely provide that.

3) Something that really irked me during the time I worked on Expelled was the fact that people who occupied the various sides of this debate were more interested in hunkering down in their chosen corner and talking ABOUT the people who disagreed with them rather than actually trying to engage the other side(s). I identified this thread as one of those places where people were hunkering down, so I thought I'd crash the party. I realize that's never going to get me voted Mr. Popularity, but at least it gives me the satisfaction of knowing I'm not one of those people.

That said, there's only so many times we can go around the same Mulberry bush. So perhaps it's time I brought my sojourn here to an end. All in favor?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevvo,

I for one am not in favour of your departure if you have matters of substance to discuss.

Despite your apparent delusions to the contrary, hunkering down over a chosen corner is demonstrably hardly anything I'm interested in (see my chosen career: scientist, as opposed to someone who shits out delusional and inaccurate propaganda movies and thus aids liars). To be exceedingly blunt I'd love to credit you and IDCists the same benefit of the doubt, but to be even more blunt your own behaviour proves that you simply aren't interested. (Hello! Entire movie comparing working scientists to Nazis!) So your patronising (and erroneous) comments re: this thread are just an obnoxious parting barb.

I LOVE it when people like yourself try to pull the reasonable card, it's so blissfully self unaware. Look again at the comment you made that elicited my first reply. Look at your abject misunderstanding of the points made in my reply and my less than sympathetic elaboration of them. The bug up your arse is not that I/we are "hunkered down over a chosen corner" but that we have seen through the sham that IDC is, and through the surrounding shams that this manufactured "controversy" entails. You don't like that so you blame the messengers.

If there truly were a genuine controversy IDCIsts would have some data, some hard and fast meaningful research to argue with. They demonstrably don't. Most of their schtick is warmed over creationism, and the bits that aren't are merely wrong.

So cut the bullshit, cut the delusion that you are some insightful genius pricking the pompous comfort of some spurious party by gate crashing. You have yet to offer ANYTHING of substance. You instead choose to slander and libel working scientists who actually know what they are talking about in your wanton ignorance of the subject at hand.

Don't like that? Think it's a character assasination? Wrong, Kevvo. It's a simple matter of demonstrable fact. It might not be polite to (for example) tell a fat person that they are fat. But if said fat person attempts to model teeny tiny swimwear they cannot fit into, then at some point for their own good a quiet mention of their obesity needs to be made. When said fat person tries to have it declared nationwide that they are slimmer than Kate Moss, have this taught as fact in school science classes, and then  complains that anyone who (however delicately) points out their obesity is ideologically akin to the group of people responsible for the greatest genocidal tragedy in recorded human history, then don't be surprised if a few people break out the (intellectual and metaphorical) baseball bats and teach Mr Fatty a lesson. Your Emperor is naked, Kevvo. Don't blame us kids for pointing that out.

That said, I'll repeat: stay and offer something of substance and thus at least attempt an adult conversation, or continue whining, lying and defending the indefensible and thus be mocked unrelentingly. The choice, as ever, is yours and ONLY yours.

Louis
Posted by: jeffox on Jan. 17 2009,16:48

C'mon Kev-0, just give us all a general ballpark figure, say 6 or 7 figures?  Pretty big minus there, eh?  

Ha ha.
Posted by: Reed on Jan. 17 2009,17:25

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,09:07)
But wouldn't it be simpler to admit that your Germany/Nazi analogy was inaccurate and that anonymous character assassination is your forte?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Don't you see even a tiny bit of hypocrisy here, given the content of your movie ?

You get such a strong reaction here (and from reality based folks everywhere) because your film was obviously a deliberately dishonest on reason, science and scientists everywhere, all with the transparently obvious goal of promoting a particular religious agenda.

Your continued insistence that it was something else just makes you look like a dishonest hack.

Have you ever noticed that pretty much the only people who said anything good about your movie were fundamentalists ? That almost all the promoters of ID have a fundamentalist Christian agenda ? That ID has produced no credible science ? Are you so deluded by your own agenda that you honestly think this is just a coincidence ?
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Something that really irked me during the time I worked on Expelled was the fact that people who occupied the various sides of this debate were more interested in hunkering down in their chosen corner and talking ABOUT the people who disagreed with them rather than actually trying to engage the other side(s).

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


ID is an obvious front for a religious agenda. It has no evidence to support it, and clearly has no place in science. As long as ID supporters insisting that their bullshit should be considered science, rather than actually doing science, there is nothing for rational people to engage.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 17 2009,17:25

I do recall, Kev-0, if memory serves that we tried and tried and tried to engage you in a discussion about Expelled and the "expelled" and you refused to participate.

You see, we all know the biographies of the "expelled" and some of know these people personally.  So, we have some insight as to what really went on.

Dembski expelled?  No, he was removed as head of the Polanyi center for non-colleagic conduct by the same guy, pres of Baylor, who granted the charter.  Dembski kept his pay for the 5-year duration of the grant.  

Sternberg, as you well know, was not expelled by the Smithsonian because he didn't work for the Smithsonian.  He worked, and still does AFAIK, for the NIH has a data analyst.

Crocker wasn't expelled.  Her 1-year teaching contract ran out and it wasn't renewed.  You should be able to find hundreds of biology teachers whose contracts run out every year.  Crocker has had several contract jobs since, all ending, and recently was Exec. Director of the IDEA clubs, announced with some fanfare, but now not (with no fanfare.)

Behe, Wells, Seelke, Marks and others have university jobs.

Even Gonzalez wasn't expelled.  He didn't make tenure because he brought in about 1% of the grant money of his colleagues, published virtually nothing and graduated no advanced students.  He failed to measure up.  Seems he's employed by another college now, however.  Hardly expelled.

In an interview it was either Ruloff or Stein who said that the Expelled team had interviewed "hundreds" of scientists who had lost their jobs or grant money for getting involved with ID.  I don't believe that at all.  If it were true than at a minimum you'd have a scrolling credits of all the "expelled."  Seriously, if the poster boy for Expelled was Sternberg then you were in big trouble with your main thesis.

So, come on back and tell us all about what REALLY went on behind the scenes.  Oh, and tell us, really, when Stein was going around giving interviews and saying things like "Darwinism doesn't explain thermodynamics," did anybody cringe?  Weren't you at least a little embarrassed by that?
Posted by: deejay on Jan. 17 2009,17:26

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,16:00)
2) I love a challenge, and a few of you definitely provide that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Evidently the current challenge is reading for comprehension.  What follows is a little bit harder.
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 17 2009,17:43

Oh Brave Sir Kevin - PLEASE DON'T RUN AWAY!!!



Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 17 2009,17:52

Quote (Doc Bill @ Jan. 17 2009,18:25)
 Oh, and tell us, really, when Stein was going around giving interviews and saying things like "Darwinism doesn't explain thermodynamics," did anybody cringe?  Weren't you at least a little embarrassed by that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I doubt Kevin knows enough to be embarrassed by that.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Jan. 17 2009,17:58

Kevineleven, complaining about folks (here or elsewhere)  only focusing on "people" is a real hoot. Your POS film was entirely about people; there wasn't a lick of science in it!

If you wanna talk about science (or anything besides people), maybe you should try it first before you complain about others...
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 17 2009,19:09



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Oh, and tell us, really, when Stein was going around giving interviews and saying things like "Darwinism doesn't explain thermodynamics," did anybody cringe?  Weren't you at least a little embarrassed by that?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



What killed me about Stein spouting off about that, and he did it several times, was that NOBODY said "what the FUCK?"

Stein also said that "Dawinism doesn't explain gravity."

Yeah, Stein, and germ theory doesn't explain red.

So, based on this statement, I would henceforth call Ben Stein a MORON and that would be "bad" because I'm assassinating his character and not addressing his argument.  However, his argument is MORONIC so what does that leave me with?

OK, Louis, I used "with" at the end of a sentence.  So, sue me.  Louis and I are only left with mockery because there is no avenue for discussion.

Creationists are morons.  I rest my case.
Posted by: Ra-Úl on Jan. 17 2009,19:40

Quote (Doc Bill @ Jan. 17 2009,19:09)
So, based on this statement, I would henceforth call Ben Stein a MORON and that would be "bad" because I'm assassinating his character and not addressing his argument.  However, his argument is MORONIC so what does that leave me with?

OK, Louis, I used "with" at the end of a sentence.  So, sue me.  Louis and I are only left with mockery because there is no avenue for discussion.

Creationists are morons.  I rest my case.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Prepositional stranding is proper English. Ask Churchill. I know he's dead, but he's my authority on this.
As usual with my posts on grammar or spelling, I had to edit this one four times before posting.
Posted by: Cubist on Jan. 17 2009,20:01

Mr. Miller, your character wasn't assassinated; it committed suicide. All we've done is conduct the autopsy.
You are a false witness, Mr. Miller. That waste of perfectly good celluloid which you call Expelled is a compendium of groundless whining, logical fallacies, libelous (or is it 'slanderous'? I can never remember which is spoken and which is written) attacks on people who have done nothing to merit such abuse, and blatant falsehoods. Every human being who bears any responsibility for the content of that waste of celluloid is, him- or herself, a false witness.
It's the Ninth Commandment, Mr. Miller, not the Ninth Suggestion.  I am given to understand that God doesn't much like false witnesses, Mr. Miller -- that, in fact, He has a lake of fire waiting for the likes of you in the afterlife. You may of course bear as much false witness as you like about anyone you like, Mr. Miller... but don't be surprised if, when you finally meet Jesus, you turn out to be one of those of whom He says, "I never knew ye."
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 17 2009,21:41

Well, it's 3:35 am ish here in the UK. I'm up and about for reasons I'd rather not go into, and I am distressingly sober.

Anyway, I thought, before I attempt sleep, that Kevvo would benefit from the words of Carl Sagan:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Words to live by, Kevvo.

Louis
Posted by: Nomad on Jan. 17 2009,21:59

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,15:00)
2) I love a challenge, and a few of you definitely provide that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Okay.  I challenge you to explain from what Sternberg was expelled from.  I know you've been asked that many times before without response, but perhaps it needs to be asked in the form of a challenge.
Posted by: Quidam on Jan. 18 2009,11:40

Quote (Doc Bill @ Jan. 11 2009,14:18)
Since we all know that nobody was "expelled" in Expelled, and that Kev-0's screenplay was a pack o' lies, if only they had waited a year they would have had a bone fide Expell-o-rama person.

Caroline Crocker.

No longer "executive director" of the IDEA clubs.  

Expelled!

By creationists.  Go figger.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've updated Wikipedia.  



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Future of IDEA
In early 2008. Dr. Caroline Crocker became the first Executive Director of the IDEA Center. Dr. Crocker left the Center in the summer of 2008 to pursue other endeavors.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< http://www.ideacenter.org/about/history.php >

That has to be the ultimate bungee appointment.  Even allowing for the vagueness of 'early 2008' and 'summer of 2008'  that's at most four months.  

What did she do/not-do to be expelled/drop out like that?  

Does anyone know?  The Idea site is very coy.  "To pursue other interests" is usually a euphemism for "we fired her sorry ass for being a total Dembski"
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 18 2009,12:18

I think it was February through June.  Press releases, now mysteriously gone from the IDEA site (how (not) strange), announce her appointment in February and the new guy in June.

Hard to imagine.  Even Luskin can hold a creationist job!
Posted by: Reciprocating Bill on Jan. 18 2009,13:30

Quote (Cubist @ Jan. 17 2009,21:01)
That waste of perfectly good celluloid which you call Expelled is a compendium of groundless whining, logical fallacies, libelous (or is it 'slanderous'? I can never remember which is spoken and which is written)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Libel is written defamation, slander is spoken. Mnemonic: libel can be read in the LIBrary.
Posted by: Texas Teach on Jan. 18 2009,14:03

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Jan. 18 2009,13:30)
Quote (Cubist @ Jan. 17 2009,21:01)
That waste of perfectly good celluloid which you call Expelled is a compendium of groundless whining, logical fallacies, libelous (or is it 'slanderous'? I can never remember which is spoken and which is written)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Libel is written defamation, slander is spoken. Mnemonic: libel can be read in the LIBrary.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And Slander is Spoken.
Posted by: deejay on Jan. 19 2009,10:39

I'm also intrigued by the continuing saga of Caroline Crocker.  My speculative explanation for how she could fail where Casey Luskin succeeded is that she has her own agenda.

Crocker's < web site > lets you know that she'll deliver a canned creationist presentation for a mere $2000, plus travel expenses.  It's another grand if you want her to customize the Powerpoint.   I have no idea what sort of compensation the IDEA center director position entailed, but I believe the DI had Dembski down for a stipend in the range of $30K/year.  I believe there is some demand for Crocker's presentations, as her rates have been boosted significantly since I saw them posted a year or so ago.   Given a choice between doing something for the DI and making $7500 for "a weekend of four talks," the wallet is going to win that decision every time.  

The overriding theme of Crocker's website is a bizarre combination of narcissism, martyrdom and unabashed venality [edited to add: and, oh yeah, flat out dishonesty]. In her own way, she's even creepier than Dembski.  

Back to the thread, the issue of relative creepiness brings up this:  

From Kevin:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Something that really irked me during the time I worked on Expelled was the fact that people who occupied the various sides of this debate were more interested in hunkering down in their chosen corner and talking ABOUT the people who disagreed with them rather than actually trying to engage the other side(s).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



If you're still reading, Kevin, I'll just reiterate that the act of engagement has been done.  We've seen Crocker's < slides >.  It's a shame that all your "research" has left you unable to see just how wretched these slides are.  The consequence of showing them, an unrenewed contract, is no worse that what many competent instructors face year in and year out.  

Crocker's "ideas", and of course they're not even vaguely her own, have been engaged and have been quickly found sorely wanting.  It's boring.  It's been done.  What's left is a discussion of "who in the hell would not only say this, but also put it in front of a college class?"  As the 1100+ pages of the UD thread, 300+ pages of the FTK thread and nearly 100 pages of this thread will attest, that discussion is a little bit more interesting.  It's interesting because there aren't clear answers.  Are these people dishonest?  Incompetent?  Both?  If so, how?  How can they be competent in other areas of life?

Or maybe they're not so competent in other areas of life.  After all, Crocker also has < this > to say of the Design of Life blog
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
A website specifically designed to keep students informed about the latest developments in ID and evolution. Maintained by Denyse O’Leary, a professional writer who understands ID and can communicate clearly.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------






Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 19 2009,10:54

Quote (deejay @ Jan. 19 2009,10:39)
Or maybe they're not so competent in other areas of life.  After all, Crocker also has < this > to say of the Design of Life blog
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
A website specifically designed to keep students informed about the latest developments in ID and evolution. Maintained by Denyse O’Leary, a professional writer who understands ID and can communicate clearly.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OUTSTANDING CATCH!  

You have cited the perfect example of the efficacy, wit and wisdom of Caroline Crocker, and makes this my Post Of The Week for Today!
Posted by: Quidam on Jan. 19 2009,10:54

Quote (Texas Teach @ Jan. 18 2009,13:03)
Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Jan. 18 2009,13:30)
 
Quote (Cubist @ Jan. 17 2009,21:01)
That waste of perfectly good celluloid which you call Expelled is a compendium of groundless whining, logical fallacies, libelous (or is it 'slanderous'? I can never remember which is spoken and which is written)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Libel is written defamation, slander is spoken. Mnemonic: libel can be read in the LIBrary.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And Slander is Spoken.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And if someone is reading a script in a propaganda movie it's ...

?

May I suggest: Slimebel
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Jan. 19 2009,11:15

The expelled video contest is going well

< http://uk.youtube.com/group/academicfreedomday >

Total of zero submissions so far.

Also the rules for the competition say

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
# Essays and videos submitted for the contest must be the original work of the student(s) entering the contest. Furthermore, video entries must not violate applicable copyright laws and only use images and audio that are in the public domain (or images and audio that the student has the legal right to use).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Imagine that.

< http://www.academicfreedomday.com/actUp.php >
Posted by: midwifetoad on Jan. 19 2009,11:37

No videos of fundie students burning evolution posters and banners? Where is their commitment?
Posted by: noncarborundum on Jan. 19 2009,11:43

Quote (deejay @ Jan. 19 2009,10:39)
Crocker's "ideas", and of course they're not even vaguely her own, have been engaged and have been quickly found sorely wanting.  It's boring.  It's been done.  What's left is a discussion of "who in the hell would not only say this, but also put it in front of a college class?"  As the 1100+ pages of the UD thread, 300+ pages of the FTK thread and nearly 100 pages of this thread will attest, that discussion is a little bit more interesting.  It's interesting because there aren't clear answers.  Are these people dishonest?  Incompetent?  Both?  If so, how?  How can they be competent in other areas of life?

Or maybe they're not so competent in other areas of life.  After all, Crocker also has < this > to say of the Design of Life blog
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
A website specifically designed to keep students informed about the latest developments in ID and evolution. Maintained by Denyse O’Leary, a professional writer who understands ID and can communicate clearly.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Exhibit B:  She claims to be writing a book called Expelled:  No Science Allowed, "to be published in 2008", and she describes it thus:

[QUOTE]Expelled: No Science Allowed is much like To Sir With Love becoming To Madam With Hate followed by a fairy tale ending of vindication by Hollywood.[I]

I was ready to rush right out (to amazon.com) and order a copy, but for some reason amazon knows nothing of Dr. Crocker's opus.
Posted by: noncarborundum on Jan. 19 2009,11:49

[quote=noncarborundum,Jan. 19 2009,11:43]

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled: No Science Allowed is much like To Sir With Love becoming To Madam With Hate followed by a fairy tale ending of vindication by Hollywood.[I]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


O for an "edit" button.
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 19 2009,12:13

Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,11:49)
[quote=noncarborundum,Jan. 19 2009,11:43]  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled: No Science Allowed is much like To Sir With Love becoming To Madam With Hate followed by a fairy tale ending of vindication by Hollywood.[I]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


O for an "edit" button.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Give Gov Blogojevich a call, or send him a PM... I am sure he'll be able to get you one.
Posted by: deejay on Jan. 19 2009,12:23

To Lou and J-Dog:

Thanks a lot for the recognition!  I can't help but notice, though, how crowded the POTW room is, and it's only Monday afternoon.  Hmmm...

; )
Posted by: Louis on Jan. 19 2009,12:40

Quote (deejay @ Jan. 19 2009,18:23)
To Lou and J-Dog:

Thanks a lot for the recognition!  I can't help but notice, though, how crowded the POTW room is, and it's only Monday afternoon.  Hmmm...

; )
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


POTW!!!!!

Louis
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 19 2009,15:40

Quote (deejay @ Jan. 19 2009,12:23)
To Lou and J-Dog:

Thanks a lot for the recognition!  I can't help but notice, though, how crowded the POTW room is, and it's only Monday afternoon.  Hmmm...

; )
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


True, however, sometimes I go HOURS without nominating anyone for POTW!

When Teh Designer Inspires me, I must testify!
Posted by: Marion Delgado on Jan. 19 2009,15:55

It was a great film, as I said, left out the Davisonian counter theory.

However, it completely lived up to its title, unlike many science movies.
Posted by: BI0L0GYwizard on Jan. 19 2009,17:10

Looks like Stein is stepping outside his usual area of expertise--the economy.

Anyway, I missed my chance to see it. Does anyone here know if it is still being sold? If so, please contact me.
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 19 2009,17:22

Quote (BI0L0GYwizard @ Jan. 19 2009,17:10)
Looks like Stein is stepping outside his usual area of expertise--the economy.

Anyway, I missed my chance to see it. Does anyone here know if it is still being sold? If so, please contact me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you check your local flyers, you might be able to get a coupon, and save even more!


Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 19 2009,17:29

I guarantee it's still being sold. It will be sold for decades. Creationist material is available indefinitely.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Jan. 19 2009,17:34

I wait for the garage sale. The problem isn't the money. It's the lost hours of my life.
Posted by: Badger3k on Jan. 19 2009,18:55

Quote (Marion Delgado @ Jan. 19 2009,15:55)
It was a great film, as I said, left out the Davisonian counter theory.

However, it completely lived up to its title, unlike many science movies.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, it did live up to the "no intelligence allowed" part.  There sure was none to be found in the film, unless we use "intelligence" in the sense of "Saddam had WMDs" and "yellowcake" were good, actionable intelligence.
Posted by: Bueller_007 on Jan. 19 2009,19:37

Quote (BI0L0GYwizard @ Jan. 19 2009,16:10)
Looks like Stein is stepping outside his usual area of expertise--the economy.

Anyway, I missed my chance to see it. Does anyone here know if it is still being sold? If so, please contact me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's available on the interwebs for free in numerous places.  It's easy enough to find.  Don't waste your money on it.

Actually, don't waste your time on it either.  The review here has basically nails it:
< http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html >
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 19 2009,19:43

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,11:07)
But wouldn't it be simpler to admit that your Germany/Nazi analogy was inaccurate and that anonymous character assassination is your forte?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How often they unconsciously let the truth slip! Now look in the mirror and say that again. You've almost got it, Kevin.
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Jan. 17 2009,11:07)
Maybe Kristine might honor you with a shimmy (shudder at the thought).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Lower the shudder and you'll have your own shimmy all to yourself.
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 19 2009,19:53

Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 19 2009,19:43)
Lower the shudder and you'll have your own shimmy all to yourself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Based on the quality of Kev's writing, and his mastery of debate skills, I would guess that he has it " all to himself" all the time.
Posted by: slpage on Jan. 19 2009,20:47

Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,11:43)
I was ready to rush right out (to amazon.com) and order a copy, but for some reason amazon knows nothing of Dr. Crocker's opus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you referring to Crocker's book about integrity in science?
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 19 2009,20:48

Quote (J-Dog @ Jan. 19 2009,19:53)
Quote (Kristine @ Jan. 19 2009,19:43)
Lower the shudder and you'll have your own shimmy all to yourself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Based on the quality of Kev's writing, and his mastery of debate skills, I would guess that he has it " all to himself" all the time.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ideas for a real screenwriter:

Whatever Happened to Baby Ben?
Les quatre cents exclures (after Truffaut)
Red Deserted (Antonioni)
Nacht und Neinstein (Resnais)
Roger Corman would have had fun with Expelled. He was, after all, a big Poe fan. :D (Imagine Vincent in the role of Ben!;)
Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 19 2009,20:50

Quote (Bueller_007 @ Jan. 19 2009,20:37)
Quote (BI0L0GYwizard @ Jan. 19 2009,16:10)
Looks like Stein is stepping outside his usual area of expertise--the economy.

Anyway, I missed my chance to see it. Does anyone here know if it is still being sold? If so, please contact me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's available on the interwebs for free in numerous places.  It's easy enough to find.  Don't waste your money on it.

Actually, don't waste your time on it either.  The review here has basically nails it:
< http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


good stuff:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That is simply one revealing fragment. This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



and the usual name-calling culture war BS that only a minority of Americans want to hear anymore.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually  did want to title it "From Darwin to Hitler." He finds a Creationist who informs him, "Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism." He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Because you're not a complete idiot. The writers of Expelled, on the other hand....
Posted by: noncarborundum on Jan. 19 2009,21:05

Quote (slpage @ Jan. 19 2009,20:47)
   
Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,11:43)
I was ready to rush right out (to amazon.com) and order a copy, but for some reason amazon knows nothing of Dr. Crocker's opus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you referring to Crocker's book about integrity in science?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm talking about the book described < here >.  Usually if I read about a book "to be published" sometime in the near future (or, in this case, the near past), I expect amazon.com to have some inkling of it (even, at least sometimes, self-publications).  Not in this case.

Is this the book "about integrity in science", or has she written another book amazon.com doesn't know about?

(BTW, just in case it needs stating, I'm really not in a rush to delve into Dr. Crocker's literary output.)
Posted by: Bueller_007 on Jan. 20 2009,01:08

Quote (stevestory @ Jan. 19 2009,19:50)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually  did want to title it "From Darwin to Hitler." He finds a Creationist who informs him, "Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism." He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Because you're not a complete idiot. The writers of Expelled, on the other hand....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nor were the < promoters of eugenics in Alberta, Canada > "liberal".
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 20 2009,10:56

Quote (stevestory @ Jan. 19 2009,17:29)
I guarantee it's still being sold. It will be sold for decades. Creationist material is available indefinitely.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If they keep showing it at megachurches and such, I wouldn't count on it have much of a shelf life. After all, who remembers who Duane Gish is anymore? Besides us?

The bad news for creationists is that, like the flu, reality now changes (mutates?) too quickly. I predict a greater emphasis on creationist accessorizing next. Less turnaround, more disposable.

Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 20 2009,12:00

Quote (BI0L0GYwizard @ Jan. 19 2009,17:10)
Looks like Stein is stepping outside his usual area of expertise--the economy.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< Expertise >? Are you kidding?

If I listened to this quackonomist when he was giving investment advice in 2007 I'd be broke instead of sitting on savings.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But some bad columns only ripen to their true fullness of wrongheadedness after the slow passage of time. And so it is with Stein. Never mind the ostensible thesis of the column -- that Goldman Sachs runs the universe and was pushing dire forecasts of the economic future to boost their own trades. Heck, if any Wall Street institution did run the universe, Goldman Sachs would be the most likely suspect, so I have no particular problem with that conspiracy theory, provided it is properly argued.

The fun part in looking back at this column is watching Stein scoff at the deeply bearish pronouncements of Goldman Sachs' chief economist, Jan Hatzius. This is the kind of scoffing that does not benefit from hindsight.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who knew that Darwin's reach extends to Goldman Sachs, as well as Amazon indigenous tribes?

Ben, the Liberty Bell called. It wants its ding-a-ling back.  :p
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on Jan. 20 2009,12:04

Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,21:05)
Quote (slpage @ Jan. 19 2009,20:47)
   
Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,11:43)
I was ready to rush right out (to amazon.com) and order a copy, but for some reason amazon knows nothing of Dr. Crocker's opus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you referring to Crocker's book about integrity in science?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm talking about the book described < here >.  Usually if I read about a book "to be published" sometime in the near future (or, in this case, the near past), I expect amazon.com to have some inkling of it (even, at least sometimes, self-publications).  Not in this case.

Is this the book "about integrity in science", or has she written another book amazon.com doesn't know about?

(BTW, just in case it needs stating, I'm really not in a rush to delve into Dr. Crocker's literary output.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There is another Crocker who is obsessed with Intelligent Designers who use a "poof" mechanism:

< http://www.tv.com/the-fai....ry.html >
Posted by: noncarborundum on Jan. 20 2009,12:59

Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ Jan. 20 2009,12:04)
 
Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,21:05)
 
Quote (slpage @ Jan. 19 2009,20:47)
       
Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,11:43)
I was ready to rush right out (to amazon.com) and order a copy, but for some reason amazon knows nothing of Dr. Crocker's opus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you referring to Crocker's book about integrity in science?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm talking about the book described < here >.  Usually if I read about a book "to be published" sometime in the near future (or, in this case, the near past), I expect amazon.com to have some inkling of it (even, at least sometimes, self-publications).  Not in this case.

Is this the book "about integrity in science", or has she written another book amazon.com doesn't know about?

(BTW, just in case it needs stating, I'm really not in a rush to delve into Dr. Crocker's literary output.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There is another Crocker who is obsessed with Intelligent Designers who use a "poof" mechanism:

< http://www.tv.com/the-fai....ry.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, but I don't think he's earned his doctorate yet.
Posted by: DMB on Jan. 21 2009,10:15

Does anyone think that this ridiculous film has influenced anyone towards ID?
Posted by: Bueller_007 on Jan. 21 2009,10:25

Quote (DMB @ Jan. 21 2009,09:15)
Does anyone think that this ridiculous film has influenced anyone towards ID?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No.  But that wasn't the point anyway.  The purpose of the film was to bilk the credulous.
Posted by: Bueller_007 on Jan. 21 2009,10:30

Oh how I love < Wikipedia >.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The movie opened in Canada on June 27, 2008 at 36 theaters[126] and grossed $24,374 with a premier at 20th closely behind Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic, a Hindi language film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



OUCH.
Posted by: jeffox on Jan. 21 2009,22:03

Ed Wood couldn't have done a better job losing money on this film.  Even Reefer Madness is more entertaining.

Gotta be seven figures lost, at least.  I wish that I had that kind of money to waste.

Ha ha.
Posted by: Nils Ruhr on Jan. 22 2009,03:34

Quote (Bueller_007 @ Jan. 21 2009,10:30)
Oh how I love < Wikipedia >.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The movie opened in Canada on June 27, 2008 at 36 theaters[126] and grossed $24,374 with a premier at 20th closely behind Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic, a Hindi language film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



OUCH.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


[126] < http://www.ncseweb.org/resourc....008.asp >
Page not fround 404 error  :O

< http://ncseweb.org/news....xpelled >
No Canadian box office either  :O
Posted by: snorkild on Jan. 22 2009,04:49

The Canadian box office figures can be seen here:

< http://www.tribute.ca/movies/BoxOffice.asp?id=16159 >
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Jan. 22 2009,05:17

Nils, you can go back to wikipedia now and make an edit to correct that link.

As a good internet citizen only concerned with the truth of the matter I fully expect you to do that.

I'll be watching the change-log!
Posted by: Nils Ruhr on Jan. 22 2009,06:21

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Jan. 22 2009,05:17)
Nils, you can go back to wikipedia now and make an edit to correct that link.

As a good internet citizen only concerned with the truth of the matter I fully expect you to do that.

I'll be watching the change-log!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I don't have an account. Since Darwinists have semi-protected the Expelled-entry, I'm not able to correct it.

Why don't you correct your error? You are the ones who fail to cite properly.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 22 2009,06:46

Quote (Nils Ruhr @ Jan. 22 2009,03:34)
 
Quote (Bueller_007 @ Jan. 21 2009,10:30)
Oh how I love < Wikipedia >.

       

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The movie opened in Canada on June 27, 2008 at 36 theaters[126] and grossed $24,374 with a premier at 20th closely behind Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic, a Hindi language film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



OUCH.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


[126] < http://www.ncseweb.org/resourc....008.asp >
Page not fround 404 error  :O

< http://ncseweb.org/news....xpelled >
No Canadian box office either  :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



< http://ncseweb.org/news/2008/06/expelled-opens-canada-001376 >

I've added a bit to the Talk page at Wikipedia to provide the new links for the two NCSE articles referenced that pointed to the old site. The Talk page is not "semi-protected". We'll see how long it takes for someone to update the article based on that.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 22 2009,07:50

And, voila, the main page is already updated. See, that wasn't hard.
Posted by: slpage on Jan. 22 2009,09:02

Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,21:05)
Quote (slpage @ Jan. 19 2009,20:47)
   
Quote (noncarborundum @ Jan. 19 2009,11:43)
I was ready to rush right out (to amazon.com) and order a copy, but for some reason amazon knows nothing of Dr. Crocker's opus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you referring to Crocker's book about integrity in science?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm talking about the book described < here >.  Usually if I read about a book "to be published" sometime in the near future (or, in this case, the near past), I expect amazon.com to have some inkling of it (even, at least sometimes, self-publications).  Not in this case.

Is this the book "about integrity in science", or has she written another book amazon.com doesn't know about?

(BTW, just in case it needs stating, I'm really not in a rush to delve into Dr. Crocker's literary output.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Looks like the same one.

That website has a different format - you can no longer email her directly.  Several months ago, when there was an email link, I emailed and asked her if she could tell the difference between a hyrax and a hyracotheium.  No reply...

I also noted on her whiny 'replies' link that she claims the things at Expelledexposed about her are wrong.

I especially liked this loaded phrase:

"· After having been banned from the GMU lecture hall..."


Due to the poor economy ( we lost about 1/4 of the worth of our endowment, apparently), we are pink slipping a number of adjuncts.  

Will it be correct for them to claim that because their contracts were not renewed that they have been 'banned'?
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Jan. 22 2009,09:14

Hey, to Kevin Miller:

I am prone to believe that beside your totaly misled ways of using your brain thingy you might be, up to a point, a descent screenwriter. In the way that you may be able to understand some of today's cinematic imperatives (a trait in no way seen in that mockery of a movie that is Expelled).

On this basis, here is a challenge for you:

Co-write, direct and produce my band's new videoclip. You are allowed to put as much ID propaganda in it as you like, as long as it is scientifically sound. In fact, if you are found of theology, read the concept I wrote for the story surrounding my music. In about 2000 years, this might be the last piece of evidence for a devout and bloodthirsty cult planning to rule over the world.

The charges are, of course, to be covered by you and your team.

Unconditional term is: "scientifically sound"

Have fun :)
Posted by: Bueller_007 on Jan. 22 2009,13:00

Quote (Nils Ruhr @ Jan. 22 2009,05:21)
You are the ones who fail to cite properly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


a) I'm pretty sure no one at this forum actually wrote that part of the article.

b) The part of the sentence I was trying to emphasize was the dismal box office performance, which was properly referenced.  In case you didn't get it, box office performance was so poor that it couldn't even top a movie whose native speakers make up much less than 1% of the population.
Posted by: Bueller_007 on Jan. 22 2009,13:03

Quote (Bueller_007 @ Jan. 22 2009,12:00)
Quote (Nils Ruhr @ Jan. 22 2009,05:21)
You are the ones who fail to cite properly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


a) I'm pretty sure no one at this forum actually wrote that part of the article.

b) The part of the sentence I was trying to emphasize was the dismal box office performance, which was properly referenced.  In case you didn't get it, box office performance was so poor that it couldn't even top a movie whose native speakers make up much less than 1% of the population.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"movie whose native speakers" -> "movie in a language whose"
Posted by: Bob O'H on Jan. 23 2009,16:29

A propos of nothing much, I thought some of you might be amused by this photo I took in Durham airport last week, when returning from ScienceOnline09:

(< from flickr >)
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 23 2009,16:43

Wow, you learn something new every day!


House Bunny is a drama!  I'll have to rent it again.
Posted by: stevestory on Jan. 23 2009,16:47

Quote (Bob O'H @ Jan. 23 2009,17:29)
A propos of nothing much, I thought some of you might be amused by this photo I took in Durham airport last week, when returning from ScienceOnline09:

(< from flickr >)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I guess it's not in the store's best interest to have a section labelled "worthless junk"
Posted by: carlsonjok on Jan. 23 2009,16:47

Quote (Doc Bill @ Jan. 23 2009,16:43)
Wow, you learn something new every day!


House Bunny is a drama!  I'll have to rent it again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From < IMDB: >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
When Shelly, a Playboy bunny, is tossed out of the mansion, she has nowhere to go until she falls in with the sorority girls from Zeta Alpha Zeta. The members of the sorority - who also have got to be the seven most socially clueless women on the planet - are about to lose their house. They need a dose of what only the eternally bubbly Shelley can provide... but they will each learn on their own to stop pretending to be what others want them to be and start being themselves.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Sounds like one of those tearjerker, find-yourself-everyone-hugs-at-the-end chick flicks. So, Doc Bill, since you indicate that you have seen it, I have to say (since RTH isn't here to say it himself):  HOMO.
Posted by: JohnW on Jan. 23 2009,16:52

Quote (Bob O'H @ Jan. 23 2009,14:29)
A propos of nothing much, I thought some of you might be amused by this photo I took in Durham airport last week, when returning from ScienceOnline09:

(< from flickr >)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Shouldn't it be two columns over to the right?
Posted by: Lowell on Jan. 23 2009,17:16

Quote (carlsonjok @ Jan. 23 2009,16:47)
Sounds like one of those tearjerker, find-yourself-everyone-hugs-at-the-end chick flicks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have to stick up for The House Bunny. It was actually really funny. Here's a < positive review from Salon > (and a picture of Anna Faris illustrating some of her *ahem* considerable talents).

The lesson I took away from the film: "The eyes are the nipples of the face."
Posted by: Marion Delgado on Jan. 23 2009,21:03

Okay, now i'm confused. I feel Expelled contributed to the discussion more than House Bunny. I watched House Bunny a lot, especially some scenes, and it totally does not explain evolution, per se.

whatever happened with the main character and the guy, they were clearly the same species. I will ask John Davison to weigh in on this. Kevin Miller is right, you guys know consensus but not what a science documentary is.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 23 2009,21:59

Now I'm confused.

I thought House Bunny was a comedy, now I find out it's a Freaking Documentary!

I want a House Bunny!

However, I fear the House Bunny was Expelled.

Tell me it ain't so!
Posted by: noncarborundum on Jan. 23 2009,22:09

Quote (Doc Bill @ Jan. 23 2009,21:59)
Now I'm confused.

I thought House Bunny was a comedy, now I find out it's a Freaking Documentary!

I want a House Bunny!

However, I fear the House Bunny was Expelled.

Tell me it ain't so!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, it was the Easter Bunny that was Expelled - a major coup in the War on Easter begun last year by militant atheists, emboldened by their early successes in the War on Christmas, as a second front in their Global War On Jesus.
Posted by: hereoisreal on Jan. 24 2009,00:02

Did you hear what happened to the bunny?
Washed his thing and couldn't do a hare with it.
Posted by: Kristine on Jan. 28 2009,12:21

< Designing better trailers for our nation's designed children > featuring Ben Stein, host of the "finance workshop and panel discussion." Where, I'm sure, they will open-mindedly debate the "strengths and weaknesses" of the NATM Guidelines.

The workshop is in 26 hours. There's a countdown clock so you won't miss it! :p
Posted by: Lowell on Jan. 28 2009,17:46

I think that's actually 26 days, Kristine. But I'm sure the collective members of the National Association of Trailer Manufacturers wish it was only a matter of hours.

I mean, with all his economics expertise, Stein must know an awful lot about how to finance a trailer manufacturing business.

WTF? Even if he didn't have a terrible track record of economic predictions, why would anyone think Stein would know anything about that subject? I wonder how much they're paying him. Someone should < call his agent > and find out what his rates are.
Posted by: J-Dog on Jan. 28 2009,19:23

Quote (Lowell @ Jan. 28 2009,17:46)
I think that's actually 26 days, Kristine. But I'm sure the collective members of the National Association of Trailer Manufacturers wish it was only a matter of hours.

I mean, with all his economics expertise, Stein must know an awful lot about how to finance a trailer manufacturing business.

WTF? Even if he didn't have a terrible track record of economic predictions, why would anyone think Stein would know anything about that subject? I wonder how much they're paying him. Someone should < call his agent > and find out what his rates are.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So, we can call his agent and find out what Stein wants to never make another film?
Posted by: Arden Chatfield on Jan. 28 2009,19:28

Quote (carlsonjok @ Jan. 23 2009,14:47)
 
Quote (Doc Bill @ Jan. 23 2009,16:43)
Wow, you learn something new every day!


House Bunny is a drama!  I'll have to rent it again.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


From < IMDB: >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
When Shelly, a Playboy bunny, is tossed out of the mansion, she has nowhere to go until she falls in with the sorority girls from Zeta Alpha Zeta. The members of the sorority - who also have got to be the seven most socially clueless women on the planet - are about to lose their house. They need a dose of what only the eternally bubbly Shelley can provide... but they will each learn on their own to stop pretending to be what others want them to be and start being themselves.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Sounds like one of those tearjerker, find-yourself-everyone-hugs-at-the-end chick flicks. So, Doc Bill, since you indicate that you have seen it, I have to say (since RTH isn't here to say it himself):  HOMO.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not at all. My daughter loved House Bunny, so evidently Doc Bill is not a homo, but merely a 14-year-old girl.

Dang. She had us fooled for a long time there.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 01 2009,13:03

Kevin Miller! None of the articles and websites announcing Ben Stein's upcoming commencement address at the University of Vermont mention your film Expelled when listing Stein's latest accomplishments. None. Don't you feel insulted, slighted?

Don't worry, < we're doing something to help you >. As I (advocate of free speech that I am) suggested, < posters of Stein's quotes will be plastered all over campus >. More publicity than you've ever had! Free speech in action! Trustees (notoriously frightened of controversy) appalled at the attention and the humiliation of having "Science leads you to killing people" plastered all over a university still recovering from its "party" reputation. The students are rising up and questioning the establishment! By donning Charles Darwin masks! Doesn't that just bring a tear to your eye? Daniel Fogel, tear down that wall! :D

By all the planets, this is priceless! Students reminding Stein of a film he obviously wants to forget! Academic inquiry, remember! Oh, I don't want him disinvited, not at all - this is too great to miss! I invited PZ again, and Dawkins. :)

Remember, film buff, that scene from Citizen Kane? When Leland (Joseph Cotton) admonishes the protagonist for claiming to "speak for the common man" until the common man started speaking for himself? It's happening now. Be careful what you make a film about claiming to wish for.
Posted by: Ptaylor on Feb. 01 2009,15:39

The UVM commencement thing is all over. Stein has < backed out >.

What's the bet that this gets spun as yet more persecution?

(Edited to clarify)
Posted by: J-Dog on Feb. 01 2009,16:23

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 01 2009,13:03)
Kevin Miller! None of the articles and websites announcing Ben Stein's upcoming commencement address at the University of Vermont mention your film Expelled when listing Stein's latest accomplishments. None. Don't you feel insulted, slighted?

Don't worry, < we're doing something to help you >. As I (advocate of free speech that I am) suggested, < posters of Stein's quotes will be plastered all over campus >. More publicity than you've ever had! Free speech in action! Trustees (notoriously frightened of controversy) appalled at the attention and the humiliation of having "Science leads you to killing people" plastered all over a university still recovering from its "party" reputation. The students are rising up and questioning the establishment! By donning Charles Darwin masks! Doesn't that just bring a tear to your eye? Daniel Fogel, tear down that wall! :D

By all the planets, this is priceless! Students reminding Stein of a film he obviously wants to forget! Academic inquiry, remember! Oh, I don't want him disinvited, not at all - this is too great to miss! I invited PZ again, and Dawkins. :)

Remember, film buff, that scene from Citizen Kane? When Leland (Joseph Cotton) admonishes the protagonist for claiming to "speak for the common man" until the common man started speaking for himself? It's happening now. Be careful what you make a film about claiming to wish for.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for the post Kristine - you made may day!  Well, as much as it can be without the Bears winning the Super Bowl anyway...:(
Posted by: stevestory on Feb. 01 2009,16:57

Quote (Ptaylor @ Feb. 01 2009,16:39)
The UVM commencement thing is all over. Stein has < backed out >.

What's the bet that this gets spun as yet more persecution?

(Edited to clarify)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


$10 says Kevin Miller calls this something like censorship, persecution, summary execution, torture in a gulag, etc.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 01 2009,18:23

Quote (stevestory @ Feb. 01 2009,16:57)
Quote (Ptaylor @ Feb. 01 2009,16:39)
The UVM commencement thing is all over. Stein has < backed out >.

What's the bet that this gets spun as yet more persecution?

(Edited to clarify)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


$10 says Kevin Miller calls this something like censorship, persecution, summary execution, torture in a gulag, etc.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah, that would be in keeping with the overwrought theatrics and dishonest hyperbole that the other "expelled" martyrs bloviated about themselves.

$10 says that I carve "Science leads you to killing people" on Ben Stein's tombstone. What a worthless coward the man is.

Honestly, what a freaking COWARD.
Posted by: AmandaHuginKiss on Feb. 01 2009,18:30

I bet Ben at the moment would run 100 miles if he saw Kevin. Note that Expelled wasn't included in the potted biography at UVM. he has destroyed himself with the intelligent crowd plus the creos aren't exactly falling over themselves to call Stein a visionary.

I haven't seen Stein mention Expelled anywhere recently (Google "Stein Expelled" and you will find all of the church basement showings and a speech at Harding University in Arkansas). I think that he knows that he still has a gig with the economic stuff, but being a martyr due to a fourth rate movie is not fun or profitable.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 01 2009,18:56

I noticed. Well, as long as I'm around, Ben "Science kills" Stein isn't going to successfully back away either from his considerable role in Expelled or from the statements he made in the snake handler lecture circuit afterward. Don't you worry, Kevin.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Feb. 04 2009,14:48

Hey, Kevin11

Here is an interesting < story >, from the latest issue of Academe, the magazine of the AAUP. It's long and boring, but it basically tells how a small Xtian college violated the academic freedom of a biology professor who admitted to being a theistic evolutionist. This was not in conflict with the dogma of the cult operating the church, but it offended some of the trustees, none of whom had science degrees, but were compelled nevertheless to harass this professor.

When you make the next version of Expelled (working title = Regurgitated?), maybe you can include this sordid tale.
Posted by: Louis on Feb. 04 2009,18:24

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ Feb. 04 2009,20:48)
Hey, Kevin11

Here is an interesting < story >, from the latest issue of Academe, the magazine of the AAUP. It's long and boring, but it basically tells how a small Xtian college violated the academic freedom of a biology professor who admitted to being a theistic evolutionist. This was not in conflict with the dogma of the cult operating the church, but it offended some of the trustees, none of whom had science degrees, but were compelled nevertheless to harass this professor.

When you make the next version of Expelled (working title = Regurgitated?), maybe you can include this sordid tale.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well even if Kevvo never reads it, I just did. I would love for the IDCists and their stooges to come up with ANYTHING remotely like it. It would simply never happen except in religiously motivated/McCarthyite/Lysenkoist ideological style pogroms within universities.

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 05 2009,12:58

Yup! < Here it comes >.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Alas, poor Richard. Out of a job [he voluntarily retired], and still twitching from Ben Stein's unveiling of his pro-intelligent design tendencies in Expelled  last year, he apparently spends his time dogging Ben Stein's heels. [Dawkins ain't got nothin' on me.] Here's how a fawning university president gushed about getting an e-mail from Dawkins telling him to bounce Stein as a commencement speaker later this year.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Is the correspondence between you and Professor Richard Dawkins authentic?

Fogel: It is authentic; I admire his work greatly. I have read his work and I have been deeply instructed by it., as I said to him. I was really quite honored to have an e-mail from him directly.

What was the first e-mail from him about?

Fogel: It was to discuss his dismay and concern along the lines we have already discussed.

And also to give me some of his more person background that I had certainly been unaware of. I did not know that he was shown in the movie ‘Expelled’ and that he had been manipulated by the producers and that his words had been used out of context.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What a bunch of malarkey. Of course, Fogel hasn't seen Expelled or he'd realize that the interview with Dawkins was long, exhaustive and in no way taken out of context. The bogus charges against the producers have long been laid to rest (see here, here, and here). The only person still smarting about this is poor Richard.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The only person still smarting about this is poor Richard? Really?

Sooo...are they bragging here, or complaining?

Because they seem teed off. Is it just me? Why are they teed off, if Richard's "smarting"? :D

(P.S. I really do wish that speech would have gone forward. But I guess it's Richard's fault that Ben quit. Well. Way to challenge the Darwinists, Ben. If a little controversy scares you, how can you take that message to the country? What was Expelled supposed to be about, then?

It couldn't be about...milking the great unwashed to advocate a movement that you don't really want to fight for, could it? Kind of like the anti-abortion profiteers who secretly don't want Roe v. Wade overturned?)
Posted by: Dr.GH on Feb. 05 2009,22:15

I don't want to slow down Kristine's excellent take-down of "Expelled," and Ben Shine (on a turd) but I wanted to mention that the NCSE Reports has come out with their special issue devoted to the lies in "Expelled." I got my copy today.
Posted by: Marion Delgado on Feb. 06 2009,22:30

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 01 2009,13:03)
Kevin Miller! None of the articles and websites announcing Ben Stein's upcoming commencement address at the University of Vermont mention your film Expelled when listing Stein's latest accomplishments. None. Don't you feel insulted, slighted?

Don't worry, < we're doing something to help you >. As I (advocate of free speech that I am) suggested, < posters of Stein's quotes will be plastered all over campus >. More publicity than you've ever had! Free speech in action! Trustees (notoriously frightened of controversy) appalled at the attention and the humiliation of having "Science leads you to killing people" plastered all over a university still recovering from its "party" reputation. The students are rising up and questioning the establishment! By donning Charles Darwin masks! Doesn't that just bring a tear to your eye? Daniel Fogel, tear down that wall! :D

By all the planets, this is priceless! Students reminding Stein of a film he obviously wants to forget! Academic inquiry, remember! Oh, I don't want him disinvited, not at all - this is too great to miss! I invited PZ again, and Dawkins. :)

Remember, film buff, that scene from Citizen Kane? When Leland (Joseph Cotton) admonishes the protagonist for claiming to "speak for the common man" until the common man started speaking for himself? It's happening now. Be careful what you make a film about claiming to wish for.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kristine that's very gracious of you and had more evolutionist Darwinists reacted in a spirit of cooperation, perhaps Kevin and Ben would have apologized for any misunderstandings that happened during the making of their science film.

I think it took a woman's touch to respond graciously and positively and in a spirit of cooperation. If Ben Stein comes to speak here, I will act in the same spirit and put up Expelled posters everywhere. Thank you for a really good idea. I have had no problem in the past finding plenty of unused Expelled posters and even have a few left in my house.
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 06 2009,22:52

Yeah, I'm a veritable saint. :)


Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 07 2009,10:32

Beshrew my heart, but I recognized that there is a point to be made about undergraduate education in all this - that many students do feel "expelled" by their professors, not because of "Darwinism," but because they perceive their professors to be remote (because faculty are rewarded for research, not teaching) and the university system to be bureaucratic. I don't doubt that these new Bible colleges that have sprung up manage to create, as did Harvard college at its founding, a warmer, more personal experience for students, with real professional concern for their development.

The trick is to re-partner that sense of service, which flowered in America's A&M universities just after the Morrill Act (while the theologically-based Harvard and Princeton denounced them as "cow colleges"), with our ongoing committment to scholarly research.

Ben has a cause, but he doesn't really know what it is. But this is why it is important for people like Fogel to at least pay attention to Expelled. Fanatics often have their finger on a pulse - it's their analysis that off. But really, the question of a return to student-centered higher education is a crucial one! At their founding, universities used to be student guilds. In our modern, Web 2.0 era, we need to rethink higher education to make it more responsive to students.
Posted by: Ideaforager on Feb. 07 2009,13:00



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kristine: Ben has a cause, but he doesn't really know what it is. But this is why it is important for people like Fogel to at least pay attention to Expelled. Fanatics often have their finger on a pulse - it's their analysis that off. But really, the question of a return to student-centered higher education is a crucial one! At their founding, universities used to be student guilds. In our modern, Web 2.0 era, we need to rethink higher education to make it more responsive to students.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

How?
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 07 2009,14:05

Quote (Ideaforager @ Feb. 07 2009,13:00)
               

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kristine: Ben has a cause, but he doesn't really know what it is. But this is why it is important for people like Fogel to at least pay attention to Expelled. Fanatics often have their finger on a pulse - it's their analysis that off. But really, the question of a return to student-centered higher education is a crucial one! At their founding, universities used to be student guilds. In our modern, Web 2.0 era, we need to rethink higher education to make it more responsive to students.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

How?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good question. Right now I'm reading Scholarship Reconsidered by Ernest Boyer, past President of Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It seems that many professors also feel "expelled," compelled to publish when they were attracted to teaching in the first place. (Massimo Pigliucci also claims this in his book Denying Evolution.) Faculty are still largely rewarded for research. There seems to be, on the part of both students and faculty, a real desire for the reintegration of research and teaching, and more interdisciplinary collaboration, rather than sitting on committees and performing departmental chores (for faculty), and defining a specialty (for students).

Boyer says:            

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Research per se was not the problem. The problem was that the research mission, which was appropriate for some institutions, created a shadow over the entire higher learning enterprise--and the model ot a "Berkeley" or an "Amherst" became the yardstick by which all institutions would be measured... Ironically, at the very time America's higher education institutions were becoming more open and inclusive, the culture of the professoriate was becoming more hierarchival and restrictive.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That's as far as I've gotten. (I must have this all read by Tuesday.) But in my mind there's the fledgling idea that students (undergrads, not just grads) could in some basic ways participate in the research that faculty do, and that all faculty in an institution should read the papers of other faculty, even far outside their specialty, to build a sense of support and collegiality within, and not just without, the institution. (I do not have a biology degree, but have been able to glean insights from peer-reviewed lit in biology; likewise for computer science, and anthropology. THEN, faculty would also become aware that librarians and archivists also do research and publish peer-reviewed papers, which is part of my evil plot, bwa ha ha!;)

All this is brewing in my mind along with the issue of information literacy, which is close to the academic librarian's heart. From the point of view of the librarian, students shuffle in, often having procrastinated a research paper assignment, and beg the librarian to show them a few sources for them to cite, so that they can complete the paper in time. The whole point was for them to understand how to find sources for themselves. Also, the literature suggests that many faculty, in assigning research paper assignments to students, are trying to teach and reinforce search strategies that are outdated. Students are using Google these days. Being able to identify authoritative information on the internet is very important.

The U of M utilized student blogs in a way that was groundbreaking. One of my professors fought for it. I don't know much about that, yet. Frankly, I don't have answers about how exactly the new technology of Web 2.0 will redefine higher education, but I think it will - and we need to jump on it. (Of course, we have, here and in blogs and discussion groups, and in the promise of open access publishing and archiving.) The words of the anthropologist  Clifford Geertz (Princeton) seem prescient to me:            

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What we are seeing is not joy another redrawing of the cultural map...but an alternation of the principles of mapping. Something is happening to the way we think about the way we think.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think Ben and the IDists are trying to manipulate the real frustrations of students into a crusade about "Darwinism" that has nothing to do with the reality of student life. If anything, students want more guidance from their professors, more teaching, more interaction, not to be cast to the winds of so-called "academic freedom" and left to their own devices to measure science against fringe and pseudoscience. They don't want the Michael Crichton "lone inventor" model of discovery. The irony is, Ben and his friends are advocating no real pedagological change in the academy - just an "add creationism and stir" tactic. But collaborative learning, seminars, and students taking on limited teaching roles in class is a growing idea. (Shit, every other class I have now means I have to give a presentation!;)

I'd like to see the creationists handle that. They don't like collaborative learning and their homeschooling techniques consist of top-down, lecture-based, close-ended questions that have only one answer. (Remember Jesus Camp? "Scientists say we have global warming. What's the answer?" "Well, scientists are just wrong, because the earth's temperature has only risen blah-de-blah percent." "Good boy.") These are the heirs to irrelevance.

I may have posted this paper elsewhere in this forum, but here's a great example: < The Natural Selection: Identifying & Correcting Non-Science Student Preconceptions Through an Inquiry-Based, Critical Approach to Evolution > by Jennifer R. Robbins and Pamela Roy. (Of course this is at the high school level, but I love the model.)
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 09 2009,08:48

For continuity, I'm moving the OT discussion begun by RFJE to The Bathroom Wall.





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Bathroom wall >, by adactio
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ETA: < Start here to read the moved conversation. >


Posted by: J-Dog on Feb. 09 2009,09:27

Quote (Lou FCD @ Feb. 09 2009,08:48)
For continuity, I'm moving the OT discussion begun by RFJE to The Bathroom Wall.



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Bathroom wall >, by adactio
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ETA: < Start here to read the moved conversation. >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe we need a new, improved thread - Now with more creationists! - called "Expectorated" - For IDers and Creos That Just Got To Spew -

What do you think?
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 09 2009,10:02

I'd say hang on to this thread through Dawkins' tour next month. :)
Posted by: Louis on Feb. 09 2009,10:27

Quote (Lou FCD @ Feb. 09 2009,14:48)
For continuity, I'm moving the OT discussion begun by RFJE to The Bathroom Wall.



 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Bathroom wall >, by adactio
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



ETA: < Start here to read the moved conversation. >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


[Cornish accent]

"My friend Denzel works in one of those old fashioned underground public lavatories in Launceston. He said to me 'Jethro, we've got perverts coming in here fiddling with their dicky doodlers, other perverts coming in here fiddling with each other's dicky doodlers, yet other perverts coming in here drilling holes in the walls and stuffing each other, people injecting drugs and snorting drugs and what have you. I tell you if someone comes down here for a good honest shit, it's a breath of fresh air!'"

[/Cornish accent]

I hope you don't mind but I've created a thread for our new chum, linked the replies (hopefully accurately) and I now hope that whatever action happens happens there. Our toilet is overflowing with the wrong sort of turds.... ;)

Louis (Chairman of the Keep Our Toilet Dirty And Rehabilitate Richard Hughes Committee)
Posted by: Henry J on Feb. 09 2009,14:25

Quote (J-Dog @ Feb. 09 2009,08:27)
For IDers and Creos That Just Got To Spew -

What do you think?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Isn't that pretty much all (or at least most) of them? ;)
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 10 2009,11:06

< The Nutshell Story of Expelled >.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Feb. 18 2009,15:54

< Casey Luskin >
         

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The NCSE's approach is otherwise known as 'blaming the victim.'"

Although the NCSE's website spends much energy attempting (poorly) to debunk and deny claims that ID proponents experience persecution, the attitude found at “Expelled Exposed” wouldn’t be any different even if its authors admitted that the attacks experienced by pro-ID scientists had actually occurred. In essence, “Expelled Exposed” effectively says, 'There’s no persecution of ID-proponents in the academy. But even if there was, so what? They deserve it.'

"Expelled Exposed" occasionally pays lip-service to freedom of speech, but the site itself should be exposed for what it really is: an attempt to subtly—and sometimes not so subtly—convince readers that the pro-ID viewpoint does not deserve the full protections of academic freedom. By unashamedly encouraging would-be persecutors, “Expelled Exposed” unwittingly justifies the central thesis of the Expelled documentary, namely that ID proponents lack academic freedom and experience unjust persecution and blacklisting within the academy.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



More "unwitting" ID victories. Lots of unwitting ID scientific research going on too, apparently.

I happened to read that piece by Casey directly after this:< How to respond to requests to debate creationists >
I wonder what Casey will say to that. And what will Ben say?
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
-- David Klinghoffer - Discovery Institute.
Ben Stein may not be the best person to single-handedly represent the ID side. As you're aware, he's known mainly as an entertainer.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Indeed....
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Feb. 18 2009,16:22

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Feb. 18 2009,22:54)
I happened to read that piece by Casey directly after this:< How to respond to requests to debate creationists >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That. Is. Brilliant!
Posted by: Henry J on Feb. 18 2009,16:28

And here I thought that an entertainer was somebody who, well, entertains...? ;)
Posted by: khan on Feb. 18 2009,16:50

< Debating the existence of god >
Posted by: Louis on Feb. 18 2009,16:54

I have been musing on something for a few days now, since the idea occurred to me. I'm not sure where to go with it so I offer it for dissection/destruction/deification as appropriate:

< Geert Wilders > was prevented from entering the UK last week to go to the House of Lords to show his film < Fitna >. He was invited by < a member > of the HoL and is a Dutch MP himself.

His film Fitna intersperses surahs from the qu'ran with various atrocities committed in the name of islam.

Now Wilders and the < UKIP > party that invited him are the "tolerable front" of some rather nasty policies. They are racist ideologues one step away from "we don't like nasty black people". They often use criticism of religion to hide their bigotry behind.

However Fitna did, and does, no more than Expelled does. The fact that it is used by bigots to justify their drivel and as a cover for it is identical in both cases. It is a propaganda piece that seeks to condemn a people because of a minority. Like Expelled, it is a film that preaches to the converted.

What is concerning me is that Fitna differs from Expelled in one important respect: it is at least accurate. There REALLY are people who believe the things, and do the things, outlined in Fitna. Expelled is a work of fiction. Of course not all muslims, the majority in fact, would recognise their own faith in Fitna. It's an expose of the extremists (not that they need more exposing). Just like not all christians would recognise their faith as being represented by Kent Hovind or Ted Haggard.

The problem for me is that really unpleasant people like UKIP and Wilders etc have usurped secularist arguments, arguments that are perfectly valid btw, to shield their racism. They dishonestly couch their bigotry behind valid critiques of extremist religion. It unfortunately breeds unholy (literally) alliances and makes me bitterly uncomfortable as a secularist and a liberal (European variety).

Since I'm musing away I wondered what other people think. My first tongue in cheek thought was that with Wilders being refused entry due to the unpleasantness of Fitna (and other of his works) Ben Stein should not plan a UK vacation any time soon...

Louis
Posted by: carlsonjok on Feb. 18 2009,17:01

Quote (Louis @ Feb. 18 2009,16:54)
Since I'm musing away I wondered what other people think. My first tongue [...] was [...] Ben Stein ....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here is what I think.


Posted by: Louis on Feb. 18 2009,17:07

Quote (carlsonjok @ Feb. 18 2009,23:01)
Quote (Louis @ Feb. 18 2009,16:54)
Since I'm musing away I wondered what other people think. My first tongue [...] was [...] Ben Stein ....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here is what I think.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crikey! How long have you been waiting to use THAT LOLcat. Bravo! I'll let you have that one for free.*

Louis

*Which is what your mum said....DAMN! I knew I couldn't keep it up**

**Which is what you said....DAMN!
Posted by: midwifetoad on Feb. 18 2009,17:11

My only close contact with Muslims has been keeping a couple of Egyptian pre-teens in my home for a week as part of a summer camp exchange program. I found it rather remarkable that the parents would allow infidels to house and feed their children. (We bullied the local Dominoes  into making pizza with tuna instead of sausage.)

The following year the parents dropped by for a quick visit. they were quite pleasant apart from being dentists.

When the were gone, however, my wife said she was horrified at how submissive the wife was. (She was also a dentist and therefore professionally equal.)

Of course it's only been 90 years since women in our enlightened country got the vote.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Feb. 18 2009,17:14

Quote (Louis @ Feb. 19 2009,00:07)
Quote (carlsonjok @ Feb. 18 2009,23:01)
Quote (Louis @ Feb. 18 2009,16:54)
Since I'm musing away I wondered what other people think. My first tongue [...] was [...] Ben Stein ....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here is what I think.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crikey! How long have you been waiting to use THAT LOLcat. Bravo! I'll let you have that one for free.*

Louis

*Which is what your mum said....DAMN! I knew I couldn't keep it up**

**Which is what you said....DAMN!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry, I have to say it, but Louis, you gave me my best internet sincere laugh in WEEKS!

It is always nice, while depressingly roaming through IDiocity, to have such pearls of wit.

Thank you for what you're doing.*






*Including, but not limited to, Carlson's mom
Posted by: carlsonjok on Feb. 18 2009,17:51

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ Feb. 18 2009,17:14)
Thank you for what you're doing.*

*Including, but not limited to, Carlson's mom
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Okay, Frenchie, let me put this in terms you can understand.


Posted by: J-Dog on Feb. 18 2009,18:33

Since I'm musing away I wondered what other people think. My first tongue in cheek thought was that with Wilders being refused entry due to the unpleasantness of Fitna (and other of his works) Ben Stein should not plan a UK vacation any time soon...

Louis[/quote]
Louis,

Sorry, got no LOL kittyz, but I do have a couple of thoughts.

1.) I think the guy should be allowed into GB to give his little talk - He was invited, he's not fomenting anarchy or violence - not directly anyway.  If the GB Muslems have a problem, they are invited to protest - non-violently.  Threats of violence- No.  Sorry.  You're religion is crazy, and so is The Phrophet.  Deal with it in another way.

2.) Latent or overt racism = racism.  Ignorant, dumb and can only be fought through education - maybe re-education (Clockwork Orange anyone?).  If your visitor is a closet hater, then all you can do is maintain the separation of ideas.  One good, one bad, deal with each.
Got to protect the freedom to utter stupidities!

3.) I can't believe there are no LOLKittz vs. Racists or LOL Kittyz vs sharia law!  And we call this a World Wide Web!

4.) eddited - had to leave in a hurry earlier to take kid to basketball game...
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 19 2009,09:13

< Bam >:p (PS - I'm getting sick of Expelled. Finally.)

*edit - hopefully fix't linky glitch

Ahhh! Okay, now?


Posted by: JonF on Feb. 19 2009,10:15

Dead link.
Posted by: Louis on Feb. 19 2009,10:49

Quote (midwifetoad @ Feb. 18 2009,23:11)
My only close contact with Muslims has been keeping a couple of Egyptian pre-teens in my home for a week as part of a summer camp exchange program. I found it rather remarkable that the parents would allow infidels to house and feed their children. (We bullied the local Dominoes  into making pizza with tuna instead of sausage.)

The following year the parents dropped by for a quick visit. they were quite pleasant apart from being dentists.

When the were gone, however, my wife said she was horrified at how submissive the wife was. (She was also a dentist and therefore professionally equal.)

Of course it's only been 90 years since women in our enlightened country got the vote.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh I've got no problem with "muslims" per se, any more than I have with "christians" or "theists". These are groups too diverse and big for me to have any "policy" or "problem" regarding them. I've had lots of lovely experiences with muslim people (and christian people and ....) precisely because of the common denominator in all those descriptors: i.e. "people". People are fine! I am one myself dontcherknow. ;) Anyway, I can only comment that behind closed doors the situation you mention might have been very different....

The thing with Wilders' film and Expelled is interesting to me because both are propaganda films whose expressed purpose is to disguise some idea known to be dodgy by presenting it as a (supposedly) less dodgy idea. In the case of Fitna, Wilders is trying to appropriate valid secular critiques about the religious justification of atrocities to disguise his racist political agenda. In the case of Expelled, Kevvo and chums are trying to disguise a religiously motivated political agenda behind faux pleas about persecution, error strewn defamation by association, and demonstrable false pseudoscience. The only difference is that some of the critiques in Fitna might be good ones, none of the ones in Expelled are. Both films are being used for nefarious purposes.

There are ideas bubbling in my head that I'm not really sure what to do with. I probably need to go away, learn some more about the relevant issues, and have a good old think.

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on Feb. 19 2009,10:49

It's gone. :(
Posted by: Lou FCD on Feb. 19 2009,11:58

Quote (Kristine @ Feb. 19 2009,11:49)
It's gone. :(
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's still there. The link is weird.

< Let's try this one. > ETA: This will get you there now.

as a response to these two comments:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Wayne Hollyoak: Once again, the scientific establishment has bamboosled the public into blackballing on of its disidents. "Heil Dawkins!" Everyone click your heels and salute!
February 19, 9:18 AM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------






---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Wayne Hollyoak: Once again, the scientific establishment has bamboosled the public into blackballing on of its disidents. "Heil Dawkins!" Everyone click your heels and salute!
February 19, 9:51 AM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I presume this is the relevant comment:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kristine: Oh, get over yourself, Wayne. (Repeat yourself much?) For one thing, Stein withdrew after Fogel asked him what the speech was to be about; Stein could have answered, if he believes in freedom of speech and academic freedom. Likewise, if Stein thinks he's fighting "Nazis" he should have shown more, er, backbone - but he only made Expelled for the money. Which didn't come. So now Ben Stein's distancing himself from the film (notice that all the PR about his upcoming commencement address at UVM didn't even mention Expelled once!) Some "dissident." I guess the post-production snake-handler tour, on which he claimed, "Science leads you to killing people," wasn't quite the ponzi scheme that he expected it to be. Enjoy being hoodwinked, do you?
February 19, 10:07 AM
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Mar. 13 2009,09:55

The < Expelled > folks need to head to Turkey to document < this >. Darwin was expelled from the front cover of a government-sponsored science mag.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 13 2009,13:10

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ Mar. 13 2009,09:55)
The < Expelled > folks need to head to Turkey to document < this >. Darwin was expelled from the front cover of a government-sponsored science mag.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe we should just call Turkey "chicken" from now on.

Ooooh, Ben Stein < is "notorious" > as an ID advocate now! Maybe now he'll finally get the, er, chicks. :p
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 13 2009,16:42

Kevin's blog:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/ >



*.................@..................# [/tumbleweed]
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 13 2009,19:44

Bwahaha, the guy does have his moments.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But my sagging stock portfolio isn't the real bad news. No, that comes from screenwriter John August. In a recent post, he noted that "studio development slates are being cut in half." That means half of the $400 million steaming apple pie that all of us screenwriters are scrambling to cram our faces into just fell on the floor and is now full of cat hair. And no, you wouldn't want to eat it anyway, even if you could, because they just swept it up, threw it in the garbage and then hauled it away in a truck to discourage dumpster diving.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I liked that. But now I want some apple pie.  :(  (Hobo pie?)
Posted by: Badger3k on Mar. 13 2009,19:59

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 13 2009,19:44)
Bwahaha, the guy does have his moments.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But my sagging stock portfolio isn't the real bad news. No, that comes from screenwriter John August. In a recent post, he noted that "studio development slates are being cut in half." That means half of the $400 million steaming apple pie that all of us screenwriters are scrambling to cram our faces into just fell on the floor and is now full of cat hair. And no, you wouldn't want to eat it anyway, even if you could, because they just swept it up, threw it in the garbage and then hauled it away in a truck to discourage dumpster diving.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I liked that. But now I want some apple pie.  :(  (Hobo pie?)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why does he need money?  Didn't he rake in on the millions of dollars that Expelled made, being the oscar-winning mega-blockbuster that it was?

:D
Posted by: Henry J on Mar. 13 2009,23:55

Maybe he needs some of that Clear Eyes stuff?

Henry
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 17 2009,16:42

Ben Stein: < How blacks see him >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I was watching the periphrastic pundit, actor and neo-economist Ben Stein on CBS Sunday morning pontificating.
He said that if President Obama offered more happy talk, more conviction that times would get better, then they would.
I was watching him just a few minutes after I had a conversation with a sister who lost her job the same week her husband did. They were confident that they could make it through three months, thanks to savings, but didn’t know what would happen to them after that. Stein wants happy talk, sister wants a job.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: FrankH on Mar. 18 2009,13:18

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 13 2009,13:10)
Quote (Albatrossity2 @ Mar. 13 2009,09:55)
The < Expelled > folks need to head to Turkey to document < this >. Darwin was expelled from the front cover of a government-sponsored science mag.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Maybe we should just call Turkey "chicken" from now on.

Ooooh, Ben Stein < is "notorious" > as an ID advocate now! Maybe now he'll finally get the, er, chicks. :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Should we send him your email address so he can start hitting on you?

 :p


(ducks for cover)
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 21 2009,17:42

No, just give him my name. According to KairoFocus, that's the same thing. :p

< Ben Stein is Expelled again >! I guess that's what happens when you're Ben Stein and trolling for dollars, not Richard Dawkins waiving your honorarium and speaking for free.
Posted by: JohnW on April 03 2009,10:43

The James Randi Education Foundation gives Expelled a < Pigasus >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So, to the producers of "Expelled" goes the Pigasus, and a little free advice: next time, invest in a project that has a more grounded basis in reality. Perhaps unicorns, fairies, or Atlantis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cool!  Now they're an "award-winning documentary".
Posted by: k.e.. on April 03 2009,11:18

Quote (JohnW @ April 03 2009,18:43)
The James Randi Education Foundation gives Expelled a < Pigasus >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So, to the producers of "Expelled" goes the Pigasus, and a little free advice: next time, invest in a project that has a more grounded basis in reality. Perhaps unicorns, fairies, or Atlantis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cool!  Now they're an "award-winning documentary".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah well they could have called it "How to make a € from bankrupt ideas"...

...then pocketed the monay and ran.


The x they are a changing.
Posted by: Louis on April 03 2009,11:35

Quote (FrankH @ Mar. 18 2009,19:18)
 
Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 13 2009,13:10)
   
Quote (Albatrossity2 @ Mar. 13 2009,09:55)
The < Expelled > folks need to head to Turkey to document < this >. Darwin was expelled from the front cover of a government-sponsored science mag.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Maybe we should just call Turkey "chicken" from now on.

Ooooh, Ben Stein < is "notorious" > as an ID advocate now! Maybe now he'll finally get the, er, chicks. :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Should we send him your email address so he can start hitting on you?

 :p


(ducks for cover)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's outrageous! If anyone is going to hit on Kristine it's us. By golly, she may be a witch/librarian/Galapagos mistress of Richard Dawkins but dammit she's OUR witch/librarian/Galapagos mistress of Richard Dawkins. If there are utterly juvenile and inappropriate advances to be made then dammit WE will be the ones to make them. If it's ok by Kristine that is.

Speaking of which, would you like to come back to my place and see my....erm....unique filing system? It involves every available flat surface, and some not so flat surfaces. I've been very bad, I could do with a lesson in the Dewey Decimal system....*

Louis

*ETA: I am aware that there is more to librarianship than alternatives to flat surfaces and the Dewey Decimal system. Tight hair pins, starched white blouses and half moon glasses for example. Oh dear I seem to have a) got myself into a lot of trouble and b) started down a road of erotic librarians that will take a crowbar to release me from.
Posted by: Amadan on April 03 2009,11:42



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
a crowbar
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



First time I've hear that term for it. You must have gone to a technical school.
Posted by: JohnW on April 03 2009,11:56

Quote (Louis @ April 03 2009,09:35)
Speaking of which, would you like to come back to my place and see my....erm....unique filing system?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your setting yourself up for a pair of shears, not a file.
Posted by: Badger3k on April 04 2009,00:01

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 21 2009,17:42)
No, just give him my name. According to KairoFocus, that's the same thing. :p

< Ben Stein is Expelled again >! I guess that's what happens when you're Ben Stein and trolling for dollars, not Richard Dawkins waiving your honorarium and speaking for free.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He charged a Cancellation Fee?

I guess this is that "charity" that the religious folks like Ben love to brag about so much.

Has anyone told Kevin?  Maybe we should be nicer to him, or he'll stop posting and charge us a fee as well?
Posted by: k.e.. on April 04 2009,06:19

Hey Ben Baby

Where's the ID Plan?

...steal music....get money from da rubes

Well here's a new tune for you.
Turn up the volume.

*Sung in the key of Revolution by some old half dead white dudes*

No royalties were paid to Yoko for this


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You say you want no evolution
Well you know
We'd all want to change the world
You tell me that  ID's  revolution
Well you know
We'd all want to change the world
But when you talk about creationism
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be alright [x3]

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
We'd all want to see the plan
You ask me for a tribulation
Well you know
We're all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you'll have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be alright [x4]

You say you'll change the constitution
Well you know
We'd all love to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of a Sistine God
You ain't going to make it with science anyhow
Don't you know know it's gonna be alright [x3]
Alright [x7]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on April 04 2009,09:41

Quote (k.e.. @ April 04 2009,06:19)
Hey Ben Baby

Where's the ID Plan?

...steal music....get money from da rubes

Well here's a new tune for you.
Turn up the volume.

*Sung in the key of Revolution by some old half dead white dudes*

No royalties were paid to Yoko for this
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You say you want no evolution
Well you know
We'd all want to change the world
You tell me that  ID's  revolution
Well you know
We'd all want to change the world
But when you talk about creationism
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be alright [x3]

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
We'd all want to see the plan
You ask me for a tribulation
Well you know
We're all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you'll have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be alright [x4]

You say you'll change the constitution
Well you know
We'd all love to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of a Sistine God
You ain't going to make it with science anyhow
Don't you know know it's gonna be alright [x3]
Alright [x7]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think John would approve.  I know I do.

BTW - good work for a native-loving gourd-wearing kiwi!
Posted by: k.e.. on April 04 2009,10:10



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I think John would approve.  I know I do.

BTW - good work for a native-loving gourd-wearing kiwi!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Hey how did you get those photos?????
Posted by: Quidam on April 04 2009,13:59

Quote (Louis @ April 03 2009,10:35)
I am aware that there is more to librarianship than alternatives to flat surfaces and the Dewey Decimal system. Tight hair pins, starched white blouses and half moon glasses for example. Oh dear I seem to have a) got myself into a lot of trouble and b) started down a road of erotic librarians that will take a crowbar to release me from.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let's see what we can do to kill the sexy librarian fantasy for you with a little hypnotism

You are feeling sleepy ... sleepy...

Whenever you think "Sexy librarian" this image will dominate your thoughts ...



Snap.  You are now awake.

Far more effective than a crowbar.
Posted by: Amadan on April 04 2009,16:08

Could be worse. What if you had made us think of the porn model's head on Densye's body?


No, please don't. PLEASE
Posted by: Quidam on April 04 2009,18:48

Well if you're looking for a youg sexy librarian then say no more.

Suzie Worblehat for your viewing pleasure


Horace grounded her for month when he saw the spread in LSpace Review
Posted by: Louis on April 04 2009,19:03

Quote (Quidam @ April 04 2009,19:59)
Quote (Louis @ April 03 2009,10:35)
I am aware that there is more to librarianship than alternatives to flat surfaces and the Dewey Decimal system. Tight hair pins, starched white blouses and half moon glasses for example. Oh dear I seem to have a) got myself into a lot of trouble and b) started down a road of erotic librarians that will take a crowbar to release me from.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let's see what we can do to kill the sexy librarian fantasy for you with a little hypnotism

You are feeling sleepy ... sleepy...

Whenever you think "Sexy librarian" this image will dominate your thoughts ...



Snap.  You are now awake.

Far more effective than a crowbar.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Did I mention that I hate you?

That image is going to ruin a not insignificant number of intimate moments for me.

If I have to go and "clean the streets" it'll be all your fault.

Louis
Posted by: Louis on April 04 2009,19:04

Quote (Quidam @ April 05 2009,00:48)
Well if you're looking for a youg sexy librarian then say no more.

Suzie Worblehat for your viewing pleasure


Horace grounded her for month when he saw the spread in LSpace Review
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I take the previous post back in its entirety.

Come to Louis, hot, furry, orange, beauty!

Louis
Posted by: Hermagoras on April 04 2009,19:26

"Clean the streets" -- is that a euphemism for something?
Posted by: Louis on April 04 2009,19:32

Quote (Hermagoras @ April 05 2009,01:26)
"Clean the streets" -- is that a euphemism for something?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes. It was allegedly used by Jack the Ripper....*

Louis

*One hypothesis about Jack was that he committed his vile crimes out of sexual frustration. I didn't say it was a *good* hypothesis.
Posted by: Kristine on April 05 2009,16:15

Okay, I'm here, I'm here! :) Louis noticed that I've been AWOL.

I have papers to write, too! And one heckuva digitization project to finish, plus another paper (Lou, JAD jinx!;) to present, all within two weeks. Dewey Decimal? Never used it. You got something against the Library of Congress? :p

Yeah, nice news about the < Pigasus Awards >, bwa ha. That made my day. I'm going to DC next week to finally meet James Randi himself! *Beams* And Paul Kurtz.

The producers of Expelled: Logan Craft, Walter Ruloff, and John Sullivan, are also among the < Five Most Irrational People of 2008 >. And by golly that's saying something.
ETA - I know they're the same thing, it just struck me funny. Are the producers each 1/3 of a person? Why not? :p


Posted by: KCdgw on April 05 2009,17:34



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The producers of Expelled: Logan Craft, Walter Ruloff, and John Sullivan, are also among the Five Most Irrational People of 2008. And by golly that's saying something.
ETA - I know they're the same thing, it just struck me funny. Are the producers each 1/3 of a person? Why not?  


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ethically, each is far less than even that.

KC
Posted by: Amadan on April 07 2009,09:38

Ben Stein returns to < the Hallowed Halls of the Academic Elite >.

Or will the evil Dawkins make those knock-kneed Perfessers drop him??

Won't anyone think of those poor Christian morons children?

Edit: Grammur. Ure wurth it.
Posted by: J-Dog on April 07 2009,12:20

Quote (Amadan @ April 07 2009,09:38)
Ben Stein returns to < the Hallowed Halls of the Academic Elite >.

Or will the evil Dawkins make those knock-kneed Perfessers drop him??

Won't anyone think of those poor Christian morons children?

Edit: Grammur. Ure wurth it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice Catch & Link!  

The comments are GREAT!  Especially the arguing about whether or not Stein being Jewish is appropriate to "send off" the Christian Kids in the world for a Christian School's Gradtardation.

Next WeeK:  How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin?
Posted by: khan on April 07 2009,12:30

Quote (J-Dog @ April 07 2009,13:20)
Quote (Amadan @ April 07 2009,09:38)
Ben Stein returns to < the Hallowed Halls of the Academic Elite >.

Or will the evil Dawkins make those knock-kneed Perfessers drop him??

Won't anyone think of those poor Christian morons children?

Edit: Grammur. Ure wurth it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice Catch & Link!  

The comments are GREAT!  Especially the arguing about whether or not Stein being Jewish is appropriate to "send off" the Christian Kids in the world for a Christian School's Gradtardation.

Next WeeK:  How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein joins a list of well-known commencement speakers at Liberty that include martial arts star Chuck Norris, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Sen. John McCain.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How many angels can dance on a pinhead?
Posted by: Kristine on April 07 2009,13:00

Quote (khan @ April 07 2009,12:30)
   
Quote (J-Dog @ April 07 2009,13:20)
   
Quote (Amadan @ April 07 2009,09:38)
Ben Stein returns to < the Hallowed Halls of the Academic Elite >.

Or will the evil Dawkins make those knock-kneed Perfessers drop him??

Won't anyone think of those poor Christian morons children?

Edit: Grammur. Ure wurth it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nice Catch & Link!  

The comments are GREAT!  Especially the arguing about whether or not Stein being Jewish is appropriate to "send off" the Christian Kids in the world for a Christian School's Gradtardation.

Next WeeK:  How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Stein joins a list of well-known commencement speakers at Liberty that include martial arts star Chuck Norris, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Sen. John McCain.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How many angels can dance on a pinhead?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


More like - how many anti-Semites can dance on the edge of barely contained hatred in the comments?
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Posted by ( bigjimm ) on April 07, 2009 at 6:04 am

I think this is a very telling discussion. So what will the good christians have to do after he speaks, cleanse the lectern?
Report Inappropriate Comment
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


:O
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Posted by ( mage_tiko ) on April 06, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Well..  
... they will now have a commencement speaker who hasn’t taken Jesus as his personal saviour.  

Have they had any other non-Christian speakers?
Report Inappropriate Comment
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Posted by ( Punto di vista di paradigma ) on April 06, 2009 at 5:32 pm

I hear ya, bigjimm.  I heard they got Ben Stein, when they really wanted his brother, Franken. Goes with the type of curriculum philosophy they’re creating.
Report Inappropriate Comment
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Unfortunately one has to be "signed in" to "report inappropriate comment." Ben Stein, you have no idea (as don't so many Zionists) how much your Christian "supporters" hate you. They're not Zionist friends, they're Rapture-crazy. Ben in the lion's den. The "Darwinists" didn't put you there.

Frankly, I fear for the man. He could seriously be putting himself in danger from his "friends."
Posted by: khan on April 07 2009,13:06



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Posted by ( bigjimm ) on April 07, 2009 at 6:04 am

I think this is a very telling discussion. So what will the good christians have to do after he speaks, cleanse the lectern?
Report Inappropriate Comment
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I took that statement as mocking the pure xians.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 07 2009,13:11



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Frankly, I fear for the man. He could seriously be putting himself in danger from his "friends."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



kristine, please....  now is no time to be sweet

i hope they feed him to the wolves.  

'e wants it, 'e gits it.
Posted by: JohnW on April 07 2009,13:22

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ April 07 2009,11:11)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Frankly, I fear for the man. He could seriously be putting himself in danger from his "friends."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



kristine, please....  now is no time to be sweet

i hope they feed him to the wolves.  

'e wants it, 'e gits it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I wouldn't regard "Antiscience wacko beaten to death by antiscience, antisemitic wackos" as any sort of victory.
Posted by: khan on April 07 2009,13:28

Quote (JohnW @ April 07 2009,14:22)
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 07 2009,11:11)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Frankly, I fear for the man. He could seriously be putting himself in danger from his "friends."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



kristine, please....  now is no time to be sweet

i hope they feed him to the wolves.  

'e wants it, 'e gits it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I wouldn't regard "Antiscience wacko beaten to death by antiscience, antisemitic wackos" as any sort of victory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe if it just crossed his mind that it was a possibility...
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 07 2009,13:45

Quote (JohnW @ April 07 2009,13:22)
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,April 07 2009,11:11)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Frankly, I fear for the man. He could seriously be putting himself in danger from his "friends."

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



kristine, please....  now is no time to be sweet

i hope they feed him to the wolves.  

'e wants it, 'e gits it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I wouldn't regard "Antiscience wacko beaten to death by antiscience, antisemitic wackos" as any sort of victory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


victory, no.

fitting end, yes.

highly highly highly entertaining, color me "Absolutely".

i have about as much compassion for stein as I do for a scorpion or a tsetse fly.  being ripped apart by a mob of fundies would be proof of a vengeful god.
Posted by: Amadan on April 07 2009,14:42

Don't worry. Poor dear Ben will be just fine. It's science that makes you kill people, as he comprehensively demonstrated in a cinematic footnote to the pimple on my arse. And they're not going to allow anything like science at Liberty, nossir.

The C*ultergeist tells us that Jews just need to be 'perfected' to be come good Republicans Xtians. Maybe all those newly-minted missionaries will take the opportunity to perfect Ben. In fact, they really would be failing in their duty if they didn't try.

Hmm. Someone should go and remind them.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 07 2009,14:44

atta boy amadan.

ripped apart by flaming mob, not so much.  probably more like proselytized into oblivion by hatemongering soul-botherers trying to get him to admit that jews = science = killed jesus = hitler

what a clusterfuck.  i would love to see them all in the same submarine fighting for the last molecule of oxygen.
Posted by: Lou FCD on April 10 2009,17:39

Saw this piece of crap today. (...for free, no money to the TARDS, mwaahahahahhahaha, suck it.)

It's every bit as chock full of deliberate lies that it is purported to be.

Not misunderstandings, not misguided foolishness, but flat out deliberate lies and distortions. Everyone involved in the production of that piece of garbage propaganda hit job is a disgusting, lying sack of shit, a vomit inducing sleazebag with a dearth of integrity so complete it begs for comparisons to a black hole.
Posted by: khan on April 10 2009,17:44

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 10 2009,18:39)
Saw this piece of crap today. (...for free, no money to the TARDS, mwaahahahahhahaha, suck it.)

It's every bit as chock full of deliberate lies that it is purported to be.

Not misunderstandings, not misguided foolishness, but flat out deliberate lies and distortions. Everyone involved in the production of that piece of garbage propaganda hit job is a disgusting, lying sack of shit, a vomit inducing sleazebag with a dearth of integrity so complete it begs for comparisons to a black hole.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Mos UD

A wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on April 10 2009,18:14

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 10 2009,17:39)
Saw this piece of crap today. (...for free, no money to the TARDS, mwaahahahahhahaha, suck it.)

It's every bit as chock full of deliberate lies that it is purported to be.

Not misunderstandings, not misguided foolishness, but flat out deliberate lies and distortions. Everyone involved in the production of that piece of garbage propaganda hit job is a disgusting, lying sack of shit, a vomit inducing sleazebag with a dearth of integrity so complete it begs for comparisons to a black hole.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


but now you can actually take and say that with an implicitly latched moral certainty.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on April 20 2009,17:28

Sorry to bump this thread and post the same thing I posted on the BW, but I just got to the fact that the video is very relevant regarding Expelled...

Richard Dawkins' talk at the American Atheists 09 convention.

< Professor Dawkins >

(And yes, I do post Dawkins' videos rather instinctively, within minutes of having started watching them, because, let's face it, the guy is brilliant!)

Edit: changed "fascinating" to "brilliant" as not to confuse the unsuspecting lurker. I DO NOT have a Dawkins altar in my bedroom...










It's in the living room... :p
Posted by: khan on April 20 2009,17:36

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ April 20 2009,18:28)
Sorry to bump this thread and post the same thing I posted on the BW, but I just got to the fact that the video is very relevant regarding Expelled...

Richard Dawkins' talk at the American Atheists 09 convention.

< Professor Dawkins >

(And yes, I do post Dawkins' videos rather instinctively, within minutes of having started watching them, because, let's face it, the guy is brilliant!)

Edit: changed "fascinating" to "brilliant" as not to confuse the unsuspecting lurker. I DO NOT have a Dawkins altar in my bedroom...










It's in the living room... :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What rituals do you perform? :)
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on April 20 2009,17:42



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
What rituals do you perform? :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



You don't want to know!*

*although constantly beating the crap out of  a stein I brought back from Oktober Fest is part of the ritual... :D
Posted by: Henry J on April 20 2009,18:43

But are those rituals on a daily basis? :p
Posted by: Badger3k on April 20 2009,23:32

I just have to add that I saw copies of "Expelled" in the 2/$10 bin at my local HEB (a super-HEB - grocery store - which is more like wal-mart, selling more than food).  So, on the one hand, they are out for a wider audience.  On the other.... :p

(and this is in the middle of Texas, right by Fort Hood).
Posted by: J-Dog on April 21 2009,08:30

Quote (Badger3k @ April 20 2009,23:32)
I just have to add that I saw copies of "Expelled" in the 2/$10 bin at my local HEB (a super-HEB - grocery store - which is more like wal-mart, selling more than food).  So, on the one hand, they are out for a wider audience.  On the other.... :p

(and this is in the middle of Texas, right by Fort Hood).
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do everybody a favor - move them into
1.) 2 / $1.00 bin
0r
2.) Recycle bin

You should do it in honor of Earth Day - I hear those disks are toxic.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on May 07 2009,23:13

Guillermo is not the only < expelled > at grove city

giggle



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
GROVE CITY, PA. – A student who appeared in pornographic videos using a pseudonym is appealing his suspension from a Christian college in western Pennsylvania saying the off-campus job wasn't the business of school officials.

John Gechter, 22, of Philadelphia said he needed the income from his roles in gay porn to pay for school but was suspended for one year from Grove City College, pending his appeal, after a student saw him in a video posted online.

"I absolutely believe this college violated my rights," Gechter told The Herald of Sharon. "They (suspended) me based on my occupation. I was not doing anything illegal."

College spokeswoman Amy Clingensmith said Gechter was suspended because he "exhibited behavior contrary to the values" of the college.

"He also indicated he chose to participate in this behavior knowing it was incongruent with the policies, mission and values of Grove City College," Clingensmith said.

Gechter told the newspaper he has been in about 15 gay porn scenes in the last two years using the screen name "Vincent DeSalvo." In doing the work, he said, he flew to Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and other places on the weekends.

Gechter, a senior majoring in molecular biology, said he started doing gay porn after he was referred to the industry through a modeling agency late in his sophomore year.

Another student recognized Gechter and copied and pasted some images of him in an e-mail that was sent to some friends April 23. By the next morning, most of the student body and the school admininstration had seen or knew about the e-mail, Gechter said.

Gechter contacted the American Civil Liberties Union and the Pittsburgh Delta Foundation, a gay advocacy group. Delta's president, Gary Van Horn Jr. sent a letter to the school saying Gechter's gay porn work doesn't affect the school because he acted under a pseudonym.

Gechter said he hasn't attended classes in two weeks since appealing the suspension, saying he's afraid of reprisals from students.

But Clingensmith said Gechter has been seen eating in the cafeteria and working out in the gym among other students.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Another student happened to see the video

roflmao

what's worse doing the gay porn or being the fundie that discovers it

pssst hey look what um my friend sent me on teh email

bwaaaaaaa
Posted by: ERV on May 08 2009,07:55

Vincent DeSalvo

DeSalvo

< Salvo >
Posted by: sledgehammer on May 09 2009,10:10

So let me get this straight:
At Grove City College, participation in gay porn is cause for expulsion, but participation in intellectual porn, a.k.a. "Expelled", gets you tenure.
Posted by: Amadan on May 11 2009,08:38

< Doktor Ben Addresses His Intellectual Peers >

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein - accomplished scholar, attorney, writer and actor who attended Yale Law School — delivered a message of creationism, patriotism and value for humanity to graduates and their families on Saturday, May 9, at Williams Stadium.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Surely they were referring to Expelled's impassioned discussion of patriotism and value for humanity, and how they are despised by the Jew-killing scientists? Because Expelled is about Intelligent Design - y'know, science, not, ah, what'sitcalledagain ... oh yeah creationism.

Umm,, no:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
He spoke extensively about his work on “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” a documentary exposing the flaws of Darwinism and showing how the scientific community discriminates against scholars who believe in creationism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





As my teenage kids say*

FAIL


* And just because I like to show their friends my prowess in disco dancing. What's not to like?
Posted by: k.e.. on May 11 2009,10:31

Quote (Amadan @ May 11 2009,16:38)
< Doktor Ben Addresses His Intellectual Peers >

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein - accomplished scholar, attorney, writer and actor who attended Yale Law School — delivered a message of creationism, patriotism and value for humanity to graduates and their families on Saturday, May 9, at Williams Stadium.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Surely they were referring to Expelled's impassioned discussion of patriotism and value for humanity, and how they are despised by the Jew-killing scientists? Because Expelled is about Intelligent Design - y'know, science, not, ah, what'sitcalledagain ... oh yeah creationism.

Umm,, no:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
He spoke extensively about his work on “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” a documentary exposing the flaws of Darwinism and showing how the scientific community discriminates against scholars who believe in creationism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





As my teenage kids say*

FAIL


* And just because I like to show their friends my prowess in disco dancing. What's not to like?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your a case,

Wait till they find out your GAY and doing a bio major boyfriend of one your kids girlfriends (the one with the huge TITS!)
Posted by: Amadan on May 11 2009,10:50

Who? The kid or the girlfriend?
Posted by: k.e.. on May 11 2009,11:06

Quote (Amadan @ May 11 2009,18:50)
Who? The kid or the girlfriend?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I suspect both now :)
Posted by: KCdgw on May 11 2009,11:14

Quote (Amadan @ May 11 2009,08:38)
< Doktor Ben Addresses His Intellectual Peers >

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Ben Stein - accomplished scholar, attorney, writer and actor who attended Yale Law School — delivered a message of creationism, patriotism and value for humanity to graduates and their families on Saturday, May 9, at Williams Stadium.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Surely they were referring to Expelled's impassioned discussion of patriotism and value for humanity, and how they are despised by the Jew-killing scientists? Because Expelled is about Intelligent Design - y'know, science, not, ah, what'sitcalledagain ... oh yeah creationism.

Umm,, no:

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
He spoke extensively about his work on “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” a documentary exposing the flaws of Darwinism and showing how the scientific community discriminates against scholars who believe in creationism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





As my teenage kids say*

FAIL


* And just because I like to show their friends my prowess in disco dancing. What's not to like?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Was that a real audience, or a fake one, as Stein used in the film?

KC
Posted by: Kristine on May 11 2009,13:00

I just snorted sushi out of my nose. Whom do I sue? (Maybe I should call teh attorney, Stein himself?)
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Blah, blah accomplished scholar [what? May I ask, what scholarship has he "accomplished?" Maybe he once received, er, a scholarship? That must be it.], attorney, writer and actor who attended Yale Law School — delivered a message of creationism, patriotism and value for humanity to graduates and their families on blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, historic because it’s the first Commencement address delivered in sneakers,” Falwell joked [Wassamatah, yer pa who was once a playboy Calypso musician never paraded around in his Bermuda shorts beneath those robes?] as he invited Stein to the podium, just moments after Liberty University conferred an honorary Doctorate of Humanities blah blah. [Humanities, yet. That's my field, and them's fightin' words.]

Stein, 64, spoke of LU founder Dr. Jerry Falwell as a great man and praised the university for its support of Israel, the unborn, family values and morality. [And Israel's prevention of more unborn Palestian Israeli citizens, by trying to pass laws in the Knesset limiting marriage by Israeli citizens who are Palestians?]

“It is a wonderful thing to be in a place where you can say the truth, and one of the truths is that in this country you can say any curse word … on television. The only words you cannot say are God and Jesus Christ — " blah, blah, see anything contradictory here? ;)

He spoke extensively about his work on “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” a documentary exposing the flaws of Darwinism and showing how the scientific community discriminates against scholars who believe in creationism.

[I thought ID was not about creationism!] :D

“I realized that the real issues of life were not economic issues, not necessarily material issues, but metaphysical issues,” he said, later explaining how looking at life as merely “animated mud” rather than a God-given blah blah animated mud-flinging.

After his documentary went public, Stein said the reception was fiercely critical blah, blah, "name-calling  blah beyond anything, blah, blah, I’ve worked for Richard Nixon, blah, blah, been called a lot of names,” he said. “But I’ve never seen the [kind of] anger directed at this movie and at yours truly.” [See, that's how you get Ben Stein to finally remember, after his "forgetting" during the UVM debacle, that he actually did this movie - make it all about him!] :)

Stein received a standing ovation for his remarks.

Though Stein does not share all of the same views as Liberty University, Chancellor Falwell said one of the major reasons he invited Stein to speak was because of his documentary.

When Falwell first announced that Stein would be delivering this year’s Commencement address, he said: “His work in exposing how fraudulent science is being used in this country to destroy freedom and advance tyrannical social and political agendas deserves our attention and respect.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------





---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Was that a real audience, or a fake one, as Stein used in the film?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Does it really matter? :p
Posted by: KCdgw on May 11 2009,13:08

A fake audience would be so much funnier.  Well, to me at least ;)

KC
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 23 2009,08:18

Liberty University, where pseudo-intellectual Ben Stein gave the commencement address this year, has < banned the campus Democratic club > from using university facilities, the university name, etc. Apparently the Democratic club was only recognized last fall, so this experiment with free speech was quite short-lived. The campus Republican club remains untouched. The email to the club's president, announcing this decision by the university administration, contained this gem.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on May 23 2009,08:33

Quote (sledgehammer @ May 09 2009,17:10)
So let me get this straight:
At Grove City College, participation in gay porn is cause for expulsion, but participation in intellectual porn, a.k.a. "Expelled", gets you tenure.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Damn, I'm late on that one!

"Let me get this straight..."

NOT A CHANCE HOMO!!! IT'S GAY PORN!!!!!!!111one11!






Sorry, had to be done...
Posted by: Lou FCD on May 23 2009,08:35

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 23 2009,09:18)
Liberty University, where pseudo-intellectual Ben Stein gave the commencement address this year, has < banned the campus Democratic club > from using university facilities, the university name, etc. Apparently the Democratic club was only recognized last fall, so this experiment with free speech was quite short-lived. The campus Republican club remains untouched. The email to the club's president, announcing this decision by the university administration, contained this gem.  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So basically, for supporting basic human rights.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on May 23 2009,08:37

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 23 2009,15:18)
Liberty University, where pseudo-intellectual Ben Stein gave the commencement address this year, has < banned the campus Democratic club > from using university facilities, the university name, etc. Apparently the Democratic club was only recognized last fall, so this experiment with free speech was quite short-lived. The campus Republican club remains untouched. The email to the club's president, announcing this decision by the university administration, contained this gem.  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd be a student there, I'd.....I.....well, I wouldn't be a student there, for a start!
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on May 23 2009,09:55

Hey, i might start to think that I'm the ultimate topic killer. I kinda like that...
Posted by: Lowell on May 23 2009,10:23

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 23 2009,08:18)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What the fuck does that even mean? The argument that one's sexual orientation or gender identity could be morally wrong is at least comprehensible (even if I totally disagree), but how could even the most deluded homophobe convince themselves that it is a "hate crime"?

If someone is gay or transgendered or whatever, who, exactly, is the victim?

Tell me I'm just reading it wrong.
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on May 23 2009,10:54

Quote (Lowell @ May 23 2009,10:23)
 
Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 23 2009,08:18)
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What the fuck does that even mean? The argument that one's sexual orientation or gender identity could be morally wrong is at least comprehensible (even if I totally disagree), but how could even the most deluded homophobe convince themselves that it is a "hate crime"?

If someone is gay or transgendered or whatever, who, exactly, is the victim?

Tell me I'm just reading it wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nope, I can't tell you that.

But it's possible that the logic goes something like this. Lots of right-wingers are opposed to the very concept of defining certain crimes as hate crimes, arguing that if you kill a gay person, you should be prosecuted under standard murder statutes. You shouldn't be punished under some other hate crime statute, hate is a "thought crime" and nobody should be punished for thought crimes...

This ignores the reason that hate crime statutes came into being; local jurisdictions were pretty lax in punishing someone who harmed a gay person, or a black person, and federal prosecutors could get involved if there was an appropriate hate crime statute at the federal level.

Or that sentence could mean something else entirely. Who knows?
Posted by: Lowell on May 23 2009,11:13

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 23 2009,10:54)
Quote (Lowell @ May 23 2009,10:23)
   
Quote (Albatrossity2 @ May 23 2009,08:18)
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What the fuck does that even mean? The argument that one's sexual orientation or gender identity could be morally wrong is at least comprehensible (even if I totally disagree), but how could even the most deluded homophobe convince themselves that it is a "hate crime"?

If someone is gay or transgendered or whatever, who, exactly, is the victim?

Tell me I'm just reading it wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nope, I can't tell you that.

But it's possible that the logic goes something like this. Lots of right-wingers are opposed to the very concept of defining certain crimes as hate crimes, arguing that if you kill a gay person, you should be prosecuted under standard murder statutes. You shouldn't be punished under some other hate crime statute, hate is a "thought crime" and nobody should be punished for thought crimes...

This ignores the reason that hate crime statutes came into being; local jurisdictions were pretty lax in punishing someone who harmed a gay person, or a black person, and federal prosecutors could get involved if there was an appropriate hate crime statute at the federal level.

Or that sentence could mean something else entirely. Who knows?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Okay. I see what you're saying. Thanks, Alby.

I guess they meant the group is contrary to the mission of the university because it "supports . . . hate crime laws, which include sexual orientation and gender identity . . . ."

It's still stupid, but at least it's comprehensible.
Posted by: bfish on July 16 2009,17:41

I was just looking at Netflix and, influenced by < the latest Ben Stein sighting, > I looked up Expelled. Under the poster for the movie, I was told how Netflix users liked the film:

Average of raters like you: 1.7 stars
Average of 166,095 ratings: 3.6 stars

Looks like Netflix has me pegged.

The movie is available for instant viewing over the internet. Does anyone know if the filmmakers get any money for such downloads? What about getting the DVD in the mail?
Posted by: J-Dog on July 16 2009,18:00

Headline:

Ben Stein - Predatory Bait and Switch Merchant

< Predatory Bait & Switch Merchant >

Created... or Designed?

And good comments - I think most people have caught up to the lying shill..
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on July 20 2009,15:30

Long time no heckle, guys. Just wanted to alert you to the next film you should be concerned about: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UjVYnhhnm0 >
Posted by: Richardthughes on July 20 2009,15:34

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ July 20 2009,15:30)
Long time no heckle, guys. Just wanted to alert you to the next film you should be concerned about: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UjVYnhhnm0 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Can you kick me out of it at the cinema? Cheers.
Posted by: midwifetoad on July 20 2009,16:26

Did detect a "Written By"?

I quit listening to NPR news decades ago, not because I disagreed with their politics, but because they put a crying kid or angry crowd soundtrack behind every news report.

I'm not going to watch any documentary  that backed by portentous music. Can't hit the off button fast enough.
Posted by: Peter Henderson on July 20 2009,17:21

Was expelled really the turkey everyone on the Panda's Thumb has made it out to be ? Not according to Wikipedia:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled opened in 1,052 theaters, more than any other documentary before it, and grossed over $2,900,000 in its first weekend, the third biggest opening for a documentary. As of May 13, 2008 it had earned over $7 million, making it the twelfth-highest-grossing documentary film in the United States in nominal dollars, from 1982 to that date. In July, the movie was re-released allowing groups of 300 to book private screenings in theaters.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That doesn't look like an absolute bumber to me. Guess I can't use that argument any more on the YEC discussion forums. Who gets the profits ? Is it the Discovery Institute ?
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on July 20 2009,18:13

Quote (Peter Henderson @ July 20 2009,17:21)
Was expelled really the turkey everyone on the Panda's Thumb has made it out to be ? Not according to Wikipedia:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled opened in 1,052 theaters, more than any other documentary before it, and grossed over $2,900,000 in its first weekend, the third biggest opening for a documentary. As of May 13, 2008 it had earned over $7 million, making it the twelfth-highest-grossing documentary film in the United States in nominal dollars, from 1982 to that date. In July, the movie was re-released allowing groups of 300 to book private screenings in theaters.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That doesn't look like an absolute bumber to me. Guess I can't use that argument any more on the YEC discussion forums. Who gets the profits ? Is it the Discovery Institute ?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Cost to make this movie and advertise it?  Not much information specified.  IMDB estimates 3.5 million just for production.

Domestic Total Gross: $7,720,487 from box office mojo.

Compare to Religulous $13,011,160 gross, estimated 2.5 million to make.
Posted by: dvunkannon on July 20 2009,18:44

Quote (Peter Henderson @ July 20 2009,18:21)
Was expelled really the turkey everyone on the Panda's Thumb has made it out to be ? Not according to Wikipedia:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled opened in 1,052 theaters, more than any other documentary before it, and grossed over $2,900,000 in its first weekend, the third biggest opening for a documentary. As of May 13, 2008 it had earned over $7 million, making it the twelfth-highest-grossing documentary film in the United States in nominal dollars, from 1982 to that date. In July, the movie was re-released allowing groups of 300 to book private screenings in theaters.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



That doesn't look like an absolute bumber to me. Guess I can't use that argument any more on the YEC discussion forums. Who gets the profits ? Is it the Discovery Institute ?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just to print a thousand copies of the film is serious money. I'd be suprised if they made any money at all on the first run in theaters. Probably started to be profitable with DVD sales. The church basement bookings are peanuts.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Aug. 08 2009,09:28

< The New York Times expels Ben Stein >

Over economics, not "intelligent design" creationism.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Aug. 08 2009,09:38

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 08 2009,09:28)
< The New York Times expels Ben Stein >

Over economics, not "intelligent design" creationism.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ben has exhibited consistency.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Aug. 13 2009,14:27

It looks like we will have Kevin Miller to < kick around some more >. He's scriptwriting a film trying to make heroic the life of exceptional loon and religious antievolutionist Kent Hovind.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Resurrection Pictures was founded in 2006 as the first—and possibly the only—501©(3) non-profit, tax-exempt ministry with a mission to produce and distribute Christian-themed entertainment for movie theaters worldwide.  This Christian film ministry is shaping the future of the faith-based film industry by investing in the work of others who share a vision to create high-quality, culturally relevant entertainment options that share the Gospel message.  In September 2009, Resurrection Pictures is partnering in the release of "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry"—a heartwarming coming-of-age story about three 12-year-old boys who are shown how to apply Scripture to daily struggles—and is a 2009 Silver Sponsor of the 168 Hour Film Project & Festival.  Creation, Resurrection Pictures’ first original film project— a humorous and tearful story of a high school biology teacher’s struggle to expose the lie of evolution, based on the life of creation evangelist Dr. Kent Hovind and written by Kevin Miller the writer of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is scheduled for production in 2010.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uh, Kevin, it hasn't been produced yet, so you could actually work to correct the errors we know you've written in so far. After all, we know your idea of "research". We'll give you a hand, I'm sure. Just post excerpts and after we get done laughing, we'll explain why going with your draft would continue your reputation as a laughingstock.

First hint: Calling Kent Hovind "Dr." isn't doing yourself any favors. Have you read Hovind's "dissertation" as distributed by Patriot University? I have.
Posted by: dheddle on Aug. 13 2009,16:18

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 13 2009,14:27)
It looks like we will have Kevin Miller to < kick around some more >. He's scriptwriting a film trying to make heroic the life of exceptional loon and religious antievolutionist Kent Hovind.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Resurrection Pictures was founded in 2006 as the first—and possibly the only—501©(3) non-profit, tax-exempt ministry with a mission to produce and distribute Christian-themed entertainment for movie theaters worldwide.  This Christian film ministry is shaping the future of the faith-based film industry by investing in the work of others who share a vision to create high-quality, culturally relevant entertainment options that share the Gospel message.  In September 2009, Resurrection Pictures is partnering in the release of "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry"—a heartwarming coming-of-age story about three 12-year-old boys who are shown how to apply Scripture to daily struggles—and is a 2009 Silver Sponsor of the 168 Hour Film Project & Festival.  Creation, Resurrection Pictures’ first original film project— a humorous and tearful story of a high school biology teacher’s struggle to expose the lie of evolution, based on the life of creation evangelist Dr. Kent Hovind and written by Kevin Miller the writer of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is scheduled for production in 2010.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uh, Kevin, it hasn't been produced yet, so you could actually work to correct the errors we know you've written in so far. After all, we know your idea of "research". We'll give you a hand, I'm sure. Just post excerpts and after we get done laughing, we'll explain why going with your draft would continue your reputation as a laughingstock.

First hint: Calling Kent Hovind "Dr." isn't doing yourself any favors. Have you read Hovind's "dissertation" as distributed by Patriot University? I have.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I nominate Richard Hughes to play Dr. Hovind--Rich has that certain je ne sais quoi.
Posted by: J-Dog on Aug. 13 2009,16:30

Quote (dheddle @ Aug. 13 2009,16:18)
quote]
I nominate Richard Hughes to play Dr. Hovind--Rich has that certain je ne sais quoi.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who gets to play the Lovely Mrs. Lying "Dr." Hovind?

a.) FTK
b.) Angelina Jolie
c.) Arden Chatfield
Posted by: Albatrossity2 on Aug. 13 2009,16:31

Quote (J-Dog @ Aug. 13 2009,16:30)
Quote (dheddle @ Aug. 13 2009,16:18)
quote]
I nominate Richard Hughes to play Dr. Hovind--Rich has that certain je ne sais quoi.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Who gets to play the Lovely Mrs. Lying "Dr." Hovind?

a.) FTK
b.) Angelina Jolie
c.) Arden Chatfield
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


d) Sal
Posted by: Lowell on Aug. 13 2009,16:32

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 13 2009,14:27)
It looks like we will have Kevin Miller to < kick around some more >. He's scriptwriting a film trying to make heroic the life of exceptional loon and religious antievolutionist Kent Hovind.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Resurrection Pictures was founded in 2006 as the first—and possibly the only—501©(3) non-profit, tax-exempt ministry with a mission to produce and distribute Christian-themed entertainment for movie theaters worldwide.  This Christian film ministry is shaping the future of the faith-based film industry by investing in the work of others who share a vision to create high-quality, culturally relevant entertainment options that share the Gospel message.  In September 2009, Resurrection Pictures is partnering in the release of "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry"—a heartwarming coming-of-age story about three 12-year-old boys who are shown how to apply Scripture to daily struggles—and is a 2009 Silver Sponsor of the 168 Hour Film Project & Festival.  Creation, Resurrection Pictures’ first original film project— a humorous and tearful story of a high school biology teacher’s struggle to expose the lie of evolution, based on the life of creation evangelist Dr. Kent Hovind and written by Kevin Miller the writer of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is scheduled for production in 2010.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uh, Kevin, it hasn't been produced yet, so you could actually work to correct the errors we know you've written in so far. After all, we know your idea of "research". We'll give you a hand, I'm sure. Just post excerpts and after we get done laughing, we'll explain why going with your draft would continue your reputation as a laughingstock.

First hint: Calling Kent Hovind "Dr." isn't doing yourself any favors. Have you read Hovind's "dissertation" as distributed by Patriot University? I have.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My god that sounds awful. And boring. I wonder if that's what he's trying to drum up capital for < here on his blog >.
Posted by: MichaelJ on Aug. 13 2009,16:44

Forgive my fearfully bad memory but didn't Kevin come here indicating that he accepted evolution but we must allow for some alternative explanations.
Its a huge drop from there to supporting Dr Dino or is Kevin just another troll lying for Jesus.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Aug. 13 2009,16:46



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Pitch package and full script available upon request.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Now that I'd like to see! "Full script" eh? I think it would be helpful if that was to be double, nay, triple checked. I'm sure some hardy soul here would be happy to fact check it. Again. As I'm sure Kevin has already made sure that happened. As long as he did not use the same fact checkers as last time he'll be OK.
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Several name actors are attached.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hey the actors have "name"! Wow! Do they also have eyes? Teeth? Why isn't Kevin crowing over how good his actors dentistry is, as well as the face they are named?

Or is that the way you say it and I'm showing my cultural intolerance?  :p
Posted by: Chayanov on Aug. 13 2009,16:55

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 13 2009,14:27)
It looks like we will have Kevin Miller to < kick around some more >. He's scriptwriting a film trying to make heroic the life of exceptional loon and religious antievolutionist Kent Hovind.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Resurrection Pictures was founded in 2006 as the first—and possibly the only—501©(3) non-profit, tax-exempt ministry with a mission to produce and distribute Christian-themed entertainment for movie theaters worldwide.  This Christian film ministry is shaping the future of the faith-based film industry by investing in the work of others who share a vision to create high-quality, culturally relevant entertainment options that share the Gospel message.  In September 2009, Resurrection Pictures is partnering in the release of "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry"—a heartwarming coming-of-age story about three 12-year-old boys who are shown how to apply Scripture to daily struggles—and is a 2009 Silver Sponsor of the 168 Hour Film Project & Festival.  Creation, Resurrection Pictures’ first original film project— a humorous and tearful story of a high school biology teacher’s struggle to expose the lie of evolution, based on the life of creation evangelist Dr. Kent Hovind and written by Kevin Miller the writer of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is scheduled for production in 2010.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uh, Kevin, it hasn't been produced yet, so you could actually work to correct the errors we know you've written in so far. After all, we know your idea of "research". We'll give you a hand, I'm sure. Just post excerpts and after we get done laughing, we'll explain why going with your draft would continue your reputation as a laughingstock.

First hint: Calling Kent Hovind "Dr." isn't doing yourself any favors. Have you read Hovind's "dissertation" as distributed by Patriot University? I have.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's not a very long read, either. It even has some correctly spelled words and everything.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 13 2009,17:08

Quote (dheddle @ Aug. 13 2009,16:18)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 13 2009,14:27)
It looks like we will have Kevin Miller to < kick around some more >. He's scriptwriting a film trying to make heroic the life of exceptional loon and religious antievolutionist Kent Hovind.

   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Resurrection Pictures was founded in 2006 as the first—and possibly the only—501©(3) non-profit, tax-exempt ministry with a mission to produce and distribute Christian-themed entertainment for movie theaters worldwide.  This Christian film ministry is shaping the future of the faith-based film industry by investing in the work of others who share a vision to create high-quality, culturally relevant entertainment options that share the Gospel message.  In September 2009, Resurrection Pictures is partnering in the release of "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry"—a heartwarming coming-of-age story about three 12-year-old boys who are shown how to apply Scripture to daily struggles—and is a 2009 Silver Sponsor of the 168 Hour Film Project & Festival.  Creation, Resurrection Pictures’ first original film project— a humorous and tearful story of a high school biology teacher’s struggle to expose the lie of evolution, based on the life of creation evangelist Dr. Kent Hovind and written by Kevin Miller the writer of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is scheduled for production in 2010.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uh, Kevin, it hasn't been produced yet, so you could actually work to correct the errors we know you've written in so far. After all, we know your idea of "research". We'll give you a hand, I'm sure. Just post excerpts and after we get done laughing, we'll explain why going with your draft would continue your reputation as a laughingstock.

First hint: Calling Kent Hovind "Dr." isn't doing yourself any favors. Have you read Hovind's "dissertation" as distributed by Patriot University? I have.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I nominate Richard Hughes to play Dr. Hovind--Rich has that certain je ne sais quoi.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My noble brow will not pass for antipodean criminal stock.

harrumph!
Posted by: SoonerintheBluegrass on Aug. 13 2009,17:32



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Several name actors are attached.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'll bet a bottle of single malt scotch that "name actors"= Kirk "Banana Boy" Cameron.
Posted by: MichaelJ on Aug. 13 2009,17:52

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 13 2009,17:08)
Quote (dheddle @ Aug. 13 2009,16:18)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 13 2009,14:27)
It looks like we will have Kevin Miller to < kick around some more >. He's scriptwriting a film trying to make heroic the life of exceptional loon and religious antievolutionist Kent Hovind.

     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Resurrection Pictures was founded in 2006 as the first—and possibly the only—501©(3) non-profit, tax-exempt ministry with a mission to produce and distribute Christian-themed entertainment for movie theaters worldwide.  This Christian film ministry is shaping the future of the faith-based film industry by investing in the work of others who share a vision to create high-quality, culturally relevant entertainment options that share the Gospel message.  In September 2009, Resurrection Pictures is partnering in the release of "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry"—a heartwarming coming-of-age story about three 12-year-old boys who are shown how to apply Scripture to daily struggles—and is a 2009 Silver Sponsor of the 168 Hour Film Project & Festival.  Creation, Resurrection Pictures’ first original film project— a humorous and tearful story of a high school biology teacher’s struggle to expose the lie of evolution, based on the life of creation evangelist Dr. Kent Hovind and written by Kevin Miller the writer of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is scheduled for production in 2010.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Uh, Kevin, it hasn't been produced yet, so you could actually work to correct the errors we know you've written in so far. After all, we know your idea of "research". We'll give you a hand, I'm sure. Just post excerpts and after we get done laughing, we'll explain why going with your draft would continue your reputation as a laughingstock.

First hint: Calling Kent Hovind "Dr." isn't doing yourself any favors. Have you read Hovind's "dissertation" as distributed by Patriot University? I have.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I nominate Richard Hughes to play Dr. Hovind--Rich has that certain je ne sais quoi.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My noble brow will not pass for antipodean criminal stock.

harrumph!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought than Ham was the Aussie, Don't tell me that there are two from my shores.
Posted by: Tony M Nyphot on Aug. 13 2009,17:59

Quote (dheddle @ Aug. 13 2009,15:18)
I nominate Richard Hughes to play Dr. Hovind--Rich has that certain je ne sais quoi.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


About RichardTHughes...you may not know what, but I do. One word:

Homo.

Besides, RTH is too funny. I think a "name" actor like < Crispin Glover > from his < Rubin and Ed > days could convey the whacked-out je ne sais QTF kookiness more accurately.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 13 2009,18:20

Quote (MichaelJ @ Aug. 13 2009,17:52)
I thought than Ham was the Aussie, Don't tell me that there are two from my shores.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crap. I confused them.


MIA KULPER
Posted by: Kristine on Aug. 14 2009,07:35

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ July 20 2009,15:30)
Long time no heckle, guys. Just wanted to alert you to the next film you should be concerned about: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UjVYnhhnm0 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


More < here >.

It's gratifying to see some consciousness-raising among vehemently pro-Zionist evangelicals but this is hardly an unknown issue.

There are Palestinian Christians? Yes, Virginia!

The Israeli army reportedly has the highest suicide rate in the world.
Posted by: Kristine on Aug. 14 2009,08:12

By the way, the film isn't going to compare the wall being constructed in Israel to the Aktion T4 Nazi plan or the Berlin Wall, is it?

We can partially thank Expelled for what's going on in health care town meetings. Nazis, Nazis, Nazis! Thanks, I'm the one who has to live with the consequences.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 14 2009,08:51

Quote (Lowell @ Aug. 13 2009,16:32)
First hint: Calling Kent Hovind "Dr." isn't doing yourself any favors. Have you read Hovind's "dissertation" as distributed by Patriot University? I have.[/quote]
My god that sounds awful. And boring. I wonder if that's what he's trying to drum up capital for < here on his blog >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He's Ixnayed that posts, along with the comment I out there.
Posted by: Lowell on Aug. 14 2009,11:05

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 14 2009,08:51)
Quote (Lowell @ Aug. 13 2009,16:32)
First hint: Calling
My god that sounds awful. And boring. I wonder if that's what he's trying to drum up capital for < here on his blog >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He's Ixnayed that posts, along with the comment I out there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha Ha! Maybe whoever's producing the Dr. Dino drama didn't like Kev's marketing technique. Or maybe Kev's just a doofus.
Posted by: Henry J on Aug. 14 2009,12:37

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 13 2009,17:20)
Quote (MichaelJ @ Aug. 13 2009,17:52)
I thought than Ham was the Aussie, Don't tell me that there are two from my shores.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crap. I confused them.


MIA KULPER
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought being confused was their normal state? :p
Posted by: carlsonjok on Aug. 14 2009,12:50

Quote (Lowell @ Aug. 14 2009,11:05)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 14 2009,08:51)
 
Quote (Lowell @ Aug. 13 2009,16:32)
First hint: Calling
My god that sounds awful. And boring. I wonder if that's what he's trying to drum up capital for < here on his blog >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He's Ixnayed that posts, along with the comment I out there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha Ha! Maybe whoever's producing the Dr. Dino drama didn't like Kev's marketing technique. Or maybe Kev's just a doofus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Uhh, Dude?  We expelled Kevin Eleven from his own blog because, otherwise, if the Kent Hovind movie gets made, the whole edifice of evolutionary hegemony will crumble down onto it's rotten foundation.

Maybe you should have been paying attention at last week's Evil Darwinist Conspiracy meeting rather than trying to sneak a peak up Arden's skirt.  The expelling was discussed right after the communal prayer to Richard Dawkins and before we passed around the decorating committee sign-up sheet for next month's Ebola Ball.




Posted by: MichaelJ on Aug. 14 2009,19:55

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 13 2009,18:20)
Quote (MichaelJ @ Aug. 13 2009,17:52)
I thought than Ham was the Aussie, Don't tell me that there are two from my shores.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crap. I confused them.


MIA KULPER
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


phew!
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 14 2009,19:59

MichaelJ, are you related to Henry J?
Posted by: MichaelJ on Aug. 14 2009,20:12

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 14 2009,19:59)
MichaelJ, are you related to Henry J?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


yes, but we don't like to talk about THAT side of the family, especially after the incident with the goat and Sister Virtue J
Posted by: J-Dog on Aug. 14 2009,21:25

Quote (MichaelJ @ Aug. 14 2009,20:12)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 14 2009,19:59)
MichaelJ, are you related to Henry J?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


yes, but we don't like to talk about THAT side of the family, especially after the incident with the goat and Sister Virtue J
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So, Henry J is related to Louis?
Posted by: Lou FCD on Aug. 15 2009,04:50

Quote (carlsonjok @ Aug. 14 2009,13:50)
Quote (Lowell @ Aug. 14 2009,11:05)
 
Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 14 2009,08:51)
 
Quote (Lowell @ Aug. 13 2009,16:32)
First hint: Calling
My god that sounds awful. And boring. I wonder if that's what he's trying to drum up capital for < here on his blog >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He's Ixnayed that posts, along with the comment I out there.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha Ha! Maybe whoever's producing the Dr. Dino drama didn't like Kev's marketing technique. Or maybe Kev's just a doofus.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Uhh, Dude?  We expelled Kevin Eleven from his own blog because, otherwise, if the Kent Hovind movie gets made, the whole edifice of evolutionary hegemony will crumble down onto it's rotten foundation.

Maybe you should have been paying attention at last week's Evil Darwinist Conspiracy meeting rather than trying to sneak a peak up Arden's skirt.  The expelling was discussed right after the communal prayer to Richard Dawkins and before we passed around the decorating committee sign-up sheet for next month's Ebola Ball.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Nominated by me.
Posted by: Henry J on Aug. 15 2009,12:00



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So, Henry J is related to Louis?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


We're talking biology here, not relativity. :p

Henry
Posted by: Richardthughes on Aug. 15 2009,19:45

PZ:

< http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng...._cr.php >
Posted by: AmandaHuginKiss on Aug. 15 2009,21:14

Kevin has turned up at PZ's blog with his feelings hurt that no-body bothered to talk to him first.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Aug. 16 2009,07:07

Kevin Miller upbraids PZ Myers:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Before you talk about me, pz, try talking to me. You're a scientist. Make sure you're working with all of the facts before you arrive at a conclusion. I'm very easy to find online.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



As the commenters noted, the last time PZ had cause to talk with Kevin, what Kevin provided were falsehoods and not facts.

So, Kevin, what "facts" are at issue? Did Resurrection Films lie when they told us that you were the scriptwriter for the Hovind flick? Or did they lie about what the topic of the film was that you wrote the screenplay for? Is there some other way that Resurrection Films lied to us about your involvement? You can tell us.
Posted by: carlsonjok on Aug. 16 2009,07:19

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 16 2009,07:07)
Kevin Miller upbraids PZ Myers:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Before you talk about me, pz, try talking to me. You're a scientist. Make sure you're working with all of the facts before you arrive at a conclusion. I'm very easy to find online.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



As the commenters noted, the last time PZ had cause to talk with Kevin, what Kevin provided were falsehoods and not facts.

So, Kevin, what "facts" are at issue? Did Resurrection Films lie when they told us that you were the scriptwriter for the Hovind flick? Or did they lie about what the topic of the film was that you wrote the screenplay for? Is there some other way that Resurrection Films lied to us about your involvement? You can tell us.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My bet is the Kevin Eleven's visit to PZ's place is a combination of the Casey Luskin patented nice Christian boy act* coupled with the old saw that there is no such thing as bad publicity. He isn't interested in dialogue. He is interested in the appearance of dialogue and will point to the ensuing rough-and-tumble at Pharyngula as proof how them evil atheists are intent on supressing the film.

And that, friends, is why it is so important that this film is made.  So, how much can I put you down for?

*Presumably as a Hollywood insider, Kevin Eleven will approach the role with an understatement that Casey, who makes Master Thespian seem subtle, could not achieve.
Posted by: Louis on Aug. 16 2009,08:40

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 16 2009,13:07)
Kevin Miller upbraids PZ Myers:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------

Before you talk about me, pz, try talking to me. You're a scientist. Make sure you're working with all of the facts before you arrive at a conclusion. I'm very easy to find online.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------



As the commenters noted, the last time PZ had cause to talk with Kevin, what Kevin provided were falsehoods and not facts.

So, Kevin, what "facts" are at issue? Did Resurrection Films lie when they told us that you were the scriptwriter for the Hovind flick? Or did they lie about what the topic of the film was that you wrote the screenplay for? Is there some other way that Resurrection Films lied to us about your involvement? You can tell us.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


He can? Perhaps so. I suspect he won't however.

Tragic really, I'd love to know what facts PZ got wrong.

Louis
Posted by: Kristine on Aug. 16 2009,08:52

Quote (AmandaHuginKiss @ Aug. 15 2009,21:14)
Kevin has turned up at PZ's blog with his feelings hurt that no-body bothered to talk to him first.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin, you have already taught people, including PZ, to look for the real truth behind your spin.

You teach people how to treat you by how you act.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Aug. 16 2009,12:40

It's all marketing. Being mocked at PZ's is good publicity.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Aug. 16 2009,16:28

I don't know why Kev-0 doesn't do Sternberg.

Now, there's a gripping yarn complete with intrigue, suspense, dusty corridors, halls of power, room to grow and a back door that's exit only, thank you very much.  Sternberg!  Who was expelled then not expelled.

Unless Kev-0's lined up Glenn Beck to play Hovind.  Then it's got to be a Chick flick.
Posted by: ERV on Aug. 17 2009,13:08



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
< Kevin Miller, *sigh* >-- Hate to break it to you, Erv, but in this case you may not be working with all of the relevant data. Feel free to verify your sources any time.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


First of all, I love it when Creationists say 'Erv'.  Its almost as good as when Deniers say 'Aids'.

Secondly, Kevins quite right.  I assumed he was a YEC for glorifying Hovind for an Evangelical film company.  There are alternatives.

1.  Kevin is a slut.  Doesnt believe any of it, will put his name on anything for $$$.
2.  Kevin is a mole.  Hes not really into airheaded po-mo TARD, hes just using that crap as a cover to gain Evangelicals trust to make fun of them.  < Like Edmondson. >  Hes throwing himself on a grenade to bring us glorious, glorious lulz, like EXPELLED and a Hovind mocumentary.
Posted by: J-Dog on Aug. 17 2009,19:33

If Kevin Eleven continues his assault on sanity, we should open him a litter-box of his very own that he can post on.

Working Title:  Humping For Hovind.
Posted by: rhmc on Aug. 18 2009,07:57

Quote (Doc Bill @ Aug. 16 2009,17:28)
...Then it's got to be a Chick flick.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


so you do know Jack.
Posted by: Kristine on Sep. 05 2009,11:54

So, now the whole expelling of PZ "never happened"? Some nutjob named Talitha00Cumi on You Tube has < informed me >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Amused Child, you're lying through your false teeth, bro. NO ONE was thrown out. Not PZ, not anyone!

Do you need to lie to get attention? Were? you neglected as a child and now crave any sort of attention you can get?

PZ was one of the childish, irresponsible ones, and he was warned that he'd be throw out if he didn't behave, but he was never thrown out.

Stop lying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This creature seems to be confusing the visit to the Creation Museum with the preview of "Expelled" - except that this person has been corrected several times!
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Sep. 05 2009,13:00

Quote (Kristine @ Sep. 05 2009,18:54)
So, now the whole expelling of PZ "never happened"? Some nutjob named Talitha00Cumi on You Tube has < informed me >:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Amused Child, you're lying through your false teeth, bro. NO ONE was thrown out. Not PZ, not anyone!

Do you need to lie to get attention? Were? you neglected as a child and now crave any sort of attention you can get?

PZ was one of the childish, irresponsible ones, and he was warned that he'd be throw out if he didn't behave, but he was never thrown out.

Stop lying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This creature seems to be confusing the visit to the Creation Museum with the preview of "Expelled" - except that this person has been corrected several times!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sweet dancing Jehova! What a douche!

Go get her, Kristine!
Posted by: Kristine on Sep. 05 2009,15:54

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ Sep. 05 2009,13:00)
Quote (Kristine @ Sep. 05 2009,18:54)
So, now the whole expelling of PZ "never happened"? Some nutjob named Talitha00Cumi on You Tube has < informed me >:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Amused Child, you're lying through your false teeth, bro. NO ONE was thrown out. Not PZ, not anyone!

Do you need to lie to get attention? Were? you neglected as a child and now crave any sort of attention you can get?

PZ was one of the childish, irresponsible ones, and he was warned that he'd be throw out if he didn't behave, but he was never thrown out.

Stop lying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This creature seems to be confusing the visit to the Creation Museum with the preview of "Expelled" - except that this person has been corrected several times!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sweet dancing Jehova! What a douche!

Go get her, Kristine!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Here's what the creature said back in < June of 2008 >:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
talitha00cumi
June 16th, 2008, 11:17 AM
wow. Funny. The guy must be a total jerk and was expected to disrupt the film. Dickie Dawkins can be a total jerk, but he's dignified enough to keep silent during a film, I'm sure.

Did anyone find out why the guy wasn't allowed in? Or are you all just guessing based on... knee-jerk reactions and empty heads?

Just a lil question.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Awfully nice to have it both ways.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Sep. 13 2009,10:33

Darwin Expelled from U.S.

< http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news....ca.html >
Posted by: Aardvark on Sep. 13 2009,13:11

Quote (midwifetoad @ Sep. 13 2009,10:33)
Darwin Expelled from U.S.

< http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news....ca.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




I was thinking exactly the same thing when I read that article.
Posted by: Advocatus Diaboli on Oct. 09 2009,13:52

Oh noes! < ID expelled again! > Constination and uproar!

But would you guess, it's < another foot-bullet from Disco: >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Avi Davis said the cancellation had nothing to do with contract issues, but rather a press release touting the film issued a few days ago by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based "intelligent design" think tank.

The institute's release announced that some of its fellows were featured in the film to be screened at a location they described as the "Smithsonian Institution's west coast affiliate."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on Oct. 09 2009,14:18

Quote (Advocatus Diaboli @ Oct. 09 2009,13:52)
Oh noes! < ID expelled again! > Constination and uproar!

But would you guess, it's < another foot-bullet from Disco: >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Avi Davis said the cancellation had nothing to do with contract issues, but rather a press release touting the film issued a few days ago by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based "intelligent design" think tank.

The institute's release announced that some of its fellows were featured in the film to be screened at a location they described as the "Smithsonian Institution's west coast affiliate."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If the D I actually invited feedback, I would remind them that the venue was just not right for the showing of their new ID comedy...
Posted by: Lowell on Oct. 09 2009,14:43

Quote (Advocatus Diaboli @ Oct. 09 2009,13:52)
Oh noes! < ID expelled again! > Constination and uproar!

But would you guess, it's < another foot-bullet from Disco: >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Avi Davis said the cancellation had nothing to do with contract issues, but rather a press release touting the film issued a few days ago by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based "intelligent design" think tank.

The institute's release announced that some of its fellows were featured in the film to be screened at a location they described as the "Smithsonian Institution's west coast affiliate."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The comments there are good, too. A few "design proponents" showed up and got their asses handed to them by some regular posters who seem pretty familiar with the ID dog-and-pony show.
Posted by: Ptaylor on Oct. 23 2009,02:05

I may be late to the party on this one, but I have noticed there is no mention of Expelled on Stein's site's < filmography > page any more, and no direct mention anywhere else on the site that I can find. Has Ben expelled Expelled?
(Or is this old news?)
Edited: Dang - see J-Dog's comment below. Looks like I had fooled myself into thinking that Stein had developed - if not remorse, or conscience -  maybe shame or some sort of guilt about the travesty that is Expelled. No such luck, I guess.
Posted by: J-Dog on Oct. 23 2009,10:34

Quote (Ptaylor @ Oct. 23 2009,02:05)
I may be late to the party on this one, but I have noticed there is no mention of Expelled on Stein's site's < filmography > page any more, and no direct mention anywhere else on the site that I can find. Has Ben expelled Expelled?
(Or is this old news?)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Jeez... I hate like hell to stick up for Stein, but your link says it was last updated in 2/07... before the release of the Blockbuster Smash Christian Church Basement Hit, Expelled.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Oct. 26 2009,15:55

At last, Stein has finally found a < worthwhile cause! >
Posted by: carlsonjok on Oct. 26 2009,16:03

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ Oct. 26 2009,15:55)
At last, Stein has finally found a < worthwhile cause! >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, it is a natural fit for Ben. Puppy mills are the logical consequence of Darwinism unrestrained by a objective moral code.  Just like Nazism, Communism, and Hyper-capitalism.




Posted by: Richardthughes on Oct. 26 2009,16:41

SEX SMELLED: CARSLON GOT PLOUGHED.

:)

ETA: PotW.

EETA: PotW this jeneyus, not horsebotherer's rubbish aboves!
Posted by: Amadan on Nov. 03 2009,08:07

Somehow, < this report > in today's NY Times didn't include a comment from their erstwhile star columnist who, you may recall, has some expertise in this area.

Just one of those random glitches, I'm sure.
Posted by: J-Dog on Nov. 03 2009,08:30

Quote (Amadan @ Nov. 03 2009,08:07)
Somehow, < this report > in today's NY Times didn't include a comment from their erstwhile star columnist who, you may recall, has some expertise in this area.

Just one of those random glitches, I'm sure.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


In another intetresting conincidence, the business motto of both freecreditreport.com and ID are exactly the same - "there's a sucker born every minute".  I have to give ID credit for evolving building on it though - they added "Buy My Book" all on their own.
Posted by: ppb on Nov. 05 2009,10:10

I just went to Amazon and ordered some batteries for a cordless drill.  When I completed the order, on the left-hand side of the page were some "Recommendations Based on Your Order."  

They were as follows:

    1) Hitachi WH12DAF2 12-Volt Ni-Cad Cordless Impact Driver
    2) Hitachi UB12D Torch 9.6-Volt to 12-Volt Pivoting Head Flashlight
    3) DVD "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", staring Ben Stein and Richard Dawkins.

Makes perfect sense to me.  :p
Posted by: Amadan on Nov. 05 2009,17:05

But ID isn't a mechanistic theory! Why would they need tools?

Aaaaaahhh. I seeeeee. It's the Hitachi WH12DAF2. That's the one you can use for wingnuts.
Posted by: Robert Byers on Nov. 05 2009,22:50

First time biblical creationist here. i haven't seen the movie but its success has been so great one must expect more to come. Hopefully  big budget YEC ones.
This movie has caused more talk and fear then anyone expected. it shows how evolution is not founded on the merits but on establishment consent. like any other idea that has been discovered to be without legs.
young men of ambition will be taking on evolution more and more now I predict.
I wish movies were not important as they come from unrepresentive demagraphics. however it seems they are a quick way to large numbers of people.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Nov. 05 2009,22:56

Quote (Robert Byers @ Nov. 05 2009,23:50)
First time biblical creationist here. i haven't seen the movie but its success has been so great one must expect more to come. Hopefully  big budget YEC ones.
This movie has caused more talk and fear then anyone expected. it shows how evolution is not founded on the merits but on establishment consent. like any other idea that has been discovered to be without legs.
young men of ambition will be taking on evolution more and more now I predict.
I wish movies were not important as they come from unrepresentive demagraphics. however it seems they are a quick way to large numbers of people.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have, and your uninformed characterizations are about as laughable and bizarre as the documentary movie character assassination propaganda film piece of crap itself.
Posted by: Jasper on Nov. 05 2009,23:09

Robert-

It appears that you left out a verb in your last sentence.  Let me fix it for you:

 
Quote (Robert Byers @ Nov. 05 2009,23:50)
This movie has caused more talk and fear then anyone expected. it shows how evolution is not founded on the merits but on establishment consent. like any other idea that has been discovered to be without legs.
young men of ambition will be taking on evolution more and more now I predict.
I wish movies were not important as they come from unrepresentive demagraphics. however it seems they are a quick way to ...misinform... large numbers of people.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: didymos on Nov. 05 2009,23:42

Quote (Robert Byers @ Nov. 05 2009,20:50)
young men of ambition will be taking on evolution more and more now I predict.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's a very telling word choice.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Nov. 24 2009,00:45

This goes back a few months, but I just found it within the last hour.

Written by: Brad Watkins on Feb 2, 2009 4:03 PM EST

For the past few days I have been in contact with Mr. Richard Mullens a school teacher in Brookeland Tx. Brookeland Tx, is an incredibly "Conservative" area of Texas, and only 16 miles up the road from Jasper Tx. the scene of several incidents of racial violence and murder. Mullens has been the victim of a smear campaign and a slew of unethical practices, based solely on his religious and political beliefs.

Now here is some real "Expelled," and not the DI, Ben Stein bull shit.

< read the rest here. >
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Nov. 24 2009,02:48

Texas, the other 1930s Alabama.

At least, it will be a mercy when the state goes down the sink and is forced into cessession by the more "sane" states...
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Nov. 24 2009,03:09

Found this in the comments od Dr. GH's link:

< http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3164811&page=1 >

Seems like Oklahoma is the 1930s... Oklahoma...
Posted by: midwifetoad on Dec. 08 2009,13:04

Believers expelled in Nigeria.

< http://www.centerforinquiry.net/newsroo....ng_turn >
Posted by: fnxtr on Dec. 08 2009,15:39

Quote (J-Dog @ Oct. 23 2009,10:34)
 
Quote (Ptaylor @ Oct. 23 2009,02:05)
I may be late to the party on this one, but I have noticed there is no mention of Expelled on Stein's site's < filmography > page any more, and no direct mention anywhere else on the site that I can find. Has Ben expelled Expelled?
(Or is this old news?)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Jeez... I hate like hell to stick up for Stein, but your link says it was last updated in 2/07... before the release of the Blockbuster Smash Christian Church Basement Hit, Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Expelled" is in our local Superstore bargain bin for CDN$5.99 (that's about 30 cents US), next to "Blood Diamond" and "Burning Yule Log 2 Hour CD".
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Dec. 08 2009,15:58

Quote (fnxtr @ Dec. 08 2009,21:39)
Quote (J-Dog @ Oct. 23 2009,10:34)
   
Quote (Ptaylor @ Oct. 23 2009,02:05)
I may be late to the party on this one, but I have noticed there is no mention of Expelled on Stein's site's < filmography > page any more, and no direct mention anywhere else on the site that I can find. Has Ben expelled Expelled?
(Or is this old news?)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Jeez... I hate like hell to stick up for Stein, but your link says it was last updated in 2/07... before the release of the Blockbuster Smash Christian Church Basement Hit, Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Expelled" is in our local Superstore bargain bin for CDN$5.99 (that's about 30 cents US), next to "Blood Diamond" and "Burning Yule Log 2 Hour CD".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Somebody here saw it for 2.99...

BTW, Blood Diamond is good.
Posted by: fnxtr on Dec. 08 2009,18:06

Somehow I think the burning Yule log would have more educational content.
Posted by: fnxtr on Dec. 08 2009,19:38

One might almost say more information.
Posted by: BopDiddy on Dec. 13 2009,23:01


Posted by: Richardthughes on Sep. 17 2010,16:30

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....on.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That's right, I'm working with Kirk Cameron...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: MichaelJ on Sep. 17 2010,17:40

Quote (Richardthughes @ Sep. 18 2010,07:30)
< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....on.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That's right, I'm working with Kirk Cameron...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought that he wasn't a YEC. Doesn't matter honesty wasn't one of Kevin Miller's strong suites.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Sep. 17 2010,19:17

Quote (MichaelJ @ Sep. 17 2010,18:40)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Sep. 18 2010,07:30)
< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....on.html >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
That's right, I'm working with Kirk Cameron...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought that he wasn't a YEC. Doesn't matter honesty wasn't one of Kevin Miller's strong suites.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So what do you get when you cross Kevin Miller, Liar for Jesus, and Kirk Cameron, Moron for Jesus?

< "Christian Nation" Revisionism >, apparently.

and oh, < there's a poll >...

Not that they won't lie about the results anyway, but...



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Do you want to see this movie in theaters? Then we need you to let the studios know:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I voted NO.

P.S. Kirk has this to say:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Just the other day, one of my friends was arrested on Hollywood Boulevard for talking to people about the Bible—that’s right, the same Good Book upon which our Forefathers built this country. What’s going on?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Hey, Kevin? Why don't you sidle up to your banana-brained buddy and ask him to identify this "friend" of his that was arrested? I'd like to know.

As of now, I'm saying he's a lying douchebag, as indicated by his other bullshit story regarding the founding of the country.


Posted by: Doc Bill on Sep. 17 2010,21:32

Ha, Kevin Zero Eleven and honesty.

Remember how long it took him to admit that Sternberg wasn't actually expelled?  Like, duh, dude!  It's a freaking public record!

It must really suck deriving all your revenue from christian morons.  And, they're cheap bastards to boot!  Double suck, eh, Kev!

(p.s. Kev, sympathy factor less than zero.)
Posted by: Ptaylor on Sep. 18 2010,03:25

(Just while this thread has resurfaced):
As some of you know, I sit in a corner of the South Pacific quite far removed - geographically, politically and socially - from the influence of Ben Stein and Expelled. The DVD isn't available in stores here and as far as I know any cinematic showings have been confined to a few by evangelical church groups (yes, we do have some of those). So my knowledge of Expelled and involvement in discussions about it have been mostly limited to the Internet.

A few months ago this changed a little. Two long-time friends from the Seattle area finally lived up to a years-old promise to visit New Zealand and catch up with me. While I hadn't seen either of them for some years, I had become aware that one of my friends - I'll call him David King - has been leaning more and more to the right of the American political spectrum. Sure enough, within an hour of picking up Dave and his charming wife from the airport he told me how America is being purposefully driven to ruin by Obama and the other 'crooks' in the Democrat administration (he asked me whether there had been a noticeable increase in the number of Americans emigrating to this country since the 2008 election, which gave me a chuckle).

The conversation moved away from from politics and somehow it led to Dave mentioning Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which we have both read and enjoyed. This in turn led to me recounting an anecdote involving a statue of Charles Darwin and some backstabbing antics that one of Darwin's contemporaries got up to. At this point Dave became somewhat more serious and told me that academic misconduct, in the form of oppression of those that question dogmatic areas of science, is a real problem in America. Ben Stein had put together a fantastic new film about it called Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed - which he recommended. My reaction? I was two hours into a three day beach vacation with two friends I hadn't seen for several years, and I was very aware that tempers could flare. I simply said "Yes, I am aware of it" and changed the subject*.

However, I remained dumbfounded. Dave is not a religious guy, although I believe his parents are fundamentalist Christians. He does seem to have a penchant for falling for wingnutty conspiracy theories (damn - I forgot to find out whether he's a birfer - it wouldn't have surprised me), and it has got me wondering: Have others here found Expelled has had an influence on people they know who are not overtly religious?

*I was able to take him to task about his wingnuttery in a good natured way over many beers a couple of nights later so I don't feel totally emasculated about avoiding the subject.
Posted by: Amadan on Sep. 18 2010,04:45

It's the old cliché about the Cock-Up versus Conspiracy schools of history & politics. Regardless of religion etc there is always a temptation to reach for a Blame Button, preferably the one furthest away from you. I also think it appeals to our Curious George facility pattern-recognition: we want there to be A Solution because Shit Happens is just not satisfying.
Posted by: dvunkannon on Sep. 18 2010,07:36

Quote (Amadan @ Sep. 18 2010,05:45)
It's the old cliché about the Cock-Up versus Conspiracy schools of history & politics. Regardless of religion etc there is always a temptation to reach for a Blame Button, preferably the one furthest away from you. I also think it appeals to our Curious George facility pattern-recognition: we want there to be A Solution because Shit Happens is just not satisfying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm dealing with a variation of this right now.

I discovered that my new brother-in-law was a truther over the summer, and recently had a long exchange of e-mails about the collapse of Building 7. We discussed the roots of the conspiracy theory - the idea that some part of the American government was perfectly willing to kill thousands of innocent Americans on American soil in order to gain the political suport it needed to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I told him this was absurd and ranked with the theory that Roosevelt intentionally allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked in order to bring the US into WW2.

His response was that he didn't know anything about Roosevelt or Pearl Harbor, since he had grown up in Communist Czechoslovakia. But from that experience he did know that it was perfectly reasonable to assume that any government could and would attack its own people to obtain and retain power.

ps - It is alos clear that the fall of communism left a serious woo vacuum in that part of the world that has been filled, not by rationality, but by a radiation of new woo species into virgin territory.
Posted by: dvunkannon on Sep. 18 2010,08:07

I joined Dr GH in leaving Keveleven a response on his blog.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------

No footage shot in West Africa of people being kidnapped? You're missing a big part of the values of our Founding Fathers...

Oligarchy, racism, slavery, and religious intolerance - yeah, we need to get back to these things!

I am looking forward to your coverage of B. Franklin and the Hellfire Club, it should be ...smokin... That was a guy who was always willing to show you the Benjamin.


ps - I didn't see any bananas in the videos. Perhaps you could work in United Fruit and Nicaragua so that Kirk could hold one for a while.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on Sep. 18 2010,08:14

Quote (dvunkannon @ Sep. 18 2010,08:36)
Quote (Amadan @ Sep. 18 2010,05:45)
It's the old cliché about the Cock-Up versus Conspiracy schools of history & politics. Regardless of religion etc there is always a temptation to reach for a Blame Button, preferably the one furthest away from you. I also think it appeals to our Curious George facility pattern-recognition: we want there to be A Solution because Shit Happens is just not satisfying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm dealing with a variation of this right now.

I discovered that my new brother-in-law was a truther over the summer, and recently had a long exchange of e-mails about the collapse of Building 7. We discussed the roots of the conspiracy theory - the idea that some part of the American government was perfectly willing to kill thousands of innocent Americans on American soil in order to gain the political suport it needed to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I told him this was absurd and ranked with the theory that Roosevelt intentionally allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked in order to bring the US into WW2.

His response was that he didn't know anything about Roosevelt or Pearl Harbor, since he had grown up in Communist Czechoslovakia. But from that experience he did know that it was perfectly reasonable to assume that any government could and would attack its own people to obtain and retain power.

ps - It is alos clear that the fall of communism left a serious woo vacuum in that part of the world that has been filled, not by rationality, but by a radiation of new woo species into virgin territory.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


My issue with the troofers isn't with the willingness, or the evilness of the administration at the time. I'm perfectly comfortable with those suppositions.

My issue is with the competence required.
Posted by: Henry J on Sep. 20 2010,11:59

Competence? Wait, you want conspirators to be competent?  :O
Posted by: midwifetoad on Oct. 11 2010,22:12

< http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1516009/ >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Some lies just have to be told.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: MichaelJ on Oct. 12 2010,02:31

Quote (midwifetoad @ Oct. 12 2010,13:12)
< http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1516009/ >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Some lies just have to be told.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's got me curious. In this movie who is doing the lying? I couldn't quite tell and the production company has done some Christian movies. Not that Christian necessarily means Creationist.
Posted by: MichaelJ on Oct. 12 2010,02:35

Sorry just did a bit more googling and it is a creationist movie
Posted by: midwifetoad on Oct. 12 2010,08:43

These folks do have a way with tag lines.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Oct. 12 2010,23:24

Well, their "Evolution of Man" poster is bull shit.

Slide 17 of 31
< http://www.imdb.com/media/rm118459648/tt1516009 >

"Nebraska Man" never figured in any way in the Scopes trial, nor made it into text books.
Posted by: Henry J on Oct. 13 2010,09:52

Yeah, here's a better one.


Posted by: Robin on Oct. 13 2010,10:11

Quote (Henry J @ Oct. 13 2010,09:52)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Yeah, here's a better one.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Shouldn't the guy at the computer be a bit more flabby?
Posted by: Amadan on Oct. 13 2010,10:45

Also, you don't type when you're sitting nekkid at a computer.


Or so I'm told.
Posted by: rossum on Oct. 13 2010,15:11

Quote (Amadan @ Oct. 13 2010,10:45)
Also, you don't type when you're sitting nekkid at a computer.


Or so I'm told.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


They told you wrong.  You can type one handed.


Oh.  Erm... :O

rossum
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 22 2011,12:01

Anyone still read this thread? If so, you may be interested in this: < http://www.prlog.org/1138384....en.html >
Posted by: midwifetoad on Mar. 22 2011,12:07

My avatar still seems timely.
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 22 2011,12:37

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2011,12:01)
Anyone still read this thread? If so, you may be interested in this: < http://www.prlog.org/1138384....en.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


WTF?  What's next Kev - a stirring expose of Santa Claus?  Leprechauns?  Or maybe : Kevin Miller examines Vampires!  Are they real?  

Kevin - if you keep up this kind of hard-hitting investigative reporting, you will win up in hell.  AKA Faux News.  I hear that Mormon Boy From Hell Glenn Beck will be leaving soon, so there will be an opening for another raving maniac.  Do you have your chalkboard ready to go?
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Mar. 22 2011,12:37

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2011,18:01)
Anyone still read this thread? If so, you may be interested in this: < http://www.prlog.org/1138384....en.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
“Rather than endorse or exclude a particular position, I’m interested in talking to leading voices on all sides of the debate to discover how the various perspectives on hell developed and what our beliefs about hell reveal about God, the Bible and, ultimately, ourselves.”
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



So...

About 40 to 50 religious (christian, protestant, of course) "leading voices"...


...and yet another edited interview of Dawkins.

Yawn
Posted by: JohnW on Mar. 22 2011,12:51

Quote (J-Dog @ Mar. 22 2011,10:37)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2011,12:01)
Anyone still read this thread? If so, you may be interested in this: < http://www.prlog.org/1138384....en.html >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


WTF?  What's next Kev - a stirring expose of Santa Claus?  Leprechauns?  Or maybe : Kevin Miller examines Vampires!  Are they real?  

Kevin - if you keep up this kind of hard-hitting investigative reporting, you will win up in hell.  AKA Faux News.  I hear that Mormon Boy From Hell Glenn Beck will be leaving soon, so there will be an opening for another raving maniac.  Do you have your chalkboard ready to go?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's not a zero-sum game.  Fox News always has an opening for another raving maniac.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Mar. 22 2011,13:58



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Kevin Miller, best known for co-writing the controversial Ben Stein vehicle "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," takes on hell in an upcoming documentary that goes into production this summer.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



well now if that ain't "damning with faint praise" I've never seen the stuff.  bless your little old heart kevin.
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 22 2011,14:39

Oooh Oooh! Can I not see it! Please!

Louis
Posted by: J-Dog on Mar. 22 2011,14:40

Quote (JohnW @ Mar. 22 2011,12:51)
It's not a zero-sum game.  Fox News always has an opening for another raving maniac.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


FTW!!!!

Yes, unfortunately!
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2011,14:45

Speaking of kevin:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....ll.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So far, the hell debate has taken place primarily in books, seminaries and on the Internet. But Miller plans to bring the controversy to the big screen when he begins production on "Hellbound?" this summer.

“Rather than endorse or exclude a particular position, I’m interested in talking to leading voices on all sides of the debate to discover how the various perspectives on hell developed and what our beliefs about hell reveal about God, the Bible and, ultimately, ourselves.”


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



*Spoiler alert*

Qoutemining, Christians are right, non believers thought they were being interviewed for a different film.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Mar. 22 2011,15:22

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 22 2011,20:45)
Speaking of kevin:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....ll.html >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So far, the hell debate has taken place primarily in books, seminaries and on the Internet. But Miller plans to bring the controversy to the big screen when he begins production on "Hellbound?" this summer.

“Rather than endorse or exclude a particular position, I’m interested in talking to leading voices on all sides of the debate to discover how the various perspectives on hell developed and what our beliefs about hell reveal about God, the Bible and, ultimately, ourselves.”


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



*Spoiler alert*

Qoutemining, Christians are right, non believers thought they were being interviewed for a different film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Erm... read my post above, you dirty atheist copycat!

:p
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2011,15:23

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ Mar. 22 2011,15:22)
Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 22 2011,20:45)
Speaking of kevin:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....ll.html >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So far, the hell debate has taken place primarily in books, seminaries and on the Internet. But Miller plans to bring the controversy to the big screen when he begins production on "Hellbound?" this summer.

“Rather than endorse or exclude a particular position, I’m interested in talking to leading voices on all sides of the debate to discover how the various perspectives on hell developed and what our beliefs about hell reveal about God, the Bible and, ultimately, ourselves.”


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



*Spoiler alert*

Qoutemining, Christians are right, non believers thought they were being interviewed for a different film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Erm... read my post above, you dirty atheist copycat!

:p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Gah!

Great minds think alike / fools seldom differ.
Posted by: JohnW on Mar. 22 2011,15:37

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 22 2011,12:45)
Speaking of kevin:

< http://kevinwrites.typepad.com/otherwi....ll.html >

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
So far, the hell debate has taken place primarily in books, seminaries and on the Internet. But Miller plans to bring the controversy to the big screen when he begins production on "Hellbound?" this summer.

“Rather than endorse or exclude a particular position, I’m interested in talking to leading voices on all sides of the debate to discover how the various perspectives on hell developed and what our beliefs about hell reveal about God, the Bible and, ultimately, ourselves.”


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



*Spoiler alert*

Qoutemining, Christians are right, non believers thought they were being interviewed for a different film.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oooh, Rich, you've made the big time!  He wants to quotemine you!



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I assume you meant "Quotemining," Rich. Considering our lengthy correspondence re: Expelled, I'd like to interview you for this film. Where do you live?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< linky >
I wonder if they'll pull a PZ and ban you from the cinema church basement?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 22 2011,16:03

Looking for recommendations from you re: the best atheists and agnostics to interview for this film. For the record, this is not "Expelled II." I promise to play fair.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2011,16:11

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2011,16:03)
Looking for recommendations from you re: the best atheists and agnostics to interview for this film. For the record, this is not "Expelled II." I promise to play fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


just to add a bit of context, it's about 'hell'.

No schadenfreude David Mabus recomendations!
Posted by: snorkild on Mar. 22 2011,16:14

Why don't you ask Dawkins?

PS Is it the real Kevin Miller, or has one of you regulars stuck his hand up Millers' a** for the lulz?


Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2011,16:16

It's the real one. I can tell by the username.
Posted by: Ptaylor on Mar. 22 2011,16:23

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2011,09:03)
Looking for recommendations from you re: the best atheists and agnostics to interview for this film. For the record, this is not "Expelled II." I promise to play fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You already know them - Dawkins, Myers, Scott etc. Try Hitchens this time. And why not use a 'working title'? Say "Intersections: The crossroad of Religion and Science"
Posted by: JohnW on Mar. 22 2011,16:31

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2011,14:03)
Looking for recommendations from you re: the best atheists and agnostics to interview for this film. For the record, this is not "Expelled II." I promise to play fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, that's good enough for me, Mr Polanski.  Of course you can babysit.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2011,16:54

Well I've just talked to Vox Day / Theodore Beale ( controversial libertarian Christian Blogger) and he'd be up for an interview. Whilst I suspect I wont agree with anything he says, it'd probably make for good cinema.



Email him here:

voxday@gmail.com

Say Rich sent ya.
Posted by: Lou FCD on Mar. 22 2011,17:25

There's a guy over at Uncommon Descent who calls himself BA77. He's pretty representative of the other side. You should talk to him.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Mar. 22 2011,19:05

Hellbound?

Does it star Handbasket?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 22 2011,19:29

Kevin sent me an invite.
Posted by: Robin on Mar. 22 2011,19:44

[quote=kevinmillerxi,Mar. 22 2011,16:03][/quote]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Looking for recommendations from you re: the best atheists and agnostics to interview for this film. For the record, this is not "Expelled II." I promise to play fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Hell's bells...I'm pretty much a nobody (except in the world of ecological research and to some extent nephrology), but I'll sign up!

One condition though...I want you to get the rights from AC/DC to play Highway to Hell as my particular theme tune. You can play it lightly in the background when you're interviewing me.

Come to think of it, Hell's Bells wouldn't be such a bad theme tune either...
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 22 2011,19:50

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 22 2011,19:29)
Kevin sent me an invite.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmmm. He does know you're a Christian, right?
Posted by: Dr.GH on Mar. 22 2011,20:40

After watching "Expelled," there is no doubt in my mind that Kevvie will stop at nothing to distort science.

As he will not stray far from the creationist party line, I'm sure we will learn how Darwin was a racist, woman-hating atheist. A possible foretaste is from my review of a creatocrap book: < "Darwin's Demise." >


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Mar. 22 2011,21:04

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 22 2011,19:50)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Mar. 22 2011,19:29)
Kevin sent me an invite.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmmm. He does know you're a Christian, right?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think I told him. It's been a while.
Posted by: noncarborundum on Mar. 23 2011,00:39

Quote (Dr.GH @ Mar. 22 2011,20:40)
A possible foretaste is from my review of a creatocrap book: < "Darwin's Demise." >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Very nice, but that's a whole lotta words you got there.  The people who need to read it, won't.

I absolutely can't wrap my mind around this comment, from a 5-star review:
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
How did these two Male and Female a world apart ever find each other...How long did the Thumb live before a Toe evolved...much less the eye or ear.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Please help.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on Mar. 23 2011,03:34



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
For the record, this is not "Expelled II." I promise to play fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Mmmhhh... So you do admit you didn't play fair with Expelled.

Thanks for definitely clarifying that...
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 23 2011,07:10

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2011,22:03)
Looking for recommendations from you re: the best atheists and agnostics to interview for this film. For the record, this is not "Expelled II." I promise to play fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why is the image this comment from Kev conjures up that of a convicted rapist saying things like:

"No this rag does not smell of chloroform, just relax and breath deeply".

"You did not just see me putting rohypnol in your drink".

"No means yes, yes means anal".

"Just the tip baby".

And other such cheerful witticisms from the terminally disgusting.

I can't speak for the others, Kev, but I would not trust anyone who had anything to do with the production of "Expelled" any further than I would trust Gary Glitter with a bevy of 9 year old girls.

You're a bunch of oleaginous, intellectually bereft liars. Your assurance that "this time you're going to play nice" is a welter of horseshit. Any credit you had with the house, you squandered. You'll carry on producing your lies and we'll carry on eviscerating them (if and when we can be bothered). Until then your attempts at attention grabbing with cause only one thing: derisive laughter. Enjoy!

Don't get me wrong, there are serious folk like Wes here, but if you think a fucking website message board is a reasonable port of call for garnering names of the glitterati then I want to know where you are getting your top grade LSD. The dishonestly and vacuity of creationists and sundry drivellers like yourself never ceases to amaze me. If you'd even picked up ONE book you'd know what you claim to be oh-so-honestly-and-humbly-asking {choke, vomit}. Get thee gone, fool.

Louis

ETA: For the accomodationists and nice folk: I do not, and will not, play nice with proven liars. If that makes the odd grandmother clutch her pearls or reach for the smelling salts, that's a loss I can be comfortable with.
Posted by: Henry J on Mar. 23 2011,10:25



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
If that makes the odd grandmother [...]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What about the even grandmother?
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 23 2011,10:27

Yes, I do know you're a Christian, Wesley. That's one of the reasons why I'd like to talk to you.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2011,10:31

Fred Phelps

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps >

Would seem like an obvious choice. He's pretty keen on talking about hell in the public square. Embarrasing to Christianity, but good footage I'd think.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2011,10:33

Hey kevin - I can start (or maybe even you can start) a new thread on Hell if you want. Might be food for thought. Just credit AtBC after chief grip and best boy ;-)
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 23 2011,10:35

Louis: Can't say I've missed your penchant for unfettered character assassination. But whatever gets you out of bed in the morning...

As for trust, I'm willing to work out a deal with whomever I interview where they have access to the uncut interview so they can post their own version of events if they object to how they are portrayed in the film. Not that I have any interest in interviewing you, Louis. Just posting this for general consumption.

Also, the reason I put a shout-out here--in addition to approaching some individuals directly--is b/c I know there are people on this board who have rejected Christianity and (subsequently) hell (and all religion) outright. So I thought you folks would be in a good position to recommend some potential interview subjects of whom I may not be aware.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2011,10:41



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...I know there are people on this board who have rejected Christianity and (subsequently) hell (and all religion)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



You've hopefully done your research, but Jews don't have Hell, Muslims do, older religions did etc etc.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 23 2011,10:45

Yes, I realize that, Rich. Thanks.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Mar. 23 2011,10:52

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2011,11:35)
Louis: Can't say I've missed your penchant for unfettered character assassination. But whatever gets you out of bed in the morning...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


or sells movies, amirite?



the difference is, Louis does it for free based on observations, and you do it with selective editing for.... what?  Jesus?  Teh Glory?
Posted by: carlsonjok on Mar. 23 2011,11:00

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Mar. 23 2011,10:52)
 
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2011,11:35)
Louis: Can't say I've missed your penchant for unfettered character assassination. But whatever gets you out of bed in the morning...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


or sells movies, amirite?



the difference is, Louis does it for free based on observations, and you do it with selective editing for.... what?  Jesus?  Teh Glory?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




EDIT: Hopefully, the bandwidth bunnies are happy now.
Posted by: Amadan on Mar. 23 2011,11:04

It strikes me that any religion that needs a Fiery Pit of Doom is banking on its followers not having any sort of moral compass. People who think about morality do good because it is good, not because they need trainer wheels.

And what value does Hell have as an incentive to worship a god? A confession made under the threat of torture is not admissible in evidence - in civilised countries, at least. Perhaps things are different where Kevin comes from.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2011,11:25

Its the stick in the 'carrot and stick' of control. Funny how they forgot to mention it in the old testament, you'd think it would have been noteworthy.

As my old pal PTET posts:

Posted by: kevinmillerxi on Mar. 23 2011,11:39

Seems I'm not allowed to start a new thread, so go ahead, Richard.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Mar. 23 2011,11:48

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2011,12:39)
Seems I'm not allowed to start a new thread, so go ahead, Richard.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


DO IT NOW, RICHARD!


he tarded thus
Posted by: Quack on Mar. 23 2011,12:30

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 23 2011,10:41)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
...I know there are people on this board who have rejected Christianity and (subsequently) hell (and all religion)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



You've hopefully done your research, but Jews don't have Hell, Muslims do, older religions did etc etc.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Didn't the magi pack Angra Mainyu with the gifts when they went to worship baby Jesus? What a gift.
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 23 2011,13:40

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ Mar. 23 2011,16:52)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2011,11:35)
Louis: Can't say I've missed your penchant for unfettered character assassination. But whatever gets you out of bed in the morning...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


or sells movies, amirite?



the difference is, Louis does it for free based on observations, and you do it with selective editing for.... what?  Jesus?  Teh Glory?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thanks for your help, 'Ras.

{Tags}

1) Oh noes you am teh meen!

Rightyho, Kevin my lad. Character assassination gets me out of bed in the morning does it now? No, sweetie, that would be "doing scientific research", you know, a real job that contributes positively to human well being, as opposed to making dishonest propaganda movies and being a shill for evangelical liars. Mocking the inescapably dishonest like you is an occasionally pleasant fringe benefit.

Complaining about "character assassination" (especially since I said nothing that cannot be substantiated and has been already well demonstrated) from the unabashed maker of the "Teh Darwinists = Teh Nazis" movie? Dear Holy Banana of Antioch does that lovely bit of the bible that mentions motes and beams even mean anything to you? Gah! Your hypocrisy is so creeping I actually feel dirty. Irony is not your strong suit is it, sweetie?

2) Nanny nanny boo boo I won't intervoo yoo!

You don't want to interview me? OMIGAWRSH! In time, with appropriate counselling, I'll learn to live again.

Oh no, wait, I don't care. All better! My apparent lack of "profile" (whatever that is) is entirely deliberate and pleasing to me. And, Kev, I wouldn't say yes. My opinion about trivial, made up irrelevances (like hell) is...{drum roll}...irrelevant! Gosh, who knew? Please enjoy your pointless evangelical fantasy circle jerk without my participation...

...Unless you change your mind and want to fly to the UK to interview me. My fees are surprisingly steep I'm afraid. My integrity isn't for sale for some Cheetos and an handjob from someone wearing a Dembski sweater. Sorry if having a little more self respect than that offends your delicate little shilling sensibilities.

Wasn't there some fun with shell companies and alternate movie titles last time around? Why should anyone trust your word that you'll provide uncut interviews etc? Have you done that for the people you {cough} "selectively edited" in your last excrescence...sorry "movie"?

Res ipsa loquitor

Reflect on two senses of that phrase.

3) Hellz be scawy/sewious:

Speaking, again purely for myself, Kev, how can someone reject something they never believed in the first place? You fundageilical funsters really don't understand anything about intellectual integrity and curiosity do you? Oh my oh my.

Ah well, I have important stuff to do, so enough titting about with the terminally tiresome for now. Enjoy your hair!

Louis
Posted by: Cubist on Mar. 23 2011,14:16

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2011,10:35)
Louis: Can't say I've missed your penchant for unfettered character assassination. But whatever gets you out of bed in the morning...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I said it before, but it bears repeating:
Mr. Miller, your character wasn't assassinated; it committed suicide. All we've done is conduct the autopsy.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Mar. 23 2011,14:22



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
My integrity isn't for sale for some Cheetos and an handjob from someone wearing a Dembski sweater
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Playing hardball, eh? Well...




Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 23 2011,14:36

Why does this always happen right around my birthday?  ;)

Next time I'm going to send PZ the link to get Devo tickets. Apparently the guys, like evolution itself, are still touring. Maybe Kevin would make a documentary about that? (No, please don't! )

Speaking of which: we're coming up on the halfway point for Teh Death of Evolution, courtesy of Kill Bill Dembski.
Posted by: Texas Teach on Mar. 23 2011,18:14

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 23 2011,14:36)
Speaking of which: we're coming up on the halfway point for Teh Death of Evolution, courtesy of Kill Bill Dembski.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


We totally need a countdown clock here at AtBC so we can build up the proper anticipation for our imminent Waterloo.
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 23 2011,18:29

Quote (Richardthughes @ Mar. 23 2011,20:22)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
My integrity isn't for sale for some Cheetos and an handjob from someone wearing a Dembski sweater
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Playing hardball, eh? Well...




---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oooooh Monster Munch! Ok then...

Louis
Posted by: khan on Mar. 23 2011,20:26

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2011,17:03)
Looking for recommendations from you re: the best atheists and agnostics to interview for this film. For the record, this is not "Expelled II." I promise to play fair.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You mean you won't be an ignorant lying asshole THIS time?

I'd sooner trust the local raccoons.
Posted by: khan on Mar. 23 2011,20:31

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2011,11:35)
Louis: Can't say I've missed your penchant for unfettered character assassination. But whatever gets you out of bed in the morning...

As for trust, I'm willing to work out a deal with whomever I interview where they have access to the uncut interview so they can post their own version of events if they object to how they are portrayed in the film. Not that I have any interest in interviewing you, Louis. Just posting this for general consumption.

Also, the reason I put a shout-out here--in addition to approaching some individuals directly--is b/c I know there are people on this board who have rejected Christianity and (subsequently) hell (and all religion) outright. So I thought you folks would be in a good position to recommend some potential interview subjects of whom I may not be aware.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I rejected all you lying homophobic misogynistic turds more than 40 years ago.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on Mar. 23 2011,21:03

but let me guess:  jebus aint the frikkin null hypothesis.  let's face it, kevin's god has a hairy anus
Posted by: carlsonjok on Mar. 23 2011,21:13

Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Mar. 23 2011,21:03)
but let me guess:  jebus aint the frikkin null hypothesis.  let's face it, kevin's god has a hairy anus
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HA HA THIS IS YOU


Posted by: khan on Mar. 23 2011,21:15

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ Mar. 23 2011,22:03)
but let me guess:  jebus aint the frikkin null hypothesis.  let's face it, kevin's god has a hairy anus
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, if we are created in gods' hairy ass image...
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 24 2011,06:01

Quote (khan @ Mar. 24 2011,02:31)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 23 2011,11:35)
Louis: Can't say I've missed your penchant for unfettered character assassination. But whatever gets you out of bed in the morning...

As for trust, I'm willing to work out a deal with whomever I interview where they have access to the uncut interview so they can post their own version of events if they object to how they are portrayed in the film. Not that I have any interest in interviewing you, Louis. Just posting this for general consumption.

Also, the reason I put a shout-out here--in addition to approaching some individuals directly--is b/c I know there are people on this board who have rejected Christianity and (subsequently) hell (and all religion) outright. So I thought you folks would be in a good position to recommend some potential interview subjects of whom I may not be aware.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I rejected all you lying homophobic misogynistic turds more than 40 years ago.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


{Applause}

Well said!

Louis
Posted by: Louis on Mar. 24 2011,06:16

Hint for Kev:



From < Jesus and Mo >, which is typically hilarious.

Louis
Posted by: J-Dog on May 20 2011,08:23

Don't know if any of you caught this last night, but Jon Stewart absolutley blasts the stupidity that is Ben Stein.

ps:  SD - Don't watch the first part... Frenchmen Jokes par excellance!  His French name pronunciation - priceless:)

Also sorry about the ad at beginning, but whatever.

Worth it for the LOL's and the Stein Dismantling.

< Ben Stein Blasted by Jon Stewart >

added in edit:  I urge you Ben Stein to yes, eat the chocolate!
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on May 20 2011,09:05

Quote (J-Dog @ May 20 2011,14:23)
Don't know if any of you caught this last night, but Jon Stewart absolutley blasts the stupidity that is Ben Stein.

ps:  SD - Don't watch the first part... Frenchmen Jokes par excellance!  His French name pronunciation - priceless:)

Also sorry about the ad at beginning, but whatever.

Worth it for the LOL's and the Stein Dismantling.

< Ben Stein Blasted by Jon Stewart >

added in edit:  I urge you Ben Stein to yes, eat the chocolate!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll watch the whole thing, thank you very much (finaly fixed that firfox bug that wouldn't allow me to watch my fav news show).

I'm never bothered by Stewart's or Colbert's poking fun at ze French. No worries there, and sometimes they even get it right.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on May 20 2011,09:12

Ok, watched the full clip, bloody hilarious. Go Stewart!
Posted by: k.e.. on May 20 2011,09:15

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ May 20 2011,17:05)
Quote (J-Dog @ May 20 2011,14:23)
Don't know if any of you caught this last night, but Jon Stewart absolutley blasts the stupidity that is Ben Stein.

ps:  SD - Don't watch the first part... Frenchmen Jokes par excellance!  His French name pronunciation - priceless:)

Also sorry about the ad at beginning, but whatever.

Worth it for the LOL's and the Stein Dismantling.

< Ben Stein Blasted by Jon Stewart >

added in edit:  I urge you Ben Stein to yes, eat the chocolate!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll watch the whole thing, thank you very much (finaly fixed that firfox bug that wouldn't allow me to watch my fav news show).

I'm never bothered by Stewart's or Colbert's poking fun at ze French. No worries there, and sometimes they even get it right.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


After God made created the most beautiful country on Earth he had to even things up, he made teh French.
Posted by: Quack on May 20 2011,09:42

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ May 20 2011,09:12)
Ok, watched the full clip, bloody hilarious. Go Stewart!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dammit, have missed Jon Stewart for too long and have to find back to recording the Norwegian airing again; problem with my ears (treble loss) makes me rather dependent on text.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on May 20 2011,10:10

Quote (k.e.. @ May 20 2011,15:15)
Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ May 20 2011,17:05)
Quote (J-Dog @ May 20 2011,14:23)
Don't know if any of you caught this last night, but Jon Stewart absolutley blasts the stupidity that is Ben Stein.

ps:  SD - Don't watch the first part... Frenchmen Jokes par excellance!  His French name pronunciation - priceless:)

Also sorry about the ad at beginning, but whatever.

Worth it for the LOL's and the Stein Dismantling.

< Ben Stein Blasted by Jon Stewart >

added in edit:  I urge you Ben Stein to yes, eat the chocolate!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll watch the whole thing, thank you very much (finaly fixed that firfox bug that wouldn't allow me to watch my fav news show).

I'm never bothered by Stewart's or Colbert's poking fun at ze French. No worries there, and sometimes they even get it right.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


After God made created the most beautiful country on Earth he had to even things up, he made teh French.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Never truer words were ever said.
Posted by: Robin on May 20 2011,11:05

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ May 20 2011,10:10)
Quote (k.e.. @ May 20 2011,15:15)
 
Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ May 20 2011,17:05)
 
Quote (J-Dog @ May 20 2011,14:23)
Don't know if any of you caught this last night, but Jon Stewart absolutley blasts the stupidity that is Ben Stein.

ps:  SD - Don't watch the first part... Frenchmen Jokes par excellance!  His French name pronunciation - priceless:)

Also sorry about the ad at beginning, but whatever.

Worth it for the LOL's and the Stein Dismantling.

< Ben Stein Blasted by Jon Stewart >

added in edit:  I urge you Ben Stein to yes, eat the chocolate!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll watch the whole thing, thank you very much (finaly fixed that firfox bug that wouldn't allow me to watch my fav news show).

I'm never bothered by Stewart's or Colbert's poking fun at ze French. No worries there, and sometimes they even get it right.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


After God made created the most beautiful country on Earth he had to even things up, he made teh French.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Never truer words were ever said.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Funny stuff, but I can't help but counter with:

1: Started the production of sparkling wines; perfected in Champagne
2: Perfected brandy making in Cognac and Armagnac
3: Actually make real cheese (well...ok...so do the Italians, but still...)
4: Hello? Can you say Bordeaux & Bourgogne?
5: Pom frites. If you've had 'em,  'nuff said. And no...no one makes them in America.
6: The French Riviera, specifically Nice and Antibes
7: And...



I think I'm done here.
Posted by: KCdgw on May 20 2011,11:41



Also French. Just sayin'.
Posted by: dhogaza on May 20 2011,11:55



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Pom frites.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Fried Brits ???
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on May 20 2011,12:23

Quote (dhogaza @ May 20 2011,11:55)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Pom frites.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Fried Brits ???
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


no, that is French for Freedom Fries.
Posted by: Robin on May 20 2011,12:30

Quote (KCdgw @ May 20 2011,11:41)


Also French. Just sayin'.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I know, I know...there's also:



But seriously, how many pics of hot French women should I have posted to get the point across?
Posted by: OgreMkV on May 20 2011,12:39

Quote (Robin @ May 20 2011,12:30)
But seriously, how many pics of hot French women should I have posted to get the point across?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


As many as possible...

All of them...

How many pics do you have?

Seriously, what do you want?  An engraved invitation?
Posted by: Robin on May 20 2011,12:50

Quote (OgreMkV @ May 20 2011,12:39)
As many as possible...

All of them...

How many pics do you have?

Seriously, what do you want?  An engraved invitation?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Clara Morgane


Melissa Theuriau


Virginie Ledoyen


Sophie Marceau


Ok...that's gonna have to do for now. Far too distracting.

What was I doing again...?
Posted by: Woodbine on May 20 2011,13:05

Ahem....



Posted by: KCdgw on May 20 2011,13:18

Not to mention...

Audrey Tautou





and Ludivine Sagnier


Posted by: Robin on May 20 2011,13:20

Quote (Woodbine @ May 20 2011,13:05)
Ahem....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Ooo! Never heard of her.

Color me silly, but at this point I believe this has gotten waaaaaay off topic. Of course, I'd like to think I'm not enough of a degenerate to think this needs its own topic...

Besides, how much bandwidth would 8,732,458 million* pics take up?




* Approximate number of highly attractive French women given the current population of France (63 million, give or take) and adjusting for age, sex distribution, fudge factor**, and ex-pats living outside of France.


** Wild-assed guess
Posted by: Dale_Husband on May 20 2011,14:08

There are beautiful women all over the world!
Posted by: OgreMkV on May 20 2011,14:24

Quote (Dale_Husband @ May 20 2011,14:08)
There are beautiful women all over the world!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


obviously, you have never been to Louisiana
Posted by: dhogaza on May 20 2011,14:54



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
no, that is French for Freedom Fries.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And all these years I thought it was "pommes frites" (not "pom" as in "bloody pom").
Posted by: Richardthughes on May 20 2011,15:22


Posted by: Robin on May 20 2011,15:23

Quote (Dale_Husband @ May 20 2011,14:08)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
There are beautiful women all over the world!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Yes of course there are. The only reason I brought up French women (well, Carla Bruni Sarkozy to be specific) was to point out few high points of France that come to mind.
Posted by: Robin on May 20 2011,15:28

Quote (dhogaza @ May 20 2011,14:54)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
no, that is French for Freedom Fries.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



And all these years I thought it was "pommes frites" (not "pom" as in "bloody pom").
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



(sigh)...yeah...well...so me written Francaise is a bit rusty. Sue me.
Posted by: KCdgw on May 20 2011,15:37

Ok, all this French has me in a Tonio K mood:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
(mesdames et messieurs, bon soir. this is joan of arc. tonio has asked me to personally deliver a rather special message. he say he just cannot get enough of my 15th-century wisdom. he say he loves it when i talk with him like this. and after many a saturday night of doing < ze funky western civilization > together, i know for a fact he agrees with me when i say: Tu peux en maquer le boulanger et avoir ton pain. Tu peux te tirer de tous les coups, tous sauf un.*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



*you can bullshit the baker and get the buns
you can back out of every deal except one
Posted by: Sealawr on May 20 2011,18:35



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Clara Morgane


Melissa Theuriau


Virginie Ledoyen


Sophie Marceau


Ok...that's gonna have to do for now. Far too distracting.

What was I doing again...?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




Common Design, obviously.
Posted by: Sealawr on May 23 2011,00:04

On a more serious note, get a load of Ben Stein's latest misogynistic idiocy:

< http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/17/presumed-innocent-anyone# >
Posted by: J-Dog on May 23 2011,07:58

Quote (Sealawr @ May 23 2011,00:04)
On a more serious note, get a load of Ben Stein's latest misogynistic idiocy:

< http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/17/presumed-innocent-anyone# >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dude!  You missed it!  Go to a page earlier on this thread and click on the jon stewart takedown of Stein.
Posted by: fnxtr on May 23 2011,12:34

Quote (J-Dog @ May 23 2011,05:58)
Quote (Sealawr @ May 23 2011,00:04)
On a more serious note, get a load of Ben Stein's latest misogynistic idiocy:

< http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/17/presumed-innocent-anyone# >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Dude!  You missed it!  Go to a page earlier on this thread and click on the jon stewart takedown of Stein.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Grr. Redirected to Comedy Network in the Great White North, I get the commercials but Teh Show doesn't load. Grr.
Posted by: Sealawr on May 23 2011,13:26



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dude!  You missed it!  Go to a page earlier on this thread and click on the jon stewart takedown of Stein.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Dayum.  I did miss it.  I didn't realize Stewart was stomping on Stein's manhood for the Amercian Spectator article. The article itslef was so repellent, i just didn't connect the two.

As a famous man once said, "Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over gain, and you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember."  

Ben Stein
Posted by: Kristine on May 23 2011,15:15

Quote (Sealawr @ May 23 2011,13:26)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Dude!  You missed it!  Go to a page earlier on this thread and click on the jon stewart takedown of Stein.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Dayum.  I did miss it.  I didn't realize Stewart was stomping on Stein's manhood for the Amercian Spectator article. The article itslef was so repellent, i just didn't connect the two.

As a famous man once said, "Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over gain, and you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember."  

Ben Stein
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The man is getting < such a swelled head > that Felix Salmon has again reinstituted the Ben Stein Watch at his blog.
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Later this year, Stein is publishing “What Would Ben Stein Do: Applying the Wisdom of a Modern-Day Prophet to Tackle the Challenges of Work and Life“. Yes, he really does refer to himself as a “modern-day prophet”, probably on the strength of his farsighted views on things like the GM share price. It’s going to be fascinating to see what the book says about selling out all your stated beliefs if someone comes along with a big enough check. Or what to do if you follow a modern-day prophet who gives wildly contradictory advice to his acolytes.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm no longer going with the stroke hypothesis - now I think that this man is suffering from paranoiac schizophrenia.

He's going to be baptizing people with eye drops next.

ETA - < Oh, P.S. >, the Arab Spring "is closely related to..." wait for it...wait for it...

Adolph [sic] Hitler!  :p


Posted by: Kristine on May 23 2011,15:43

Oops. Stein himself recently < lost a gig due to sexist jokes >. (Actually, they are all older than the hills. Yawn.)
Posted by: Louis on May 23 2011,17:39

Next season's blockbuster: Ben Stein's Moral Limbo! How low can he go?

You heard it here first folks.

Louis
Posted by: Doc Bill on May 23 2011,18:58

Quote (Kristine @ May 23 2011,15:43)
Oops. Stein himself recently < lost a gig due to sexist jokes >. (Actually, they are all older than the hills. Yawn.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's what she said.
Posted by: Kristine on May 23 2011,19:40

Quote (Doc Bill @ May 23 2011,18:58)
Quote (Kristine @ May 23 2011,15:43)
Oops. Stein himself recently < lost a gig due to sexist jokes >. (Actually, they are all older than the hills. Yawn.)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's what she said.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, he did lost the gig! :)

Frankly, I think that the cowboy joke was not sexist, just old, and derogatory to the cowboy. I can see suburban men in South Dakota acting like that, not Montana cowboys.
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 06 2011,21:13

Premise Media gone bankrupt.  "Expelled" being auctioned.

Hey, Kevin Eleven, nice job!  You certainly wrote a classic, buddy!  You should buy your own film, then you could hawk it at Kraft Fayres around the midwest.  You and Stein could buy an old VW microbus, paint it orange, and earn Motel 6 points or something.  It's a living!

< Linky >
Posted by: fnxtr on June 06 2011,22:28

Quote (Doc Bill @ June 06 2011,19:13)
Premise Media gone bankrupt.  "Expelled" being auctioned.

Hey, Kevin Eleven, nice job!  You certainly wrote a classic, buddy!  You should buy your own film, then you could hawk it at Kraft Fayres around the midwest.  You and Stein could buy an old VW microbus, paint it orange, and earn Motel 6 points or something.  It's a living!

< Linky >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Perfect time for a MST3K reunion.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 06 2011,22:32

Quote (fnxtr @ June 06 2011,22:28)
Quote (Doc Bill @ June 06 2011,19:13)
Premise Media gone bankrupt.  "Expelled" being auctioned.

Hey, Kevin Eleven, nice job!  You certainly wrote a classic, buddy!  You should buy your own film, then you could hawk it at Kraft Fayres around the midwest.  You and Stein could buy an old VW microbus, paint it orange, and earn Motel 6 points or something.  It's a living!

< Linky >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Perfect time for a MST3K reunion.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, I was thinking exactly that sort of thing. How about if we get our part of the internet to chip in and buy the thing, then release a version online with various and sundry experts added in rebutting each erroneous claim as it is made?
Posted by: Seversky on June 06 2011,22:33

Quote (Doc Bill @ June 06 2011,21:13)
Premise Media gone bankrupt.  "Expelled" being auctioned.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ah, I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning (or any other time really).
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 06 2011,22:34

If nothing else, we could force the Discovery Institute or other deep-pockets peddler of religious antievolution to spend some of their bucks to keep it out of hostile hands. A win-win, I think.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 06 2011,22:36

Or perhaps even: "Expelled: The Special Farty Noises Edition"
Posted by: Henry J on June 06 2011,23:31

That sounds like it could be a gas!
Posted by: Amadan on June 07 2011,01:57

If they can make a musical called The Book of Mormon, we should do the same for Expurgated.



PS: Hasa disa Eebowai!
Posted by: Kristine on June 07 2011,08:43

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 06 2011,22:36)
Or perhaps even: "Expelled: The Special Farty Noises Edition"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No lie: Rev. Barky and I have been talking about a "Mystery Creation Science Theatre" project, in which we would riff on old Left Behind/creation science/etc. films from the 1950s-1970s, and some of the most grossly inaccurate "science" documentaries.

The silhouettes in front of the screen would be either Rev. Barky or I, sitting with our two cats.

I'm not kidding. We think it would be a cable-access hit! :)
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 07 2011,09:32

Quote (Kristine @ June 07 2011,08:43)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 06 2011,22:36)
Or perhaps even: "Expelled: The Special Farty Noises Edition"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No lie: Rev. Barky and I have been talking about a "Mystery Creation Science Theatre" project, in which we would riff on old Left Behind/creation science/etc. films from the 1950s-1970s, and some of the most grossly inaccurate "science" documentaries.

The silhouettes in front of the screen would be either Rev. Barky or I, sitting with our two cats.

I'm not kidding. We think it would be a cable-access hit! :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd watch that. I'd even pay some $$ too!
Posted by: Robin on June 07 2011,09:35

My only thought on this is, given how popular and profitable this movie apparently was for Premise Media, is there really any incentive to own it, nevermind reissue it? I mean seriously, did even 10,000 "Christians" see it? Why in the world would they see it again with factual edits?

ETA: Ok...I looked it up on Box Office Mojo and it did make almost $8 million domestically and ended up 17th on the all time grossing documentary film list. Still...
Posted by: Kristine on June 07 2011,09:48

Quote (Robin @ June 07 2011,09:35)
My only thought on this is, given how popular and profitable this movie apparently was for Premise Media, is there really any incentive to own it, nevermind reissue it? I mean seriously, did even 10,000 "Christians" see it? Why in the world would they see it again with factual edits?

ETA: Ok...I looked it up on Box Office Mojo and it did make almost $8 million domestically and ended up 17th on the all time grossing documentary film list. Still...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Frankly, I think that a legitimate scientific entity should acquire it and shelve it.
Posted by: csadams on June 07 2011,10:08

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 06 2011,22:34)
If nothing else, we could force the Discovery Institute or other deep-pockets peddler of religious antievolution to spend some of their bucks to keep it out of hostile hands. A win-win, I think.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let's do it.  How can I help?
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 07 2011,10:14

Quote (csadams @ June 07 2011,10:08)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 06 2011,22:34)
If nothing else, we could force the Discovery Institute or other deep-pockets peddler of religious antievolution to spend some of their bucks to keep it out of hostile hands. A win-win, I think.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let's do it.  How can I help?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It will presumably go for at least tens of thousands.
Posted by: Kristine on June 07 2011,10:33

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 07 2011,10:14)
 
Quote (csadams @ June 07 2011,10:08)
   
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 06 2011,22:34)
If nothing else, we could force the Discovery Institute or other deep-pockets peddler of religious antievolution to spend some of their bucks to keep it out of hostile hands. A win-win, I think.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let's do it.  How can I help?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It will presumably go for at least tens of thousands.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
All rights of every kind and nature (including, without limitation, copyrights) in and to any literary, musical, dramatic or other literary material of any kind or nature upon which, in whole or in part, the Picture is or may be based, or from which it is or may be adapted or inspired or which may be or has been used or included in the Picture, including, without limitation, the Screenplay, the characters and all other scripts, scenarios, screenplays, bibles, stories, treatments, novels, outlines, books, titles, concepts, manuscripts or other properties or materials of any kind or nature, in whatever state of completion and all drafts, versions and variations thereof (all of the foregoing herein collectively referred to as the "Literary Property");

(ii) All physical properties of every kind or nature of or relating to the Picture and all versions thereof, to the extent now or hereafter in existence, including, without limitation, exposed film, developed film, positives, negatives, prints, answer prints, special effects, pre-print materials (including interpositives, negatives, duplicate negatives, internegatives, color reversals, intermediates, lavenders, fine grain master prints and matrices, and all other forms of pre-print elements which may be necessary or useful to produce prints or other copies or additional preprint elements, whether now known or hereafter devised), soundtracks, recordings, audio and video tapes and discs of all types and gauges, cutouts, trims and any and all other physical properties of every kind and nature relating to the Picture in whatever state of completion, and all duplicates, drafts, versions, variations and copies of each thereof (all of the foregoing herein collectively referred to as the "Physical Property
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



This is an archivist's dream. This is a treasure trove. It would include all their documentation regarding their little tricks regarding "Crossroads," as well as whatever cutting-room floor footage, e-mails, storyboards, etc. that they have.

I would argue that this is worth a scientific entity shelling out $$ for.

It most certainly also demonstrates how these grifters are for sale, and not about sharing "scientific knowledge" with the public. Man, this is also another article for me to write. "Expelled"'s second coming will rival its first!

ETA - "with," not "to" the public


Posted by: Richardthughes on June 07 2011,10:34

Let's not give them a martyr.
Posted by: Kristine on June 07 2011,10:36

How would we give them a martyr? If we get a hold of their memos and background documentation, it will be another Wedge Document moment.
Posted by: csadams on June 07 2011,10:39

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 07 2011,10:14)
Quote (csadams @ June 07 2011,10:08)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 06 2011,22:34)
If nothing else, we could force the Discovery Institute or other deep-pockets peddler of religious antievolution to spend some of their bucks to keep it out of hostile hands. A win-win, I think.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let's do it.  How can I help?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It will presumably go for at least tens of thousands.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


So we need thousands of tens.  Or twenties.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on June 07 2011,10:48

Why not ask the NCSE to join in? That would be interesting...
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 07 2011,10:58

Quote (Kristine @ June 07 2011,10:36)
How would we give them a martyr? If we get a hold of their memos and background documentation, it will be another Wedge Document moment.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*puts creationist cap on*

THE DARWINIST ESTABLISHEMENT WAS SO KEEN TO SILENCE AND EXPUNGE OUR JOURNALISTRIC INVESTIGATION INTO THE CURROPTION OF SCIENCE THAT THEY HAD TO BUY THE RIGHTS TO IT TO ENSURE IN WOULD NEVER AGAIN SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY....

It's already died the death of scientific ridicule and public indifference. It's a PR war - never lose sight of that. We've won this battle, why re-open it and give them new weapons?
Posted by: JohnW on June 07 2011,11:09

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 07 2011,08:58)
Quote (Kristine @ June 07 2011,10:36)
How would we give them a martyr? If we get a hold of their memos and background documentation, it will be another Wedge Document moment.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*puts creationist cap on*

THE DARWINIST ESTABLISHEMENT WAS SO KEEN TO SILENCE AND EXPUNGE OUR JOURNALISTRIC INVESTIGATION INTO THE CURROPTION OF SCIENCE THAT THEY HAD TO BUY THE RIGHTS TO IT TO ENSURE IN WOULD NEVER AGAIN SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY....

It's already died the death of scientific ridicule and public indifference. It's a PR war - never lose sight of that. We've won this battle, why re-open it and give them new weapons?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But that argument only holds if we buy everything up and lock it away.  If we buy everything up and release it, dirty tricks and all...

Kristine's right.  This is Wedge Document II.
Posted by: csadams on June 07 2011,11:20

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 07 2011,10:58)
It's already died the death of scientific ridicule and public indifference. It's a PR war - never lose sight of that. We've won this battle, why re-open it and give them new weapons?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's still viewed by creos as a major weapon; a creo recommended it to me just a few months ago.  

I'd *love* to see it < MST3K'd > with no copyright concerns and distributed widely on DVD s - for free would be even better.  The anti-evo, anti-climate change, anti-science folks provide well-produced freebies* to science teachers.  Pro-science should be doing the same or more.

It is about PR.  This is a chance for pro-science folks to set the record straight about the duplicity of those affiliated with "Expelled," in a manner that is appealing to the public.

(If only I had a few ten thousand$ to $pare . . . )

*"Unstoppable Solar Cycles," touted by the Heartland Institute as part of its < "Tea Party Toolbox" >
Posted by: Kristine on June 07 2011,11:39

I see no reason to release the film in its expurgated (remember that "Bad to the Bone" theme?), completed, and released form again, any more than I see a need to pass out Discovery Toot press releases without comments. Yes, I would shelve the film.

They had their chance to go the open access route instead of all of their "people are trying to copy it and distribute it!" hysteria; they can go right ahead and make a claim of "censorship" once it is acquired! Hell, I would want them to! People are astute enough to see the irony and the hypocrisy of this should they go there.

Releasing all of the other material will sink their asses. Talk about censorship.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 07 2011,12:00

Quote (JohnW @ June 07 2011,11:09)
But that argument only holds if we buy everything up and lock it away.  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No - it holds if they can perpetuate the belief that that's what happened. They're not constrained by the truth.
Posted by: sparc on June 07 2011,12:03

If it is just about money why don't you contact Yoko Ono?
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 07 2011,12:06

Quote (sparc @ June 07 2011,12:03)
If it is just about money why don't you contact Yoko Ono?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, this could be so very very funny...
Posted by: J-Dog on June 07 2011,14:16

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ June 07 2011,12:06)
Quote (sparc @ June 07 2011,12:03)
If it is just about money why don't you contact Yoko Ono?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, this could be so very very funny...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yoko, there's just a couple of changes, ok babe?

Imagine there's no Kevee
It isn't hard to do
Nothing for ID to lie for
And no Ben Stein too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
Except when we're LOLing at The Expelled Cru
Posted by: Sealawr on June 07 2011,14:55



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Imagine there's no Kevee
It isn't hard to do
Nothing for ID to lie for
And no Ben Stein too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
Except when we're LOLing at The Expelled Cru
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



POTW nomination.
Posted by: Bob O'H on June 07 2011,15:27

I definitely think we should band together and buy it for PZed. Then he can organise a public showing, and expel Richard Dawkins.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 07 2011,16:21

I think it'll be more expensive than we can afford. It is aprox 90 mins of TV filler.
Posted by: QED on June 07 2011,18:56

Dawkins could buy it. Imagine the wailing - an athiest owner, born in Kenya, and no US birf certificate...
Posted by: Kristine on June 07 2011,19:44

Maybe I should post this on the archives listserve.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 07 2011,20:08

I'd like to not make a false start with where to set up funding for a buy attempt. I can see three possibilities offhand.

1. NCSE. This would probably be my first choice, if they say that they are interested.

2. TalkOrigins Foundation. This, like NCSE, has tax-exempt status.

3. PZ Myers. I'm not sure exactly how PZ would handle the incoming funds or where funds would go if the auction doesn't go that way, but PZ does have lots of enthusiastic followers who may contribute. Hopefully, PZ would send people to one of the other choices above if he wasn't going to try for it himself.
Posted by: Kristine on June 11 2011,10:09

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 07 2011,20:08)
I'd like to not make a false start with where to set up funding for a buy attempt. I can see three possibilities offhand.

1. NCSE. This would probably be my first choice, if they say that they are interested.

2. TalkOrigins Foundation. This, like NCSE, has tax-exempt status.

3. PZ Myers. I'm not sure exactly how PZ would handle the incoming funds or where funds would go if the auction doesn't go that way, but PZ does have lots of enthusiastic followers who may contribute. Hopefully, PZ would send people to one of the other choices above if he wasn't going to try for it himself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wesley, I sent a message to Glenn via Linkedin with your ideas, and my explanations as to why I think acquiring the ephemera is important.
Posted by: Cubist on June 11 2011,14:35

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 07 2011,20:08)
I'd like to not make a false start with where to set up funding for a buy attempt. I can see three possibilities offhand.

1. NCSE. This would probably be my first choice, if they say that they are interested.

2. TalkOrigins Foundation. This, like NCSE, has tax-exempt status.

3. PZ Myers. I'm not sure exactly how PZ would handle the incoming funds or where funds would go if the auction doesn't go that way, but PZ does have lots of enthusiastic followers who may contribute. Hopefully, PZ would send people to one of the other choices above if he wasn't going to try for it himself.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It would be very appropriate for a pro-science organization to acquire the rights to EXPELLED. I particularly like the thought of using it to create an "annotated version" in which all the lies and misrepresentations are called out for what they are, with concise explanations of the truth on-screen plus pointers to detailed explanations for off-screen study.
Or... hmm. Maybe two 'annotated versions'? One AV to correct the crap science, and another to identify all the logical fallacies & rhetorical gambits they used?
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 11 2011,18:57

We should ask Kevin Eleven to do the revised screenplay.  He's probably looking for work and because of his reputation he could offer some authority to the documentary.

I mean, who other than K11 knows where all the lies are?  Except for all of us, of course.
Posted by: Cubist on June 11 2011,19:22

Hmm. That might be interesting, Doc; the KevinEleven 'annotated version' of EXPELLED -- complete with annotations on Kev's commentary, so as to point our where he lies and/or misrepresents the truth *even when he's supposedly tryna set the record straight*.
Posted by: sparc on June 12 2011,00:13

rather than in the movie itself I would be interested in
1. correspondence regarding the Harvard/XVIVOs animation "Inner Life of a Cell" that was part of the original EXPELLED version
2. information about how the Dawkins and PZ interviews were planned and arranged
3. correspondence about including "Imagine"
4. how much the DI and leading ID figures especially Dembski were involved
Posted by: Kristine on June 13 2011,20:15

< Heh >.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------

6:14 pm June 13, 2011
Quentin L F Patch wrote:

     Every nation’s educated majority follow Darwinism? Not true here. Shows who’s lying. Same as needs censorship and lawsuits to keep their faith system exclusively in government schools.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
9:05 pm June 13, 2011
Kristine wrote:

     Aside from Quentin’s pumpkin patch, yes, every nation’s educated citizens accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. And the selling of “Expelled” only goes to prove how morally bankrupt creationists are – they were always for sale!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: J-Dog on June 14 2011,07:41

Fixed That For You !:)



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
9:05 pm June 13, 2011
Kristine wrote:

    Aside from Quentin’s pumpkin patch, yes, every nation’s educated citizens accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. And the selling of “Expelled” only goes to prove how morally bankrupt creationists are – they were are always for sale!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Sealawr on June 21 2011,14:52

I just signed up to bid on Expelled.
Posted by: J-Dog on June 21 2011,17:10

Quote (Sealawr @ June 21 2011,14:52)
I just signed up to bid on Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Don't forget to save money for Kent Hovind's Dino Adventure Land!!!

Hat Tip To PZ!:)

< Hovind's Dino Debacle >
Posted by: fnxtr on June 21 2011,21:43

Quote (J-Dog @ June 21 2011,15:10)
 
Quote (Sealawr @ June 21 2011,14:52)
I just signed up to bid on Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Don't forget to save money for Kent Hovind's Dino Adventure Land!!!

Hat Tip To PZ!:)

< Hovind's Dino Debacle >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Wait, what?

1.06 acre?

I was imagining something more... i dunno... Isla Nublar-ish.

He had how many people on staff?
Posted by: Kristine on June 21 2011,22:36

Quote (Sealawr @ June 21 2011,14:52)
I just signed up to bid on Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good luck! Save me a bite of that "Crossroads" cake! :)
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 23 2011,08:06

We've got two out of three of the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation on board with making a bid, but we haven't heard back from the treasurer yet, who will be a critical participant on the final day of bidding.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 23 2011,09:10

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 23 2011,08:06)
We've got two out of three of the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation on board with making a bid, but we haven't heard back from the treasurer yet, who will be a critical participant on the final day of bidding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I can commit $200 - if we're looking to increase the pot. Come on lurkers! maybe we could get some sort of automated mechanism?

Rich
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on June 23 2011,09:39

I could easily scrap out 4 euros (that's about 6000 US$, I think)...
Posted by: noncarborundum on June 23 2011,09:57

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ June 23 2011,09:39)
I could easily scrap out 4 euros (that's about 6000 US$, I think)...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I used to make a similar joke about Canadian dollars, until one day I discovered that Canadian dollars had actually passed U.S. dollars in value.
Posted by: nmgirl on June 23 2011,10:47

count me in for $200.
Posted by: carlsonjok on June 23 2011,10:57

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 23 2011,09:10)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 23 2011,08:06)
We've got two out of three of the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation on board with making a bid, but we haven't heard back from the treasurer yet, who will be a critical participant on the final day of bidding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I can commit $200 - if we're looking to increase the pot. Come on lurkers! maybe we could get some sort of automated mechanism?

Rich
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm good for a C-note.
Posted by: Sealawr on June 23 2011,14:25

Quote (Kristine @ June 21 2011,22:36)
Quote (Sealawr @ June 21 2011,14:52)
I just signed up to bid on Expelled.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Good luck! Save me a bite of that "Crossroads" cake! :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If I win, I want an Expelled CD autographed by Kristine, PZ and Richard Dawkins.

Oh, and a year's supply of pizza, and a private jet.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 23 2011,15:31

Two new docs for you guys to check out:

< http://www.facebook.com/pages/SpOILed-The-Movie/216288371729865 >

< http://www.facebook.com/sexandmoneyfilm >
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 23 2011,15:32

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2011,15:31)
Two new docs for you guys to check out:

< http://www.facebook.com/pages/SpOILed-The-Movie/216288371729865 >

< http://www.facebook.com/sexandmoneyfilm >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


miller, I have a question.

What is Richard Sternberg doing right now?
Posted by: Occam's Aftershave on June 23 2011,15:41

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2011,15:31)
Two new docs for you guys to check out:

< http://www.facebook.com/pages/SpOILed-The-Movie/216288371729865 >

< http://www.facebook.com/sexandmoneyfilm >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Let us know when you film your autobiography

"Shithead: the man-whore who would suck off merchant seamen for a nickle and give change."
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2011,16:20

Kevin Miller, this thread is regarding Expelled. It is not a space for you to publicize your latest ventures, or we'll be talking here about how they are likewise raffled off like rump roasts in a neighborhood bar. Let's get this back on topic, everyone.
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 23 2011,16:34

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 24 2011,06:31)
Two new docs for you guys to check out:

< http://www.facebook.com/pages/SpOILed-The-Movie/216288371729865 >

< http://www.facebook.com/sexandmoneyfilm >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I found on the first link I couldn't ask the question that if they could drill everywhere they wanted what percentage of the US total consumption would this additional oil represent?

I guess once again Kevin Miller has no problem whoring for others.
Posted by: KenFair on June 23 2011,18:06

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 23 2011,08:06)
We've got two out of three of the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation on board with making a bid, but we haven't heard back from the treasurer yet, who will be a critical participant on the final day of bidding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


We're on.

:)
Posted by: KenFair on June 23 2011,18:29

The TalkOrigins Foundation, Inc. (a Texas non-profit corporation) is accepting donations towards this project.  The Foundation's donation link is < here >.

A few notes about these donations:

(1) The Foundation's board of directors has authorized an expenditure from the Foundation's funds to acquire Expelled, should the Foundation be the winning bidder. The Foundation's bid is limited by the funds the Foundation currently has available. The board may decide to increase the Foundation's maximum bid based upon additional funds donated to the Foundation's Paypal account.

(2) The auction has an 10% fee due from the buyer at the auction's close, which would be on top of the Foundation's bid amount (should the Foundation have the winning bid). The Foundation will also need funds to transport and store whatever physical property is associated with the motion picture. Thus, the Foundation's top bid will be somewhat less than the full authorized expenditure.

(3) Although the current bid for Expelled is (at the time of this posting) less than the amount authorized to be expended, and the Foundation hopes to be successful in acquiring the motion picture, the Foundation cannot predict what the highest bid will be when the auction closes on June 28, 2011.  In addition, there is an undisclosed reserve price on the auction, which may be higher than any amount the Foundation is willing or able to bid.

(4) As a practical matter, the Foundation will be unable to return any donations made to the donors, even if the Foundation is unsuccessful in bidding for Expelled, or the Foundation is successful and the amount donated is greater than the bid.

We are therefore simply asking potential donors to make contributions (which are tax-deductible in the United States) to the TalkOrigins Foundation. Although the Foundation would like to use those funds towards the purchase of Expelled, given the constraints facing the Foundation, THE FOUNDATION CANNOT MAKE ANY GUARANTEE OR PROMISE CONCERNING THE EXPENDITURE OF THE DONATED FUNDS. Funds not used to acquire Expelled will be used for other purposes consistent with the Foundation's non-profit purposes. Due to the time constraints, the Foundation can only attempt to bid with the funds it has on hand and those donated to its Paypal account as of Monday, June 27, 2011.

Our thanks to everyone who has contributed to the Foundation in the past, and to those who contribute now to the Foundation.

Kenneth Fair
Secretary/Treasurer, TalkOrigins Foundation, Inc.
Posted by: steve_h on June 23 2011,18:34

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 23 2011,16:10)
I can commit $200 - if we're looking to increase the pot. Come on lurkers! maybe we could get some sort of automated mechanism?

Rich
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll match that -- and that of two other people pledging a similar amount following this; But I do want the money back if we don't win. Is that possible ?

ETA: I just read the last post on the previous page. No refunds. I'll donate $300.
ETA: done
Posted by: carlsonjok on June 23 2011,18:37

Quote (steve_h @ June 23 2011,18:34)
Quote (Richardthughes @ June 23 2011,16:10)
I can commit $200 - if we're looking to increase the pot. Come on lurkers! maybe we could get some sort of automated mechanism?

Rich
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'll match that -- and that of one other person pledging a similar amount following this.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I just made a donation of $100.
Posted by: khan on June 23 2011,18:57

Quote (KenFair @ June 23 2011,19:06)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 23 2011,08:06)
We've got two out of three of the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation on board with making a bid, but we haven't heard back from the treasurer yet, who will be a critical participant on the final day of bidding.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


We're on.

:)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Could you send an official twitter of facebook message that I (and others) could resend?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 23 2011,19:03

The TalkOrigins Archive Foundation's primary mission is to support its projects (TalkOrigins, PT, TalkDesign). But we have supported other efforts as they became apparent. We can't guarantee success in getting "Expelled", but we can assure everyone that the funds will make things harder for religious antievolutionists to carry on their campaigns, just as our efforts have done to date.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 23 2011,19:17

I just tweeted the announcement with a link to our donations page and to Ken's long comment on donations.

< http://twitter.com/#!/welsberr/status/84052119199547392 >
Posted by: steve_h on June 23 2011,19:38

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 24 2011,02:03)
The TalkOrigins Archive Foundation's primary mission is to support its projects (TalkOrigins, PT, TalkDesign). But we have supported other efforts as they became apparent. We can't guarantee success in getting "Expelled", but we can assure everyone that the funds will make things harder for religious antievolutionists to carry on their campaigns, just as our efforts have done to date.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'd like to see some sort of totalizer output.  Amount received so far:  200 300 600 onetyone fahsand etc, along with the planned expenditure, average running costs, amounts paid to expert  advisors(*)/the management, estimate of how long overheads are presently covered for (eg until 2011-mmm-dd without further donations),  and so on for the site.  What I currently see are some TO balance sheets from 2005. The amounts there are likely to be dwarfed by the amounts that come in now.
(*) eg. DrDr somewhere else.
Posted by: csadams on June 23 2011,19:56

Boilerplate FB:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Own a piece of history! Donate to help TalkOrigins bid on the rights to the anti-science video, "Expelled." Yes, $ bankruptcy followed the moral kind.

Among other ideas, it's been suggested that a version be produced which would point out the abundant lies and rank hypocrisy.

Donate at < http://talkorigins.org/foundation/donate.html; > read the fine print at the next link.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



(1st comment = < https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u....=28a29) >
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 23 2011,20:03

this makes me so happy i almost believe in people again.  then i think "wait ben stein and kevin miller are people too" and i realize that you can only believe in some people.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 23 2011,20:19

I get reimbursed for payments to the TOA hosting providers, domain name registration, and I got reimbursed once for a set of Drupal books. The monthly ISP gets paid for this server, which hosts TalkDesign. We bought this server back in 2005, IIRC, and the one Reed Cartwright has just begun hosting PT on. As far as payments to principals, there aren't any. It's in our by-laws that people associated with the TOAF are unpaid. We can get reimbursed for expenses associated with running the site (as mentioned above), but there's nothing beyond that. Current annual expenses are (by my guess) in the $1,600 ballpark for the technical end of things, with the purchase every few years of a machine at somewhere upwards of $3,000. Maybe we can call it about $2,600 per year, with the hardware costs spread out over three years. There may be some financial fees that we get hit with that I don't know about. Is the above helpful?

I'm reluctant to try to do a totalizer on current donations -- that's information that we don't really want others to know before the close of the auction. Likewise the number of years of operating costs at the ~$2,600 figure above... that would let another bidder know too much. If there were to be a totalizer, it would be up to Ken. I don't have access to the PayPal numbers.
Posted by: steve_h on June 23 2011,20:36

I was talking in general about sites soliciting donations without really saying how much they were getting or what they are spending it on.  If a site I enjoy is raising money because it's in danger of going under, that's a a different matter to one that is raising money to gold-plate its ceremonial Bugatti Veyron ™. In the latter case, I may be more motivated to spend my beloved dosh in order to reduce human rights violations or to acquire more lovely lovely cake.
eta: but the totalizer giving away any bidding advantage is understood.
Posted by: Acipenser on June 23 2011,20:50

I'm in for a $100.....
Posted by: Cubist on June 23 2011,20:50

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2011,15:31)
Two new docs for you guys to check out...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Considering how deceitful you've been in connection with EXPELLED, why on Earth would you expect anybody hereabouts to believe anything you say about any 'doc' you happen to be involved with? Mr. Miller, I will not tell you to go to Hell. Rather, I will simply note that if the Bible is correct about the post mortem fate God has in store for false witnesses, you are going to Hell. The Bible also says that you can avoid this fate, but in order to do so, you'll have to sincerely repent of, and atone for, your false-witness-bearing. And thus far, you haven't displayed any awareness of the fact that you have violated the Ninth Commandment, let alone acknowledged that you might actually have any need for the repent-and-atone thing.
Enjoy your stay in the lake of fire, Mr. Miller.
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2011,21:28

Quote (Acipenser @ June 23 2011,20:50)
I'm in for a $100.....
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Me too! I wish it could be more. :)

ETA - and retweeted!


Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 23 2011,21:35

Before you get too giddy: "The Picture may be subject to certain distribution and manufacturing rights held by Vivendi Entertainment. Vivendi Entertainment maintains an inventory of manufactured compact discs and has continued to distribute the Picture for the benefit of the bankruptcy estate of Premise Media Distribution, L.P."
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2011,21:41

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2011,21:35)
Before you get too giddy: "The Picture may be subject to certain distribution and manufacturing rights held by Vivendi Entertainment. Vivendi Entertainment maintains an inventory of manufactured compact discs and has continued to distribute the Picture for the benefit of the bankruptcy estate of Premise Media Distribution, L.P."
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I want those frakkin' archives!
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 23 2011,21:55

I don't think you understand. Whoever gains the rights to those archives will likely have to abide by the current distribution deal with Vivendi.
Posted by: fnxtr on June 23 2011,22:29

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2011,19:55)
I don't think you understand. Whoever gains the rights to those archives will likely have to abide by the current distribution deal with Vivendi.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Doesn't Vivendi own Universal, or Sony, or some such megamedia enterprise? You think they're going to give a flying dog turd what happens to this boat anchor? Hah!
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 23 2011,22:31

I don't think that you understand Kristine: the *other* materials are of particular interest, the stuff that Vivendi has no rights to or interest in.
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 23 2011,22:53

Quote (Cubist @ June 11 2011,12:35)
It would be very appropriate for a pro-science organization to acquire the rights to EXPELLED. I particularly like the thought of using it to create an "annotated version" in which all the lies and misrepresentations are called out for what they are, with concise explanations of the truth on-screen plus pointers to detailed explanations for off-screen study.
Or... hmm. Maybe two 'annotated versions'? One AV to correct the crap science, and another to identify all the logical fallacies & rhetorical gambits they used?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I would finally have something to use my other 11 pages of notes on why "Expelled" is total bullshit.
Posted by: Kristine on June 23 2011,22:56

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 23 2011,21:55)
I don't think you understand. Whoever gains the rights to those archives will likely have to abide by the current distribution deal with Vivendi.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, will they give us a timetable for the distribution of the material related to "Crossroads"? ;)

Understand me now? :D
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 23 2011,23:01

I think Kevin is making it easier for us. I mean, if the distribution is already assigned and tied up, there's not a lot of point for a bidder aiming just at making money off the property. Fewer people should be interested in bidding, and those left will bid less.
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 23 2011,23:10

Quote (KenFair @ June 23 2011,16:29)
The TalkOrigins Foundation, Inc. (a Texas non-profit corporation) is accepting donations towards this project.  The Foundation's donation link is < here >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I'll chip in on the additional costs described in #2;

Quote (KenFair @ June 23 2011,16:29)
(2) The auction has an 10% fee due from the buyer at the auction's close, which would be on top of the Foundation's bid amount (should the Foundation have the winning bid). The Foundation will also need funds to transport and store whatever physical property is associated with the motion picture. Thus, the Foundation's top bid will be somewhat less than the full authorized expenditure.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



But, not carte blanc as per point #4;

Quote (KenFair @ June 23 2011,16:29)
(4) As a practical matter, the Foundation will be unable to return any donations made to the donors, even if the Foundation is unsuccessful in bidding for Expelled, or the Foundation is successful and the amount donated is greater than the bid.

Kenneth Fair
Secretary/Treasurer, TalkOrigins Foundation, Inc.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I have donated in the past to standard operating costs, and probably will in the future.  If you win the bid, I'll help some more.
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 24 2011,00:27

Yeah, like the current distribution channel is doing SO well they don't need to file Chapter 11 ... oh, wait ...
Posted by: Amadan on June 24 2011,06:01

In for €50. Happy to look at any EU/UK/Irish (as if!) legal stuff related to distribution etc.
Posted by: George on June 24 2011,07:46

In for a few euro.  Would have liked to donate more, but I'm recently un- self-employed.
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 24 2011,08:00

I'm in for a couple of bucks.  I'd be happy to help out with anything else related to this project or whatever else is needed.
Posted by: KenFair on June 24 2011,10:23

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 23 2011,20:19)
I get reimbursed for payments to the TOA hosting providers, domain name registration, and I got reimbursed once for a set of Drupal books. The monthly ISP gets paid for this server, which hosts TalkDesign. We bought this server back in 2005, IIRC, and the one Reed Cartwright has just begun hosting PT on. As far as payments to principals, there aren't any. It's in our by-laws that people associated with the TOAF are unpaid. We can get reimbursed for expenses associated with running the site (as mentioned above), but there's nothing beyond that. Current annual expenses are (by my guess) in the $1,600 ballpark for the technical end of things, with the purchase every few years of a machine at somewhere upwards of $3,000. Maybe we can call it about $2,600 per year, with the hardware costs spread out over three years. There may be some financial fees that we get hit with that I don't know about. Is the above helpful?

I'm reluctant to try to do a totalizer on current donations -- that's information that we don't really want others to know before the close of the auction. Likewise the number of years of operating costs at the ~$2,600 figure above... that would let another bidder know too much. If there were to be a totalizer, it would be up to Ken. I don't have access to the PayPal numbers.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I haven't added up the costs over the years, but Wesley's estimates sound about right. The only significant expenses we've had have been the server purchases and the annual costs of hosting the various websites (T.O Archive, Panda's Thumb, etc.).

The Foundation gets a very small amount of revenue (a few dollars per month) from people buying books through our Amazon links. We get occasional donations from people. We haven't needed to do much in the way of fundraising; between these two sources, we've generally made enough to cover the expenses Wesley listed.

Like Wesley, I'm reluctant to give donation totals in the interim, for the reason Wesley states. I will say that we've gotten a few thousand dollars in donations over the past 24 hours. I will provide a total once this process is complete.

Regarding returning donations: The Foundation's directors discussed whether this would be possible or feasible before I posted the donation request. You must understand that this possibility/opportunity of bidding on Expelled only came to our attention very recently (I only learned of it yesterday morning). If we had more time, we might have come up a different way to fund this project.

It may actually be possible to return donations if our bid is unsuccessful, and we will investigate that possibility. But we are not sure at this point that we will be able to return donations, and we did not want to make a promise we could not fulfill. Thus the disclaimer that we could not guarantee how the donated funds would be used. I don't want anyone feeling misled about what they're doing, and by all means, if you have any such concerns, I would rather that you did not donate.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 24 2011,10:41

$200 given.
Posted by: xinit on June 24 2011,13:32

Has there been any discussion with what might be done / could be done with the rights and materials should they be acquired? Might be interesting if all the extra non-movie pieces could be made available freely for CC derivative works...
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 24 2011,13:35

Quote (xinit @ June 24 2011,13:32)
Has there been any discussion with what might be done / could be done with the rights and materials should they be acquired? Might be interesting if all the extra non-movie pieces could be made available freely for CC derivative works...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm personally thinking an MST3K style play over.
Posted by: Louis on June 24 2011,13:59

Quote (xinit @ June 24 2011,19:32)
Has there been any discussion with what might be done / could be done with the rights and materials should they be acquired? Might be interesting if all the extra non-movie pieces could be made available freely for CC derivative works...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


An XXX Parody.

Has to be. Has. To. Be.

I have a scene in mind for the Dembski sweater....you really, really do not want to know, suffice to say it will become an internet meme.

Louis
Posted by: carlsonjok on June 24 2011,14:11

Quote (Louis @ June 24 2011,13:59)
I have a scene in mind for the Dembski sweater....you really, really do not want to know, suffice to say it will become an internet meme.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: sparc on June 24 2011,14:43

I hope you get EXPELLED! but I will happily appreciate if you use my few Euros for another purpose.
Posted by: Kristine on June 24 2011,16:12

Quote (Louis @ June 24 2011,13:59)
Quote (xinit @ June 24 2011,19:32)
Has there been any discussion with what might be done / could be done with the rights and materials should they be acquired? Might be interesting if all the extra non-movie pieces could be made available freely for CC derivative works...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


An XXX Parody.

Has to be. Has. To. Be.

I have a scene in mind for the Dembski sweater....you really, really do not want to know, suffice to say it will become an internet meme.

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, frankly, the first thing I would do would be to catalog them and preserve them, like any good archivist/museum specialist. Then, documents and images could be digitized.

I fear that items could be shredded/destroyed, even as we speak...
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 24 2011,18:04

Your suspicion/paranoia about what you will find is laughable, Kristine. Prepare to be massively disappointed with the lack of scandal. I have all of the interview transcripts on my computer, and I would gladly make them available online if they were actually my property. Nothing at all to hide.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 24 2011,18:29

Well, if the TOAF is successful and those transcripts become our property, we'll post them whether they are "disappointing" or not.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 24 2011,18:54

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 24 2011,18:04)
Your suspicion/paranoia about what you will find is laughable, Kristine. Prepare to be massively disappointed with the lack of scandal. I have all of the interview transcripts on my computer, and I would gladly make them available online if they were actually my property. Nothing at all to hide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Careful examination of evidence has never been a creationist forté.
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 24 2011,18:55

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,09:04)
Your suspicion/paranoia about what you will find is laughable, Kristine. Prepare to be massively disappointed with the lack of scandal. I have all of the interview transcripts on my computer, and I would gladly make them available online if they were actually my property. Nothing at all to hide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Even if nothing extra is found there are enough lies in the movie that an annotated version would be embarrassing enough. How about we include a door stop interview with Kevin and ask him how as a committed Christian he knowingly lied about Steinberg.

However, a number of people who were interviewed have blogged about it and we know there is a lot of stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Posted by: Amadan on June 24 2011,19:09

I think a few musical cut-scenes would be a good way to get across some snarky commentary about the original content.

[Rubs hands eagerly, reaches for rhyming dictionary]
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 24 2011,19:20

Kevin, you never did answer me.

Where is Steinberg working now?  I know, do you?
Posted by: xinit on June 24 2011,19:21

Quote (Kristine @ June 24 2011,16:12)
Well, frankly, the first thing I would do would be to catalog them and preserve them, like any good archivist/museum specialist. Then, documents and images could be digitized.

I fear that items could be shredded/destroyed, even as we speak...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


The nice bit about this is that it's being sold by the bankruptcy trustees, so this should all be out of the hands of the kooks
Posted by: xinit on June 24 2011,19:24

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 24 2011,18:04)
Your suspicion/paranoia about what you will find is laughable, Kristine. Prepare to be massively disappointed with the lack of scandal. I have all of the interview transcripts on my computer, and I would gladly make them available online if they were actually my property. Nothing at all to hide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


While I'm sure there are no amazing secret documents, having the full video for the "interviews" to correct the lies inherent in the film itself would be handy.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 24 2011,19:32

Hey, Kevin, do you have any further information about how the "Expelled" property is even more worthless to a potential buyer than it looks at first glance? I'm all for scaring away more of the bidding pool before Tuesday.
Posted by: Kristine on June 24 2011,19:53

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 24 2011,18:04)
Your suspicion/paranoia about what you will find is laughable, Kristine. Prepare to be massively disappointed with the lack of scandal. I have all of the interview transcripts on my computer, and I would gladly make them available online if they were actually my property. Nothing at all to hide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Really, Kevin? Including the all the rehearsals of that "Pepperdine University student body" comprising of paid film extras?

Footage of Ben Stein practicing his speech? And being made up, while Expelled showed only Dawkins having make-up applied?

Memos regarding the disappearance of the song "Bad to the Bone"?

If there is nothing to hide, why your strident tone?
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 24 2011,20:09

Quote (Amadan @ June 25 2011,10:09)
I think a few musical cut-scenes would be a good way to get across some snarky commentary about the original content.

[Rubs hands eagerly, reaches for rhyming dictionary]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How about a take off of Python's Brave Sir Robin but calling it Honest Sir Kevin? You could show scenes of the movie and then say what really happened.
Posted by: Kristine on June 24 2011,20:11

Quote (OgreMkV @ June 24 2011,19:20)
Kevin, you never did answer me.

Where is Steinberg working now?  I know, do you?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Even better, what was Meyer's paper about again?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
“The paper ignited a firestorm of controversy merely because it suggested intelligent design might be able to explain how life began.” (Ben Stein, Expelled)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I don't think so! :)
Posted by: noncarborundum on June 24 2011,20:11

Quote (xinit @ June 24 2011,13:32)
Has there been any discussion with what might be done / could be done with the rights and materials should they be acquired? Might be interesting if all the extra non-movie pieces could be made available freely for CC derivative works...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bill Dembski may have some spare farty noises he'd be willing to sell.
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 24 2011,20:13

Wouldn't you love to be a lawyer and have to come up with the < following: >


That certain feature-length motion picture ("Picture") entitled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" and all collateral, allied, ancillary, subsidiary and merchandising rights therein and thereto, and all properties and things of value pertaining thereto (as used in this paragraph, the term "Picture" shall mean and include the Picture, all of the aforesaid rights and the rights set forth in subparagraphs (i) through (iii) below), including, without limitation: (i) All rights of every kind and nature (including, without limitation, copyrights) in and to any literary, musical, dramatic or other literary material of any kind or nature upon which, in whole or in part, the Picture is or may be based, or from which it is or may be adapted or inspired or which may be or has been used or included in the Picture, including, without limitation, the Screenplay, the characters and all other scripts, scenarios, screenplays, bibles, stories, treatments, novels, outlines, books, titles, concepts, manuscripts or other properties or materials of any kind or nature, in whatever state of completion and all drafts, versions and variations thereof (all of the foregoing herein collectively referred to as the "Literary Property"); (ii) All physical properties of every kind or nature of or relating to the Picture and all versions thereof, to the extent now or hereafter in existence, including, without limitation, exposed film, developed film, positives, negatives, prints, answer prints, special effects, pre-print materials (including interpositives, negatives, duplicate negatives, internegatives, color reversals, intermediates, lavenders, fine grain master prints and matrices, and all other forms of pre-print elements which may be necessary or useful to produce prints or other copies or additional pre-print elements, whether now known or hereafter devised), soundtracks, recordings, audio and video tapes and discs of all types and gauges, cutouts, trims and any and all other physical properties of every kind and nature relating to the Picture in whatever state of completion, and all duplicates, drafts, versions, variations and copies of each thereof (all of the foregoing herein collectively referred to as the "Physical Property"); (iii) All rights in and to all copyrights and renewals and extensions of copyrights, domestic and foreign, heretofore or hereafter obtained in the Picture or the Literary Property or any part thereof. The sale will be “AS IS, WHERE IS without warranty except for the transfer of title through Trustee.” The Picture may be subject to certain distribution and manufacturing rights held by Vivendi Entertainment. Vivendi Entertainment maintains an inventory of manufactured compact discs and has continued to distribute the Picture for the benefit of the bankruptcy estate of Premise Media Distribution, L.P.


Bibles?
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 24 2011,20:14

Creationist professional prevaricator sez:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Nothing at all to hide.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Remind us K-11 just for old times sake, was Sternberg fired from the Smithsonian?

Hmmmmm?
Posted by: Kristine on June 24 2011,20:29

< Paranoia >? :)
Posted by: noncarborundum on June 24 2011,20:33

Quote (MichaelJ @ June 24 2011,20:13)
Wouldn't you love to be a lawyer and have to come up with the < following: >


That certain feature-length motion picture ("Picture") entitled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" and all collateral, allied, ancillary, subsidiary and merchandising rights therein and thereto, and all properties and things of value pertaining thereto (as used in this paragraph, the term "Picture" shall mean and include the Picture, all of the aforesaid rights and the rights set forth in subparagraphs (i) through (iii) below), including, without limitation: (i) All rights of every kind and nature (including, without limitation, copyrights) in and to any literary, musical, dramatic or other literary material of any kind or nature upon which, in whole or in part, the Picture is or may be based, or from which it is or may be adapted or inspired or which may be or has been used or included in the Picture, including, without limitation, the Screenplay, the characters and all other scripts, scenarios, screenplays, bibles, stories, treatments, novels, outlines, books, titles, concepts, manuscripts or other properties or materials of any kind or nature, in whatever state of completion and all drafts, versions and variations thereof (all of the foregoing herein collectively referred to as the "Literary Property"); (ii) All physical properties of every kind or nature of or relating to the Picture and all versions thereof, to the extent now or hereafter in existence, including, without limitation, exposed film, developed film, positives, negatives, prints, answer prints, special effects, pre-print materials (including interpositives, negatives, duplicate negatives, internegatives, color reversals, intermediates, lavenders, fine grain master prints and matrices, and all other forms of pre-print elements which may be necessary or useful to produce prints or other copies or additional pre-print elements, whether now known or hereafter devised), soundtracks, recordings, audio and video tapes and discs of all types and gauges, cutouts, trims and any and all other physical properties of every kind and nature relating to the Picture in whatever state of completion, and all duplicates, drafts, versions, variations and copies of each thereof (all of the foregoing herein collectively referred to as the "Physical Property"); (iii) All rights in and to all copyrights and renewals and extensions of copyrights, domestic and foreign, heretofore or hereafter obtained in the Picture or the Literary Property or any part thereof. The sale will be “AS IS, WHERE IS without warranty except for the transfer of title through Trustee.” The Picture may be subject to certain distribution and manufacturing rights held by Vivendi Entertainment. Vivendi Entertainment maintains an inventory of manufactured compact discs and has continued to distribute the Picture for the benefit of the bankruptcy estate of Premise Media Distribution, L.P.


Bibles?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Producers of TV shows use the term "show bible" to refer to a guidebook written by a show's creator that lays out all the information the writers will need to know in order to maintain consistency from episode to episode.  I don't know how exactly this would apply to a "documentary" film, but I strongly suspect the term is used here in connection with this kind of "bible", not the other kind.  
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 24 2011,20:41

Some of the commenters at < TalkRational Forum > seem to strongly disagree with trying to bid on "Expelled".

Each stage in the religious antievolution movement's evolution is a progressive camouflaging of their motivations. The *only* protection for keeping science in the classroom and the religious antievolution arguments out is continuing to prove that, yes, it really still is just religious antievolution and not some form of science or advancing "academic freedom". It's possible that there is no "Wedge Document 2" awaiting in what's up for auction, but I'd be irresponsible if there were and I hadn't tried my best to get it. Besides which, there is no intention of restricting access to "Expelled". If anything, we want to provide more information in it, i.e., add in the true stuff that Miller and Stein cut out.
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 24 2011,21:19

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 25 2011,11:41)
Some of the commenters at < TalkRational Forum > seem to strongly disagree with trying to bid on "Expelled".

Each stage in the religious antievolution movement's evolution is a progressive camouflaging of their motivations. The *only* protection for keeping science in the classroom and the religious antievolution arguments out is continuing to prove that, yes, it really still is just religious antievolution and not some form of science or advancing "academic freedom". It's possible that there is no "Wedge Document 2" awaiting in what's up for auction, but I'd be irresponsible if there were and I hadn't tried my best to get it. Besides which, there is no intention of restricting access to "Expelled". If anything, we want to provide more information in it, i.e., add in the true stuff that Miller and Stein cut out.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


With the hard core IDers we will look bad no matter what happens but I think that for those who are less rusted-on googling expelled and finding 100 satirical you-tube videos can only help.
Buyers will come in four camps
1. Us to use for education
2. Creationist organisations as a money stream.
3. Somebody like Ben Stein or the DI who wants to bury it or to stop 1 happening
4. insane

2/ I was wondering how much money is left to make out of it? Most of the people who want to see it will have seen it or bought the DVD. There probably already unsold stock already in the distribution channels.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 24 2011,21:28

I essentially don't expect any monetary return on value from "Expelled". I think I've seen it in program listings once in the past several months, and as Kevin Miller helpfully noted, there's an existing distribution agreement that's ongoing (and didn't stave off bankruptcy for Premise Media, so it can't be delivering much). The value of the materials associated with "Expelled" lies elsewhere for me and hopefully many others interested in fending off religious antievolution encroachments disguised as "academic freedom".
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 24 2011,21:35

I see that Michael Egnor noticed the announcement of TalkOrigins' involvement and chalked it up to atheists seeking to "bury" the movie. Olegt noted that I'm not an atheist in a reply.

I thought that I would mention that back in 2002, I attended the AMNH "intelligent design" debate and got pretty complete tape recordings (yes, tape) of the proceedings. I put MP3s of those up on the server for anyone to download. Dembski got all bent out of shape and insisted that AMNH make me take them down. So if Egnor or any other IDC advocate would care to compare records on exposing the debate, I think my reputation is quite up to that. There was "buud", too... he probably doesn't want to know about that.
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 24 2011,21:36

Kelvin 11 boasted:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I have all of the interview transcripts on my computer, and I would gladly make them available online if they were actually my property.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Srsly, dood, why do you haz other people's property on your computer?  Isn't that theft?  Not that ethics matter to a creationist propagandist.  At least you've proven that much!
Posted by: Kristine on June 24 2011,22:19

Whatever happened to < Kevin Miller's film about Kent Hovind >? :)
Posted by: fnxtr on June 24 2011,22:24

"lavenders"???
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 24 2011,22:24

Meh, Miller is a liar.  We all know that.  Either he has the transcripts/notes (in which case he's stealing and if he doesn't turn them over to whomever buys the movie, then he's guilty of breaking several other laws including contract law and bankruptcy law as well) OR he doesn't have the transcripts/notes in which case, he's just being a tool.
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 24 2011,23:04

Quote (OgreMkV @ June 25 2011,13:24)
Meh, Miller is a liar.  We all know that.  Either he has the transcripts/notes (in which case he's stealing and if he doesn't turn them over to whomever buys the movie, then he's guilty of breaking several other laws including contract law and bankruptcy law as well) OR he doesn't have the transcripts/notes in which case, he's just being a tool.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Not necessarily. As an IT consultant I have copies of most of the code I've written and notes of meetings etc. I'm just not allowed to break confidentiality.

I assume that this is the case with Kevin.

I have been on projects where I have been asked to remove all traces. This wasn't a trust issue more to protect people if our computers get seized by the guv'mnt.
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 24 2011,23:07

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 25 2011,12:28)
I essentially don't expect any monetary return on value from "Expelled". I think I've seen it in program listings once in the past several months, and as Kevin Miller helpfully noted, there's an existing distribution agreement that's ongoing (and didn't stave off bankruptcy for Premise Media, so it can't be delivering much). The value of the materials associated with "Expelled" lies elsewhere for me and hopefully many others interested in fending off religious antievolution encroachments disguised as "academic freedom".
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I know that we aren't interested but I was more wondering if somebody might bid $50k thinking that there is enough life in it to return an income of say $20k a year for the next few years.

It would be ironic if  you guys made a steady income from the original movie.
Posted by: Freelurker on June 25 2011,05:22

I donated.
It's for a good cause even if we don't get the movie.
Posted by: Stephen Furley on June 25 2011,06:49

Quote (fnxtr @ June 24 2011,22:24)
"lavenders"???
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Low contrast fine grain intermediate black and white elements.  So-named because they had a slight lavender colour to them.  Unlikely to exist for this film, as are 'color reversals'.  This looks like a standard list of possible elements which might exist for a film which they have just pasted in, rather than a specific list of elements which do exist for this particular film.
Posted by: Kristine on June 25 2011,09:21

Quote (OgreMkV @ June 24 2011,22:24)
Meh, Miller is a liar.  We all know that.  Either he has the transcripts/notes (in which case he's stealing and if he doesn't turn them over to whomever buys the movie, then he's guilty of breaking several other laws including contract law and bankruptcy law as well) OR he doesn't have the transcripts/notes in which case, he's just being a tool.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin Miller reveals his black-and-white thinking with his blather about my "paranoia" and a "scandal." Archives are always biased, but they reveal something about their creators, namely the intentions and aims of the people who worked on this project. I fully expect that most intentions were well-meant, but that is the point: the Road to Perdition, etc.

Did Ronald Numbers' The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism reveal a "scandal"? For that matter, was the Wedge Document a "scandal"? It was revealing, yes, but a scandal? What I would term a scandal was the clandestine acquisition of Of Pandas and People in Dover.

And how do we know that the transcripts are complete? We still don't have the complete transcripts from McLean v. Arkansas.

I think I made a statement about treating this material with the respect that it is due first, namely, restoring (if necessary) original order and provenance, and he barged in like the bull in a china shop he is to mock. Frankly, records are lost, even unintentionally, all the time (a point that I will make in my latest article, tentatively coming out in September), although considering the slights-of-hand that Expelled employed, I think my fears of shredding have at least some validity.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 25 2011,10:30

I seem to have mistakenly touched a nerve, Kristine. I was simply trying to save you money. There's really no there there. I fail to see anything strident in my comment.

That said, it does strike me as rather odd to see all of you obsessing over gaining access to this film. If Expelled truly is an inconsequential piece of horseshit, I fail to see why it's so important to gain access to the archives. I can't imagine how pathetically you would view Christians who set about to do the same if they had the chance to get their hands on the original drafts, notes, etc. behind Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," for instance. The book was a full frontal attack on religion. But it's arguments were so easily defeated that its relevance (and perceived threat to theism) quickly faded from view. I defy you to find a group of theists hunkered down in a shady corner of the internet talking about it right now. And I can hardly conceive of a group of Christians gleefully plotting to gain control of the rights so they could publish their own annotated version of the book. And if they did, I can hear you people mocking them mercilessly. And it would be well deserved, b/c it would be a pathetic form of behavior fear-based behavior. It would also be extremely telling in terms of the perceived threat "The God Delusion" represented. The fact that you're still hunkered down over here chortling about "Expelled" three years later, full of vitriol and immediately defensive at the slightest criticism of your behavior is the most telling of all. Just an observation.
Posted by: Kristine on June 25 2011,10:44

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,10:30)
I seem to have mistakenly touched a nerve, Kristine. I was simply trying to save you money. There's really no there there. I fail to see anything strident in my comment.

That said, it does strike me as rather odd to see all of you obsessing over gaining access to this film. If Expelled truly is an inconsequential piece of horseshit, I fail to see why it's so important to gain access to the archives. I can't imagine how pathetically you would view Christians who set about to do the same if they had the chance to get their hands on the original drafts, notes, etc. behind Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," for instance. The book was a full frontal attack on religion. But it's arguments were so easily defeated that its relevance (and perceived threat to theism) quickly faded from view. I defy you to find a group of theists hunkered down in a shady corner of the internet talking about it right now. And I can hardly conceive of a group of Christians gleefully plotting to gain control of the rights so they could publish their own annotated version of the book. And if they did, I can hear you people mocking them mercilessly. And it would be well deserved, b/c it would be a pathetic form of behavior fear-based behavior. It would also be extremely telling in terms of the perceived threat "The God Delusion" represented. The fact that you're still hunkered down over here chortling about "Expelled" three years later, full of vitriol and immediately defensive at the slightest criticism of your behavior is the most telling of all. Just an observation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin, it is obvious to everyone that I have touched a nerve in you. You deny being strident, then launch into insults, which I have not done. Grow up.

Look for my article when it comes out, and you will see how I treat any subject.

ETA - Oh, and Kevin: I personally advised Richard Dawkins to save all of his ephemera, his notes, his drafts, as much as possible. That is what an archivist does, think of the future, and I'm talking more than three years hence.


Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 25 2011,11:10

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,10:30)
Just an observation.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think you are in the wrong line of work.

Your "observations" have been somewhat lacking both here and in your professional endeavors.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 25 2011,12:07

You haven't addressed my "shoe on the other foot" analogy, Kristine. And I'm sorry, your attempt at dispassionate interest in archiving the material fails to convince. This is all about vindictiveness. And I don't mean to single you out in that. Let's just call a spade a spade.
Posted by: Kristine on June 25 2011,12:16

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,12:07)
You haven't addressed my "shoe on the other foot" analogy, Kristine. And I'm sorry, your attempt at dispassionate interest in archiving the material fails to convince. This is all about vindictiveness. And I don't mean to single you out in that. Let's just call a spade a spade.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have addressed it, Kevin. I told Richard to save everything.

You or anyone can come out with an annotated version if you want. After all, Expelled was a particularly vile annotation of Origin of Species.

Quit while you're behind.
Posted by: fnxtr on June 25 2011,12:20

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,10:07)
You haven't addressed my "shoe on the other foot" analogy, Kristine. And I'm sorry, your attempt at dispassionate interest in archiving the material fails to convince. This is all about vindictiveness. And I don't mean to single you out in that. Let's just call a spade a spade.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Um, no.

It's about correcting the lies and bullshit you generated, Kevin Eleven, and making sure the correction is available to as many people as possible so that teachers, administrators, politicians, and hoi polloi don't get blindsided by the same bullshit again and again and again.
Posted by: Kristine on June 25 2011,12:31

It occurs to me now that Kevin was probably completely blindsided by this turn of events. He is likely hurt, and probably bitter, and I can understand that.

But that is where creationism leads - to bitterness. The Darwinian powers-that-be just seem to keep winning, are too powerful to fight, etc., etc.

He doesn't realize that, in pursuing my own career now in information science, I have left many of the anti-religious arguments behind, and in fact called God Delusion Dawkins' least interesting book. (Yes, I said that to him, too.)

If nothing else, we could finally find out how much Expelled cost - I do believe that is still a question.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 25 2011,12:53

Quote (Kristine @ June 25 2011,13:31)
It occurs to me now that Kevin was probably completely blindsided by this turn of events. He is likely hurt, and probably bitter, and I can understand that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


call the waaaaaaaaaaahmbulance

until he apologizes for his share of that pile of shit i hope he cries every day and has nightmares every night.

kevvy baby what's Sternberg up to these days anyhow?  looking for the hovind movie any.day.now!
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 25 2011,13:06

Kev!  So nice to have you back!  I have so missed your abject stupidity and duplicity.  Hey, why don't you start a blog and call it "Stuplicity?"

Bad example you picked, The God Delusion.  Currently number 86, overall, on Amazon.  Over 2 million copies sold.  A quick check of books by reputable authors (that would leave you out, of course) shows that the closest rival sits at about 25,000.  Yeah, Dawkins has been refuted, OK.

The think is, Kev old fruit, is that all of Dawkins arguments are laid out there to read and critique.  Nothing hidden.  Perhaps you're looking for a prayer scribbled in the margins:  Please, God, help me sell 2 million copies of this rubbish.

HOWEVER, in Expelled, as you well know, nobody was expelled.  The whole thing is made up, every case.  By owning the film we could make the Real Expelled with commentary on what actually went down.  And the DI would be powerless to slap DMA violations or copyright violations.  How sweet would that be?

Don't you think the world needs to know that Dembski was fired for being a horse's ass by the very same Baylor President who defended him just a few days earlier?  Only "fired" is so harsh when one is simply relieved of teaching duties but free to collect a salary for five years.  All of you who want to get expelled like Dembski raise your hands!!

You already admitted you lied about Sternberg; no need to raise that again.

Let's review famous creationists and ID proponents and list who's been expelled.  Behe, nope.  Meyers, nope.  Berlinski, nope.  Dembski, nope.  Wells, nope.  West, nope.  Phillips, nope.  Richards, nope.  Gonzalez, nope.  Crocker, nope.

Hmmmmm, seems like they're all gainfully employed.

Wouldn't it be fun to do a "Where Are They Now?" segment in Expelled?  I think so!

Keep it up, Kev, you're providing much needed entertainment on an otherwise hot, dull Saturday!
Posted by: Cubist on June 25 2011,13:22

I can certainly see why Mr. Miller would prefer that the 'ephemera' of Expelled sink into oblivion. It would clearly be better for Mr. Miller's reputation if his part in the creation of that collection of damned lies was forgotten for all time.
Mr. Miller, I am given to understand that there's a Middle Eastern religion whose founder exhorted his followers to be honest in all things. Your actions suggest, first, that you are completely unfamiliar with this religion, and second, that you would benefit from following its 'don't lie' precept. This religion is called, by some, Christianity. Have you heard of it?
Posted by: Woodbine on June 25 2011,14:03



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And I can hardly conceive of a group of Christians gleefully plotting to gain control of the rights so they could publish their own annotated version of the book.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Can't you? Let us help you....

Here's Ray 'Banana' Comfort repackaging Darwin's Origin complete with special introduction....

< http://www.livingwaters.com/index.p....sk=view >

And here's our good friend William Dembski announcing the imminent release of Alfred Russell Wallace's World of Life, re-titled to appeal to the IDiots and encumbered with similar introduction and foreword.

< http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/coming-soon/ >

(Kevin, for comic relief read Dembski's first comment! For reasons best left to his troubled soul Dembski seems to have a fetish for collecting domains with names relevant to intelligent design or evolution and then bragging about it. He even, during his pasting by Hitchens, brought up the fact he owned some such website as though this was supposed to impress anyone....he is disturbed. Unsurprisingly if one follows that link it's as dead as an intelligently designed dodo.)

Kevin according to you this is nothing more than....
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
a pathetic form of behavior fear-based behavior
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


....or does it depend on who's doing it?

Kevin, what is your analysis of someone who makes a film that exploits the holocaust in order to demonize the scientific community because they happen to reject totally the non-theory of intelligent design?

Someone like that must be a real sad fucker, eh?
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 25 2011,15:30

Kevin,

I know why you refuse to answer my question (where is Sternberg working right now?) because by ignoring it you might be able to retain some sense of dignity.

Interestingly, I know of only one person in the decades of the 'controversy' that has actually been fired for taking a position on the ID/evolution debate.

That was the Texas Education Agency director of science curriculum and she was fired for forwarding an e-mail about a talk from Barbara Forrest.

That's it.  One person and she was a science teacher fired from promoting science knowledge.  Not harassing employees like that IDiot at JPL.  Just doing her job and forwarding information about a meeting that shows the lies of ID.

Tell me, what do you think of that?

BTW: Are you going to give those files on your HDD to whomever wins the bid?
Posted by: Wolfhound on June 25 2011,16:37

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,13:07)
You haven't addressed my "shoe on the other foot" analogy, Kristine. And I'm sorry, your attempt at dispassionate interest in archiving the material fails to convince. This is all about vindictiveness. And I don't mean to single you out in that. Let's just call a spade a spade.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevin, seriously, why don't you just fuck off?  This alternate reality that you live in really isn't working and it's really pathetic that you're trying to spin this as anything other than the complete and total commercial failure of your perfidious propaganda porn piece.

You LOST.  Big time.  Now just admit how badly you suck and toddle along then.
Posted by: Stephen Furley on June 25 2011,16:48

Quote (Kristine @ June 25 2011,12:16)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,12:07)
You haven't addressed my "shoe on the other foot" analogy, Kristine. And I'm sorry, your attempt at dispassionate interest in archiving the material fails to convince. This is all about vindictiveness. And I don't mean to single you out in that. Let's just call a spade a spade.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have addressed it, Kevin. I told Richard to save everything.

You or anyone can come out with an annotated version if you want. After all, Expelled was a particularly vile annotation of Origin of Species.

Quit while you're behind.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kristine,

I haven't seen this film; I tried to buy a copy while I was out today, but couldn't find one.  Can you please explain in what way you think it is 'particularly vile'?  I know that Richard was unhappy about the way in which the film was represented (misrepresented?) when he was requested to give an interview; is it this that you are unhappy about, or the content of the film itself?  Do you claim that the content of the film was untrue, or that it was simply selective in the truth which it chose to present?

What was the content in the film relating to the holocaust which many people seem to have found particularly objectionable?  Was this attempting to put the blame for the holocaust on atheism/humanism/secularism?  If so, this would be ridiculous, but certainly not unique to this film; such claims have been made by many in the past.

What do you hope to find if it is possible to buy the rights to this film, and materials relating to it?  Is it not likely that much of this material not included in the film itself would have been discarded when the production was completed?

There has been considerable discussion about the possibility of producing an 'annotated' version of the film.  While I can see the merits of doing so, would it be possible?  How would you distribute this version? A cinema release seems unlikely, Would you do it on DVD?  On the Internet?  We know that a company, I can't remember the name at the moment holds the rights do distribute the original film on DVD, but we don't know exactly what rights they hold?  For example, if it turns out that they hold exclusive rights for all non-theatrical distribution of the film and all derivative works in digital works for a long period  then that would pretty much put a stop to any annotated version being distributed.  If they simply hold the rights to distribute the original film on DVD then that might not be a problem, but we simply don't know.  They might still try to stop the distribution of an 'annotated' version, which contains the content of the original film, by another party.
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 25 2011,17:47

Mummy!  Wolfie is trying to take away my chew toy, Mummy!

Mummy, make Wolfie stop!  Poopy-head Wolfie!
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 25 2011,17:51

Hey, Stephen, try a little Google-Fu.  After all, it is the next century.

< Expelled Exposed >

The short answer to your question is: All of the above.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 25 2011,18:09

stephen don't waste your money on that rag i am sure that if get yourself a phonebook you can probably find a nearby church youth group who will be viewing the thing in the basement of the fellowship hall.  the thing is that was the target audience all along, rubes and suckers.  and if you buy the thing, well, that'll be you too.

ben stein


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



yeah that's about all you need to know.
Posted by: Kristine on June 25 2011,18:16

Quote (Stephen Furley @ June 25 2011,16:48)
   
Quote (Kristine @ June 25 2011,12:16)
     
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,12:07)
You haven't addressed my "shoe on the other foot" analogy, Kristine. And I'm sorry, your attempt at dispassionate interest in archiving the material fails to convince. This is all about vindictiveness. And I don't mean to single you out in that. Let's just call a spade a spade.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have addressed it, Kevin. I told Richard to save everything.

You or anyone can come out with an annotated version if you want. After all, Expelled was a particularly vile annotation of Origin of Species.

Quit while you're behind.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kristine,

I haven't seen this film; I tried to buy a copy while I was out today, but couldn't find one.  Can you please explain in what way you think it is 'particularly vile'?  I know that Richard was unhappy about the way in which the film was represented (misrepresented?) when he was requested to give an interview; is it this that you are unhappy about, or the content of the film itself?  Do you claim that the content of the film was untrue, or that it was simply selective in the truth which it chose to present?

What was the content in the film relating to the holocaust which many people seem to have found particularly objectionable?  Was this attempting to put the blame for the holocaust on atheism/humanism/secularism?  If so, this would be ridiculous, but certainly not unique to this film; such claims have been made by many in the past.

What do you hope to find if it is possible to buy the rights to this film, and materials relating to it?  Is it not likely that much of this material not included in the film itself would have been discarded when the production was completed?

There has been considerable discussion about the possibility of producing an 'annotated' version of the film.  While I can see the merits of doing so, would it be possible?  How would you distribute this version? A cinema release seems unlikely, Would you do it on DVD?  On the Internet?  We know that a company, I can't remember the name at the moment holds the rights do distribute the original film on DVD, but we don't know exactly what rights they hold?  For example, if it turns out that they hold exclusive rights for all non-theatrical distribution of the film and all derivative works in digital works for a long period  then that would pretty much put a stop to any annotated version being distributed.  If they simply hold the rights to distribute the original film on DVD then that might not be a problem, but we simply don't know.  They might still try to stop the distribution of an 'annotated' version, which contains the content of the original film, by another party.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stephen, are you under the mistaken impression that I administer or own the Talk Origins site? Your questions regarding distribution should be directed there. I have nothing to do with the site other than to have read it and have donated to it.

What is "particularly vile"? Are you joking? How many other films made this direct link between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust?

How about < this review >: "One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time"?

How about a deliberately taken-out-of-context quote from Charles Darwin:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
   With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


without including this important statement which follows:
   

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How about using movie extras to portray "Pepperdine University students" to which Ben Stein in shown addressing as if he were giving a "speech"? Is this standard procedure in a documentary?

The movie is one lie after another. That is not vile?

I have seen the film, Stephen - I was the one who told PZ about the screening, and I was there when he was thrown out right before my eyes. Then that same scary security guard came and sat right behind me after I asked producer Mark Mathis < a question >.

Have you read the auction notice? You would find that it includes all ephemera related to the film. My suggesting that such ephemera has been or is being destroyed got me called "paranoid" by the writer of the film, Kevin Miller.

Why do you single me out in this manner? I am not bidding on this film myself. Who are you? Where did you come from?
Posted by: Kristine on June 25 2011,18:21

Incidentally, that whole rotten turd of a film is now on YouTube.
Posted by: Wolfhound on June 25 2011,20:59

Quote (Doc Bill @ June 25 2011,18:47)
Mummy!  Wolfie is trying to take away my chew toy, Mummy!

Mummy, make Wolfie stop!  Poopy-head Wolfie!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*Dodges rolled up newspaper*
*tucks tail*
*lowers head*
*whines plaintively*
*tears up sofa while you aren't looking*
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 25 2011,21:53

Quote (Wolfhound @ June 25 2011,20:59)
Quote (Doc Bill @ June 25 2011,18:47)
Mummy!  Wolfie is trying to take away my chew toy, Mummy!

Mummy, make Wolfie stop!  Poopy-head Wolfie!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*Dodges rolled up newspaper*
*tucks tail*
*lowers head*
*whines plaintively*
*tears up sofa while you aren't looking*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You forgot

*pees on pillow
*shits in coffee cup
*chews up iPhone charger
*subscribes to Skeptical Inquirer
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 25 2011,23:22

Ha ha!  PZ just picked up the story and Kev-11 is being dragged through the muck he raked.

Sucks to be you, Kevvers!
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 25 2011,23:26

just think kevin, if Crossroads and Dr. Dino riiiiiiiides agaaaaaaaaaain (or whatever the fuck you were going to call it) had made you some money perhaps you could have bought this aborted tumor yourself and saved yourself all of this public butthurt

own it, you sombitch

bwaahahahahahahahaha
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 26 2011,00:18

Quote (Doc Bill @ June 25 2011,15:51)
Hey, Stephen, try a little Google-Fu.  After all, it is the next century.

< Expelled Exposed >

The short answer to your question is: All of the above.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And then there is the special NCSE Reports issue, Expelled Exposed:

< http://ncse.com/rncse/28/5-6 >

Which just happened to include;

"Why Invent the Crystal"
< http://ncse.com/rncse/28/5-6/why-re-invent-crystal >

AKA, "Why Polish My Star?"
Posted by: Stephen Furley on June 26 2011,04:41

Quote (Kristine @ June 25 2011,18:16)
Quote (Stephen Furley @ June 25 2011,16:48)
     
Quote (Kristine @ June 25 2011,12:16)
     
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 25 2011,12:07)
You haven't addressed my "shoe on the other foot" analogy, Kristine. And I'm sorry, your attempt at dispassionate interest in archiving the material fails to convince. This is all about vindictiveness. And I don't mean to single you out in that. Let's just call a spade a spade.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I have addressed it, Kevin. I told Richard to save everything.

You or anyone can come out with an annotated version if you want. After all, Expelled was a particularly vile annotation of Origin of Species.

Quit while you're behind.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kristine,

I haven't seen this film; I tried to buy a copy while I was out today, but couldn't find one.  Can you please explain in what way you think it is 'particularly vile'?  I know that Richard was unhappy about the way in which the film was represented (misrepresented?) when he was requested to give an interview; is it this that you are unhappy about, or the content of the film itself?  Do you claim that the content of the film was untrue, or that it was simply selective in the truth which it chose to present?

What was the content in the film relating to the holocaust which many people seem to have found particularly objectionable?  Was this attempting to put the blame for the holocaust on atheism/humanism/secularism?  If so, this would be ridiculous, but certainly not unique to this film; such claims have been made by many in the past.

What do you hope to find if it is possible to buy the rights to this film, and materials relating to it?  Is it not likely that much of this material not included in the film itself would have been discarded when the production was completed?

There has been considerable discussion about the possibility of producing an 'annotated' version of the film.  While I can see the merits of doing so, would it be possible?  How would you distribute this version? A cinema release seems unlikely, Would you do it on DVD?  On the Internet?  We know that a company, I can't remember the name at the moment holds the rights do distribute the original film on DVD, but we don't know exactly what rights they hold?  For example, if it turns out that they hold exclusive rights for all non-theatrical distribution of the film and all derivative works in digital works for a long period  then that would pretty much put a stop to any annotated version being distributed.  If they simply hold the rights to distribute the original film on DVD then that might not be a problem, but we simply don't know.  They might still try to stop the distribution of an 'annotated' version, which contains the content of the original film, by another party.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stephen, are you under the mistaken impression that I administer or own the Talk Origins site? Your questions regarding distribution should be directed there. I have nothing to do with the site other than to have read it and have donated to it.

What is "particularly vile"? Are you joking? How many other films made this direct link between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust?

How about < this review >: "One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time"?

How about a deliberately taken-out-of-context quote from Charles Darwin:
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
   With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


without including this important statement which follows:
     

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



How about using movie extras to portray "Pepperdine University students" to which Ben Stein in shown addressing as if he were giving a "speech"? Is this standard procedure in a documentary?

The movie is one lie after another. That is not vile?

I have seen the film, Stephen - I was the one who told PZ about the screening, and I was there when he was thrown out right before my eyes. Then that same scary security guard came and sat right behind me after I asked producer Mark Mathis < a question >.

Have you read the auction notice? You would find that it includes all ephemera related to the film. My suggesting that such ephemera has been or is being destroyed got me called "paranoid" by the writer of the film, Kevin Miller.

Why do you single me out in this manner? I am not bidding on this film myself. Who are you? Where did you come from?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kristine,

I don't single you out, I'm simply trying to find out what it is that people find so offensive about this film; as I said, I haven't seen it, and wasn't able to buy a copy from the HMV store when I tried yesterday. I'd never even heard of the film, or Stein, until I was watching a clip from a Richard Dawkins lecture on Youtube recently where the 'Sexpelled' parody of this was shown, after which Richard explained that it was a parody of the film 'Expelled'.  I know that the film claims to be about how people are being harassed and discriminated against for their beliefs, and I know that Richard feels that the film was misrepresented when he was requested to give an interview, and that is as much as I know.

I read the discussion of the proposal to bid for the rights and existing materials of the film, and wanted to know more before deciding whether to make a donation.

I did read the auction notice; it seems that you get all existing materials, but it's not known what actually does exist. 'Lavenders', 'Colour reversals' and 'Matrices' were all mentioned, but none of these would have been likely to have been used in the making of this film.  Indeed, matrices were used for Technicolor imbibition printing, a process which has not been used for years, and when it was used the matrices remained the property of Technicolor, were held by them in their vaults, and could not be sold.  It seems that the list of elements in the auction notice is just a standard one which they would use for any film; if these exist they are included in the sale, but there is no indication as to what actually existed for this film, what may have already been discarded, and what still exists.  It is also unclear exactly what the terms of the contract for the video distribution of the original film are, and whether these would impose any restriction on what may be done with the film by whoever wins the rights at auction.

You obviously know considerably more about this film than I do; you described it as being 'particularly vile', I simply wanted to know what it was about this film which you, and many others, find so offensive, and also what benefit there would be if it were possible to buy the rights to this film at auction.
Posted by: Cubist on June 26 2011,05:55

Mr. Furley, your ignorance of the content of the film < Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed > is not particularly unusual, because said film came and went from theatres without leaving much, if any, evidence of its passage. The reason some people want to bid on a commercial failure like < Expelled > is because of its role as part of the deceitful propaganda machine that is the Intelligent Design movement, said movement itself being a wholly-owned subsidiary of the greater Creationist movement.
The film misrepresents ID-pushers as being the innocent victims of a dogmatically intolerant Darwinist establishment, an establishment which the film falsely portrays as bearing responsibility for the horrors of Nazi Germany. This alone, I think, would adequately account for the somewhat intense reactions the film inspires among some members of the reality-based community, but the offenses of < Expelled > only start there.
Google is your friend, Mr. Furley. It is, perhaps, worth noting that when I googled for expelled: no intelligence allowed just now, the website < Expelled > < Exposed >, which documents in detail the film's myriad layers of deceit and outright lying, came up in the top five results, and the first such result was < the Wikipedia page on Expelled >, which provides a good deal of information on the film's contents and the various controversies surrounding the film. It is unclear why you neglected to google for expelled: no intelligence allowed yourself, but perhaps you may find the information in those two websites to be of some small interest.
The benefits to be gained from purchasing a piece of shit like < Expelled > are, in the main, those associated with revealing 'the man behind the curtain'. One proposal which has met with some approval, is that an 'annotated version' of < Expelled > be created and released, a version which accompanies the film's every lie and misrepresentation with the truth about whatever the film just decieved its audience about.
Posted by: Stephen Furley on June 26 2011,07:26

Quote (Kristine @ June 25 2011,18:21)
Incidentally, that whole rotten turd of a film is now on YouTube.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Thank you.  I have watched the first four parts; I have to go out now but will watch the rest later today.
Posted by: Kristine on June 26 2011,09:50

Well, Stephen, it is forum etiquette to

1) briefly identify oneself (even if to just say, "Longtime lurker" or "new to this board," etc.)

2) have read the thread before posting.

Now please read the material people have already given you.
Posted by: Wolfhound on June 26 2011,10:14

Quote (Doc Bill @ June 25 2011,22:53)
Quote (Wolfhound @ June 25 2011,20:59)
Quote (Doc Bill @ June 25 2011,18:47)
Mummy!  Wolfie is trying to take away my chew toy, Mummy!

Mummy, make Wolfie stop!  Poopy-head Wolfie!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*Dodges rolled up newspaper*
*tucks tail*
*lowers head*
*whines plaintively*
*tears up sofa while you aren't looking*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You forgot

*pees on pillow
*shits in coffee cup
*chews up iPhone charger
*subscribes to Skeptical Inquirer
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, no, I might be naughty but I'm not that naughty.  Especially that last item.
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 26 2011,11:09

Someone on PZs blog said it best

"If it's the truth, why do you have to lie to defend it?"
Posted by: clamboy on June 26 2011,11:49

Professor Myers also pointed out that The God Delusion was, oh, what's that word...successful. Additionally, what with all those propagating fleas, apologists owe Richard Dawkins a debt of gratitude, for keeping them in sweaters for years. For Kevin Miller to think that there is some kind of comparison, along those lines, between Dawkins's book and that execrable waste of celluloid that is Expelled is just so damned silly.

(While my opinion matter not a whit, I will add that my reaction to The God Delusion was akin to Kristine's. It read like the book Dawkins felt he had to write, rather than truly enjoyed writing, like The Ancestor's Tale.)
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 26 2011,15:46

is concerned troll concerned?
Posted by: Kristine on June 26 2011,19:02

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ June 25 2011,12:53)
Quote (Kristine @ June 25 2011,13:31)
It occurs to me now that Kevin was probably completely blindsided by this turn of events. He is likely hurt, and probably bitter, and I can understand that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


call the waaaaaaaaaaahmbulance

until he apologizes for his share of that pile of shit i hope he cries every day and has nightmares every night.

kevvy baby what's Sternberg up to these days anyhow?  looking for the hovind movie any.day.now!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Come to the Bathroom Wall and I'll tell the story of what happened with the first film that yours truly was in. At least, the way that I tell it, it's funny. Erasmus, you especially will appreciate this.
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 26 2011,22:25

when he gets to 014, we should sell.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on June 27 2011,05:44

How does he jump from 013 to 58? Way to keep up with the stock market!  :angry:
Posted by: Louis on June 27 2011,05:44

I don't see the need for all the  **DRAHHHMAHHH** {Jazz Hands}. Although given that Kev is butthurt and flannelling because no one takes his dishonest shilling seriously, it's all pretty par for the course.

It's pretty simple, as I think Wes and Kristine and others have already made plain. In the supplementary materials around the film could very likely be documents or whatever that are the Wedge Document 2. Or something like it. It's a possibility that any group of people interested in the legal challenges that creationists cause school boards etc to undergo cannot afford to let pass. Forewarned is forearmed when it comes to combating creationist tropes in court.

If these materials contain nothing of the sort, then fine, there is other value in owning the film. If the auction is lost then there's value in having that money in the TO coffers. It's pretty much a win-win situation for TO.

Of course it's definitely a lose-lose situation for Kevvo and chums....but then it always has been.

Louis

P.S. I am grateful to 'Ras for keeping the Waaaaaaaaaahmbulance on standby. I have fainting couches and smelling salts available for the concerned.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on June 27 2011,06:08

Quote (Louis @ June 27 2011,11:44)
P.S. I am grateful to 'Ras for keeping the Waaaaaaaaaahmbulance on standby. I have fainting couches and smelling salts available for the concerned.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Do you also have a readily-available amount of clench-ready pearl necklaces? They can come in handy.

When all's said and done, getting the rights to Expelled has a kind of beauty and ellegance in its own ironic awesomeness. An annotated version would be a delight, whatever the extra material gained with the bid. Sure, it would make the movie twice as long, but only the original half of it would be tedious. Plus I'd finally muster the courage to watch that pile of crap in one go, which is a lot more than I have been able to muster this far.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 27 2011,07:54

I've been told that we've received 375 donations via PayPal since our announcement. That's an amazing response on the part of the pro-science community.

In the case that the TOAF "Wins Ben Stein's Movie!", the auction house requires clearing out the property from its Dallas location within 24 hours of payment. There's the possibility of assistance from other sources, but if there's anybody here who might be able to get themselves to Dallas and volunteer for the inventory, packing, and moving detail, let me know (you can send me a PM). If we have to do this, we would need people for Thursday and Friday of this week. Thus, I'd like to do like back in scouts and "be prepared".
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton on June 27 2011,10:35

Quote (Schroedinger's Dog @ June 27 2011,05:44)
How does he jump from 013 to 58? Way to keep up with the stock sock market!  :angry:
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


FTFY.
Posted by: socle on June 27 2011,11:44

Eh?  10 bids within 4 minutes, all apparently by the same bidder?
Posted by: dvunkannon on June 27 2011,11:53

Quote (socle @ June 27 2011,12:44)
Eh?  10 bids within 4 minutes, all apparently by the same bidder?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bidder 5538 apparently has a "MaxBid" that is higher than all of those bids by 8466, who may have been trying to get higher than that. The last column on the right shows that 5538 is still the winning bid, but since that bid is not on the list, it must be a MaxBid. See the note at the bottom of the history page:

< http://www.maxanet.com/cgi-bin/mnhistory.cgi?rosen2/1 >
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 27 2011,12:24

Quote (dvunkannon @ June 27 2011,11:53)
Quote (socle @ June 27 2011,12:44)
Eh?  10 bids within 4 minutes, all apparently by the same bidder?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bidder 5538 apparently has a "MaxBid" that is higher than all of those bids by 8466, who may have been trying to get higher than that. The last column on the right shows that 5538 is still the winning bid, but since that bid is not on the list, it must be a MaxBid. See the note at the bottom of the history page:

< http://www.maxanet.com/cgi-bin/mnhistory.cgi?rosen2/1 >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Anyone want to bet that bidder 8369 was JoeG?
Posted by: socle on June 27 2011,13:17

Thanks, dvunkannon.
Posted by: JonF on June 27 2011,13:20

Quote (Wolfhound @ June 25 2011,21:59)
Quote (Doc Bill @ June 25 2011,18:47)
Mummy!  Wolfie is trying to take away my chew toy, Mummy!

Mummy, make Wolfie stop!  Poopy-head Wolfie!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


*Dodges rolled up newspaper*
*tucks tail*
*lowers head*
*whines plaintively*
*tears up sofa while you aren't looking*
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: Kristine on June 27 2011,14:49

Actually, what would constitute a nightmare regarding this collection, in my opinion (other than finding crap strewn all over the place, which happens), would be to find pictures of someone's kids, valentines or other correspondence of a personal nature, someone's Spanish homework or materials otherwise of a different provenance that would require identification and transfer to the owner. It happens.

After my internship last year, I was attending the SAA conference, or I would have volunteered to help my colleagues pack up a huge collection of aviation photographs in New Jersey. One of the archivists was kind enough to share his photographs of the packing with me: when they cleared  everything away, they discovered an exercise machine! :) (Same provenance, but out of scope.)
Posted by: darwin's bulfinch on June 27 2011,17:52

Quote (dvunkannon @ June 27 2011,11:53)
Bidder 5538 apparently has a "MaxBid" that is higher than all of those bids by 8466, who may have been trying to get higher than that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I'm not sure, but I think 5538 could well be Ken Ham.  I'm assuming that this "maxanet" auction service which Rosen is using assigns people bidding numbers permanently; if not, then this means nothing, but previous auctions I find when searching for "5538 maxanet" on Google involve purchases of various small-value items from an auctioneer called Penny Worley in Maineville, OH, which is a suburb of Cincinnati.  The Creation Museum is, of course, also in a town just outside Cincinnati.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 27 2011,18:11

The AiG connection seems plausible. I would prefer to win the bid, but making AiG spend more than they planned to buy it is a decent consolation prize.
Posted by: Schroedinger's Dog on June 27 2011,18:20

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 28 2011,00:11)
The AiG connection seems plausible. I would prefer to win the bid, but making AiG spend more than they planned to buy it is a decent consolation prize.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hear, hear! This is a win win, whatever happens!
Posted by: clamboy on June 27 2011,18:22

I posted the first result to a Google search of "5538 maxanet ham," but decided that that was wrong.
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 27 2011,18:52

Don't answer this, but I'm wondering if TOAF has shot its bolt?
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 27 2011,20:55

Seriously!??!?!?  Awesome.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 27 2011,22:05

I've seen an idea floated elsewhere that strikes me as something we could aim for if the bid goes our way. It was suggested that a documentary about the making of "Expelled" could be an interesting project.

I'd suggest a working title of "Intelligently Designed Lies: The Creation of 'Expelled'".









What? That is the soft version.
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 27 2011,22:26

Quote (OgreMkV @ June 27 2011,16:52)
Don't answer this, but I'm wondering if TOAF has shot its bolt?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


There are still some "reserve" assets.  ;)  But, I agree with Wesley's recent comment.


Posted by: OgreMkV on June 27 2011,23:00

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 27 2011,22:05)
I've seen an idea floated elsewhere that strikes me as something we could aim for if the bid goes our way. It was suggested that a documentary about the making of "Expelled" could be an interesting project.

I'd suggest a working title of "Intelligently Designed Lies: The Creation of 'Expelled'".









What? That is the soft version.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Count me in.  How can I help?
Posted by: Louis on June 28 2011,03:28

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 28 2011,04:05)
I've seen an idea floated elsewhere that strikes me as something we could aim for if the bid goes our way. It was suggested that a documentary about the making of "Expelled" could be an interesting project.

I'd suggest a working title of "Intelligently Designed Lies: The Creation of 'Expelled'".









What? That is the soft version.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've said it before and I'll say it again. You're much nicer than I am. I have a series of working titles in mind.

Louis
Posted by: BathTub on June 28 2011,03:33

Reserve Met! So it's going to sell, that's cool. price is creeping up. Fingers Crossed that TO gets it.
Posted by: Seversky on June 28 2011,08:00

Quote (BathTub @ June 28 2011,03:33)
Reserve Met! So it's going to sell, that's cool. price is creeping up. Fingers Crossed that TO gets it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Fingers crossed, of course. But the fact is religion is where the big money is.
Posted by: Kristine on June 28 2011,08:57

Quote (Louis @ June 28 2011,03:28)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ June 28 2011,04:05)
I've seen an idea floated elsewhere that strikes me as something we could aim for if the bid goes our way. It was suggested that a documentary about the making of "Expelled" could be an interesting project.

I'd suggest a working title of "Intelligently Designed Lies: The Creation of 'Expelled'".









What? That is the soft version.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've said it before and I'll say it again. You're much nicer than I am. I have a series of working titles in mind.

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Creationism at a Crossroads: the Evolution of Expelled." Now, that's a nice title. :)
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 28 2011,10:03

I am very surprised at the size of the bids. I had made a side offer for $200 if it would have closed the deal. It would have had to have been $20,000.


8461 152000.00 Jun-28-2011 11:03am 152000.00 8461

8468 199500.00 Jun-28-2011 11:10am 201000.00 8461

OH!


Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 28 2011,10:11

I think L. Susskind needs to read Thomas Kuhn.
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 28 2011,10:23

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,08:11)
I think L. Susskind needs to read Thomas Kuhn.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Kevie, not only are you a lying sack of shit, you are presumptuous as well.
Posted by: Kristine on June 28 2011,10:27

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,10:11)
I think L. Susskind needs to read Thomas Kuhn.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Oh, < the invocation of Thomas Kuhn >! *Tremble* ;)
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 28 2011,10:27

Not exactly a well reasoned response, but not unexpected, either.
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 28 2011,10:30

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,10:27)
Not exactly a well reasoned response, but not unexpected, either.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Musical choice for your new film:
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2cTc7DofrA >
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 28 2011,10:31

I love it. Thanks, Richard.
Posted by: Louis on June 28 2011,10:33

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,16:27)
Not exactly a well reasoned response, but not unexpected, either.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What, precisely, is it about your ideas and claims (and by extension, those various flavours of creationism you espouse) that deserves a reasoned response? The reasoned responses occurred decades ago and you and your ideological chums ignored them. It's time for the pointing and the laughing.

When you make claims that so heavily fly in the teeth of the available evidence, when you slander people as BUNNIES in your "work", why on earth do you expect anything other than the ridicule you richly deserve?

Louis

P.S. Susskind probably HAS read Thomas Kuhn. If he has I'd put money on the fact that he understood it. Mind you, even if he hasn't read it and/or doesn't understand it, he would share something with you, eh Kevvo.
Posted by: Robin on June 28 2011,10:35

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,10:27)
Not exactly a well reasoned response, but not unexpected, either.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Is there any response criticizing ID you'd accept as "well-reasoned", Kevin? I doubt it. Try this one: forget for a moment that there's no actual research supporting the concept of ID, ID doesn't explain anything and is of no utility. That's really all there is to it.
Posted by: Louis on June 28 2011,10:35

Whoa! There's an auto edit in place that replaces the word "BUNNIES"* with "Bunnies".

Louis

*N.A.Z.I.S.

ETA: I have double checked. It exists. I disapprove. Censorship is very silly.
Posted by: Kristine on June 28 2011,10:36

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,10:27)
Not exactly a well reasoned response, but not unexpected, either.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I really get under your skin, don't I? :)

Your statement is a < non-sequitur >. Read and learn.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 28 2011,10:38

If Susskind has read Kuhn, then I'd like to hear him justify his analogy in light of the relationship Kuhn draws between science and philosophy, b/c I would call Susskind's statement is a gross oversimplification.
Posted by: Sealawr on June 28 2011,10:41

$201,000 for a failed movie?  Maybe there was blackmail material :D and Ben Stein needed to keep it out of the public eye.
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 28 2011,10:47

What I'm saying is that the relationship between science and philosophy isn't uni-directional like a cart pulling a horse. I would liken it more to two oxen attached to the same yoke. Sometimes they pull together, sometimes they pull against each other. Sometimes one leads and the other follows, and then it switches again. There's far more interplay going on that Susskind acknowledges in that (admittedly) brief quote (the context of which I'm unaware).
Posted by: Louis on June 28 2011,10:49

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,16:38)
If Susskind has read Kuhn, then I'd like to hear him justify his analogy in light of the relationship Kuhn draws between science and philosophy, b/c I would call Susskind's statement is a gross oversimplification.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Then, and this is a wonderful piece of advice you can use in your life from this point forward:

ASK HIM!

Amazing, I know. Instead of wasting everyone else's time you can simply email the man himself. Here, I'll even help you:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"Dear Dr Susskind,

My name is Kevin. I was a writer on the creationist propaganda movie Expelled and I enjoy frequenting various bits of the internet to continue shilling for my odious, dishonest little screed in which I slander actual scientists and misrepresent science. Please, please, please could you tell me if you've read anything by Thomas Kuhn because I am trying to pretend I've read a book to some strangers on the internet. If you say you have read it I will be able to continue in the illusion that I am weally, weeally serious and important. Thank you and big kisses.

Yours

Kevin Miller"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



No, no. There's no need to thank me. I'll even help you more.
< Here > are his contact details. Now I know that my getting hold of them involved some "research" and that is a little tough for you creationists, but try it out. You might like it. Doubtful, but I live in hope.

Louis

ETA: P.S. You seem to have a problem with Dr GH's sig line. Mine should be the one that gives you more problems, Kevvo.
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 28 2011,10:58

Hey Kevin,

remind me again where Sternberg is currently doing research...

Thanks
Posted by: Kristine on June 28 2011,11:08

You're talking to someone whose undergrad was in Lit. There are three essay topics that I would automatically exclude from any incoming freshman writing class simply to spare the faculty any more of this dreck:

1. Why I think deer/rabbit hunting is evil
2. Why my mother/father is my greatest hero
3. How "worldview" influences those who don't have Jesus until a "paradigm-shift" hits them too, etc.

Because, really! It becomes difficult to grade papers when the students seem to be plagiarizing each other when, in fact, they're not.

Let's move on.
Posted by: sparc on June 28 2011,11:11

Quote (Sealawr @ June 28 2011,10:41)
$201,000 for a failed movie?  Maybe there was blackmail material :D and Ben Stein needed to keep it out of the public eye.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Imagine the winner is Yoko Ono.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on June 28 2011,11:12

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,10:27)
Not exactly a well reasoned response, but not unexpected, either.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Then it falls to you to explain the flaws.

But no, typical creationist. Says something is wrong but cannot explain why.
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 28 2011,11:14

I really want to know who were the two players that took it up that far.

Did the whole movie cost $200k to make?

I'm with Wesley, let's make our own.
Posted by: Robin on June 28 2011,11:20

Quote (Louis @ June 28 2011,10:35)

---------------------QUOTE-------------------




---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Whoa! There's an auto edit in place that replaces the word "BUNNIES"* with "Bunnies".

Louis

*N.A.Z.I.S.

ETA: I have double checked. It exists. I disapprove. Censorship is very silly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Godwin's Lagomorphic Codicil?
Posted by: dvunkannon on June 28 2011,11:25

Quote (OgreMkV @ June 28 2011,12:14)
I really want to know who were the two players that took it up that far.

Did the whole movie cost $200k to make?

I'm with Wesley, let's make our own.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, 8461's MaxBid is yet unknown. It could have been 225K. We just know that 8468 ran out of money at 200K.

But based on the timestamps, the bidding should have stopped a few minutes earlier. It looks to me like 8461 won with a MaxBid around 120K.
Posted by: Kristine on June 28 2011,11:40

I like the idea of Ben Stein buying the film to promote it again himself, with the more ambitious original version finally getting out there. The history of cinema goes from the shot of an approaching train to that of a trainwreck.

And I do suspect that the pre-production of Expelled cost a pretty penny.
Posted by: Dale_Husband on June 28 2011,11:47

I see no point in ANYONE wasting their money on Expelled. I spent $8.00 on it a couple of years ago, and that was enough forever. It was a crappy movie, and it should be forgotten. Let dead dogs stay dead.
Posted by: Louis on June 28 2011,12:02

Quote (Robin @ June 28 2011,17:20)
[quote=Louis,June 28 2011,10:35][/quote]


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Whoa! There's an auto edit in place that replaces the word "BUNNIES"* with "Bunnies".

Louis

*N.A.Z.I.S.

ETA: I have double checked. It exists. I disapprove. Censorship is very silly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Godwin's Lagomorphic Codicil?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Your ideas are interesting and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Louis
Posted by: Robin on June 28 2011,12:05

What say we take all that collected money and use it to buy the rights to Firefly/Serenity and get that back on the air? Hey...at least it was a quality show!
Posted by: dvunkannon on June 28 2011,12:20

Quote (dvunkannon @ June 28 2011,12:25)
Quote (OgreMkV @ June 28 2011,12:14)
I really want to know who were the two players that took it up that far.

Did the whole movie cost $200k to make?

I'm with Wesley, let's make our own.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, 8461's MaxBid is yet unknown. It could have been 225K. We just know that 8468 ran out of money at 200K.

But based on the timestamps, the bidding should have stopped a few minutes earlier. It looks to me like 8461 won with a MaxBid around 120K.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OK, I see the "no sniping" rule extended the bidding. Sorry about previous post.

Interesting behavior in the bidding that the two big spenders didn't show up until the night before, then they inflated the price by an order of magnitude. It doesn't look like TOAF got to bid at all.
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 28 2011,12:23

Quote (dvunkannon @ June 28 2011,12:20)
Quote (dvunkannon @ June 28 2011,12:25)
Quote (OgreMkV @ June 28 2011,12:14)
I really want to know who were the two players that took it up that far.

Did the whole movie cost $200k to make?

I'm with Wesley, let's make our own.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Actually, 8461's MaxBid is yet unknown. It could have been 225K. We just know that 8468 ran out of money at 200K.

But based on the timestamps, the bidding should have stopped a few minutes earlier. It looks to me like 8461 won with a MaxBid around 120K.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


OK, I see the "no sniping" rule extended the bidding. Sorry about previous post.

Interesting behavior in the bidding that the two big spenders didn't show up until the night before, then they inflated the price by an order of magnitude. It doesn't look like TOAF got to bid at all.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Is OK.  The website is a new one for me and I wasn't sure I was reading the data correctly.

Ah well.
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 28 2011,12:56

Quote (Sealawr @ June 28 2011,08:41)
$201,000 for a failed movie?  Maybe there was blackmail material :D and Ben Stein needed to keep it out of the public eye.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I am very curious as to who would waste that kind of money.

Too bad we cannot learn the identity of the second highest bidder as well.
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 28 2011,13:00

Quote (dvunkannon @ June 28 2011,10:20)
It doesn't look like TOAF got to bid at all.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Technically, there was one TOAF bid.
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 28 2011,13:22

There had to have been some really damning shit in those files.

That is the only thing I can think of that could justify $210K.
Posted by: KCdgw on June 28 2011,14:41

Quote (Dr.GH @ June 28 2011,13:22)
There had to have been some really damning shit in those files.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Like the fact the "talk" Stein was supposed to be giving was completely staged.
Posted by: OgreMkV on June 28 2011,15:14

Quote (KCdgw @ June 28 2011,14:41)
Quote (Dr.GH @ June 28 2011,13:22)
There had to have been some really damning shit in those files.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Like the fact the "talk" Stein was supposed to be giving was completely staged.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yeah.  I wonder if the pay stubs to the extras was in there?

Of course, the entire interviews would have been in there.

I wonder if all the original materials from the Sternberg affair where there too?

"If it's the truth, why do you have to lie to defend it?"

Of course, it's all kind of moot anyway.  Everyone knows about all of these things.  As GH says, I wonder what's really in those files?
Posted by: Kristine on June 28 2011,15:38

But contact with the actual evidence has significance - that's why I kept referring to it as The Creationists 2. Their efforts are evolving, although you're right to point out that we already know what they are.

Dammit, this is the second near-miss for me actually packing up a collection! I just want to do it, once, and apply assessment in the field. Plus, I was going to get my digital camera out for a group shimmy! :p And yes, Wesley, I mean you!
Posted by: Henry J on June 28 2011,16:24



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Their efforts are evolving,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What, their efforts aren't designed?  :p
Posted by: Kristine on June 28 2011,16:27

Quote (Henry J @ June 28 2011,16:24)


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Their efforts are evolving,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What, their efforts aren't designed?  :p
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That is what is so amusing about it all--no, not designed, because reactive. :)
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 28 2011,16:32

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 29 2011,01:38)
If Susskind has read Kuhn, then I'd like to hear him justify his analogy in light of the relationship Kuhn draws between science and philosophy, b/c I would call Susskind's statement is a gross oversimplification.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Discussion of the philosophy of science doesn't work if the data contradicts your position, otherwise why would you have to lie to make a movie supporting your position.
Posted by: Amadan on June 28 2011,16:54

Meanwhile, < a new front emerges in the war >.
Posted by: J-Dog on June 28 2011,17:04

Quote (Amadan @ June 28 2011,16:54)
Meanwhile, < a new front emerges in the war >.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I hope you PM'd RAS about this...
Posted by: kevinmillerxi on June 28 2011,18:13

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,10:27)
Not exactly a well reasoned response, but not unexpected, either.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Sorry, Kristine, I was actually referring to Dr. GH. You don't get under my skin at all.
Posted by: steve_h on June 28 2011,18:38

TOAF is planning to < return > contributions made towards the purchase of this film.  I would have offered more if I had known this, but in the end, I made my contribution with full knowledge that it was not returnable. If it is returned, I will therefore un-return it with a small addition for administrative overheads.

Thanks for being so classy.

(but I would like to see the money stuff pages kept up to date in the interest of openness)
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 28 2011,18:42

Quote (Kristine @ June 28 2011,13:38)
Dammit, this is the second near-miss for me actually packing up a collection! I just want to do it, once, and apply assessment in the field. Plus, I was going to get my digital camera out for a group shimmy! :p And yes, Wesley, I mean you!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ms K.

I have years of collected materials that I shudder at trying to get sent off to appropriate places.

Sherrie says we will sleep on the sofa, if you can get rid of the dozens of animal skeletons, (hundreds counting the fish skeletons). Also, a seed and pollen collection of a few hundred species.

There Is More!: hundreds of psychiatric patient interviews, an ethnographic film of a ChaChac', the Yucatec Mayan rain ceremony (and film editors out there? PBS made an offer, but too cheap), and a load of other stuff.

We'll throw in free laundry, and meals.
Posted by: Kristine on June 28 2011,19:00

Quote (Dr.GH @ June 28 2011,18:42)
Quote (Kristine @ June 28 2011,13:38)
Dammit, this is the second near-miss for me actually packing up a collection! I just want to do it, once, and apply assessment in the field. Plus, I was going to get my digital camera out for a group shimmy! :p And yes, Wesley, I mean you!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ms K.

I have years of collected materials that I shudder at trying to get sent off to appropriate places.

Sherrie says we will sleep on the sofa, if you can get rid of the dozens of animal skeletons, (hundreds counting the fish skeletons). Also, a seed and pollen collection of a few hundred species.

There Is More!: hundreds of psychiatric patient interviews, an ethnographic film of a ChaChac', the Yucatec Mayan rain ceremony (and film editors out there? PBS made an offer, but too cheap), and a load of other stuff.

We'll throw in free laundry, and meals.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


C'est tempting! Do the "meals" include shots of Tequilia every time Kevin takes my bait? ;) Although I am up to my eyebrows in aviation artifacts right now. Which, of course, I love. :)
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 28 2011,19:50

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,11:38)
If Susskind has read Kuhn, then I'd like to hear him justify his analogy in light of the relationship Kuhn draws between science and philosophy, b/c I would call Susskind's statement is a gross oversimplification.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


why should we care what you would call it?

hint:  we don't!  toodles
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 28 2011,19:52

Quote (Louis @ June 28 2011,11:49)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,16:38)
If Susskind has read Kuhn, then I'd like to hear him justify his analogy in light of the relationship Kuhn draws between science and philosophy, b/c I would call Susskind's statement is a gross oversimplification.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Then, and this is a wonderful piece of advice you can use in your life from this point forward:

ASK HIM!

Amazing, I know. Instead of wasting everyone else's time you can simply email the man himself. Here, I'll even help you:

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
"Dear Dr Susskind,

My name is Kevin. I was a writer on the creationist propaganda movie Expelled and I enjoy frequenting various bits of the internet to continue shilling for my odious, dishonest little screed in which I slander actual scientists and misrepresent science. Please, please, please could you tell me if you've read anything by Thomas Kuhn because I am trying to pretend I've read a book to some strangers on the internet. If you say you have read it I will be able to continue in the illusion that I am weally, weeally serious and important. Thank you and big kisses.

Yours

Kevin Miller"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



No, no. There's no need to thank me. I'll even help you more.
< Here > are his contact details. Now I know that my getting hold of them involved some "research" and that is a little tough for you creationists, but try it out. You might like it. Doubtful, but I live in hope.

Louis

ETA: P.S. You seem to have a problem with Dr GH's sig line. Mine should be the one that gives you more problems, Kevvo.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


in which Louis tries to make a new boyfrind

pssst don't listen kevv-o keep after those windmills YOU constructed don't let them give you THEIR WINDMILLS THOSE BASTRADS
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 28 2011,19:53

Quote (Dale_Husband @ June 28 2011,12:47)
I see no point in ANYONE wasting their money on Expelled. I spent $8.00 on it a couple of years ago, and that was enough forever. It was a crappy movie, and it should be forgotten. Let dead dogs stay dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HA HA
Posted by: Wolfhound on June 28 2011,21:29

Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ June 28 2011,20:53)
Quote (Dale_Husband @ June 28 2011,12:47)
I see no point in ANYONE wasting their money on Expelled. I spent $8.00 on it a couple of years ago, and that was enough forever. It was a crappy movie, and it should be forgotten. Let dead dogs stay dead.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


HA HA
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: fnxtr on June 28 2011,21:56

Quote (Richardthughes @ June 28 2011,08:30)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 28 2011,10:27)
Not exactly a well reasoned response, but not unexpected, either.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Musical choice for your new film:
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2cTc7DofrA >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I think this is more a apropos:

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x3TMBeX-ws >
Posted by: Doc Bill on June 28 2011,23:28

I never saw Expelled although it played in a seedy theater in Houston for a day or so.  Pay, no way!

Thanks to Kristine, may she shimmy forever, I watched the 1st part on Youtube.

Must say, I was impressed with the opening how they did the credits on the b/w film clips like Nazi Germany.  Kev11 would have made a GREAT Nazi although he's too stupid to have been Colonel Klink and too skinny to be Sgt. Schultz.  However, our Kev does "know nutzing.  Nutzing!"

After that I skipped to the Sternberg interview which met all my expectations.  Lie upon lie and mock expressions of shock by Beuler, er, I mean that other guy, whatzis name, the guy who was fired from his newspaper job due to conflict of interest and ethical violations.

Anyway, that's all I could stand.  When it got to Crockershit's interview I lost interest.

In fact, I'm done.  Crawl back under your rock, Kev-1.1 for another couple of years or five until we get bored again.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD on June 29 2011,01:52

at some point we are going to find out who bought this piece of shit.  how does this work, i am sure there are all sorts of confidentiality whatsis but when do we get to find out?  

kevin, perhaps you could call up Sternberg, I think you know where to find him, right?  Axe him do he be knowin who bought this bitch. for that much loot i hope they shoop tranmaw into that mug and rerelease it
Posted by: Ptaylor on June 29 2011,04:35

< DeLerious > :  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Update, just in: Walt Ruloff and his associates, who were the original producers of EXPELLED, won the auction. More later.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 29 2011,07:11

Excellent. It appears that we may have had an effect, then.
Posted by: sparc on June 29 2011,07:40

Quote (Ptaylor @ June 29 2011,04:35)
< DeLerious > :    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Update, just in: Walt Ruloff and his associates, who were the original producers of EXPELLED, won the auction. More later.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just to understand: The former CEO of Premise Media buys the left overs of the very same now bankrupt Premise Media? Must have been a ticking time bomb.
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 29 2011,08:21

Quote (Ptaylor @ June 29 2011,02:35)
< DeLerious > :    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Update, just in: Walt Ruloff and his associates, who were the original producers of EXPELLED, won the auction. More later.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe I need more caffeine, but wouldn't the court, and the IRS wonder how the bankrupt producers can afford to buy back their bankrupt company's only asset?  

Is there an empty cell next to Kent Hovind?
Posted by: Robin on June 29 2011,08:40

Quote (Dr.GH @ June 29 2011,08:21)
Maybe I need more caffeine, but wouldn't the court, and the IRS wonder how the bankrupt producers can afford to buy back their bankrupt company's only asset?  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Not likely. It is an oddity of our economic system (from a psychological/common sense standpoint) that companies are not people. Thus, a company can go bankrupt while the principles are dragged to the floor by the weight of their billfolds.
Posted by: Kristine on June 29 2011,09:19

Quote (Robin @ June 29 2011,08:40)
Quote (Dr.GH @ June 29 2011,08:21)
Maybe I need more caffeine, but wouldn't the court, and the IRS wonder how the bankrupt producers can afford to buy back their bankrupt company's only asset?  
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Not likely. It is an oddity of our economic system (from a psychological/common sense standpoint) that companies are not people. Thus, a company can go bankrupt while the principles are dragged to the floor by the weight of their billfolds.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought that a corporation is legally considered to be an individual though.

My mind is boggling! We need an image here of Expelled nesting dolls!

This would make a great article for Skeptical Inquirer, don't you think? :)

ETA - Something tells me that our shimmyparty just got delayed, not canceled. This is deliciously, deliciously not over, folks.


Posted by: Richardthughes on June 29 2011,09:27

Quote (sparc @ June 29 2011,07:40)
Quote (Ptaylor @ June 29 2011,04:35)
< DeLerious > :    

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Update, just in: Walt Ruloff and his associates, who were the original producers of EXPELLED, won the auction. More later.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Just to understand: The former CEO of Premise Media buys the left overs of the very same now bankrupt Premise Media? Must have been a ticking time bomb.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It's like a variation on "the producers":

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producers_(musical) >



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
As in the film, the story concerns two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich by overselling interests in a Broadway flop. The humor of the show is accessible to a wide range of audiences and draws on ridiculous accents, caricatures of homosexuals and Nazis, and many show business in-jokes.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Robin on June 29 2011,09:42

Quote (Kristine @ June 29 2011,09:19)
I thought that a corporation is legally considered to be an individual though.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Quite so...an independent individual entity. A corporation is no one person however.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
My mind is boggling! We need an image here of Expelled nesting dolls!

This would make a great article for Skeptical Inquirer, don't you think? :)

ETA - Something tells me that our shimmyparty just got delayed, not canceled. This is deliciously, deliciously not over, folks.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



I don't even want to think about how much surgery I'd likely need if I tried to shimmy...
Posted by: Kristine on June 29 2011,09:48

< A look at Walt Ruloff >.
Posted by: utidjian on June 29 2011,10:26

So um... if Premise Media went bankrupt on a venture that cost $3.5M and netted $8M .... then it appears it was mis-managed. Presumably there are businesses and people that didn't get paid what and when they were supposed to be paid by Premise. The former owners (until yesterday) of Premise get out of paying off those debts. Premise gets auctioned off and the proceeds from the auction are used to pay off the creditors.
The winner of the auction is the former financial backer of Premise (but not the owner?)

Something still seems awfully fishy here.

To complete this, could Ruloff hire Manning as CFO to manage his "new" property?

-DU-
Posted by: Richardthughes on June 29 2011,10:33

Quote (utidjian @ June 29 2011,10:26)
So um... if Premise Media went bankrupt on a venture that cost $3.5M and netted $8M .... then it appears it was mis-managed. Presumably there are businesses and people that didn't get paid what and when they were supposed to be paid by Premise. The former owners (until yesterday) of Premise get out of paying off those debts. Premise gets auctioned off and the proceeds from the auction are used to pay off the creditors.
The winner of the auction is the former financial backer of Premise (but not the owner?)

Something still seems awfully fishy here.

To complete this, could Ruloff hire Manning as CFO to manage his "new" property?

-DU-
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Depends on the revenue share with the cinemas.
Posted by: Kristine on June 29 2011,10:57

Quote (utidjian @ June 29 2011,10:26)
So um... if Premise Media went bankrupt on a venture that cost $3.5M and netted $8M .... then it appears it was mis-managed. Presumably there are businesses and people that didn't get paid what and when they were supposed to be paid by Premise. The former owners (until yesterday) of Premise get out of paying off those debts. Premise gets auctioned off and the proceeds from the auction are used to pay off the creditors.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Um, yes. My thoughts exactly. These guys manage their "science ventures" the same way that televangelists manage their "business ventures." Stay tuned. :)
Posted by: Dr.GH on June 29 2011,11:27

If Premise Media owes more than $201K, then it looks to me that Walt Ruloff just found a great way to defraud investors, and creditors.
Posted by: Amadan on June 29 2011,11:45

As a general rule it's difficult to pin the losses of an insolvent limited liability corporation on its directors or shareholders. You would have to show that they company had not just been mismanaged but that it was done deliberately or recklessly, or that the company was not being used for its original corporate purposes (i.e. you can't hide behind a limited liability company to avoid paying for your groceries or the kids' private school).

Unless the company was so badly run as to raise an inference of fraud, it's unlikely that the backers will be blamed for being able to walk away from the wreckage. That's what insolvency and bankruptcy laws are there for.

I wouldn't be too surprised if Ruloff & co had a bit of help from Howard and Friends to stop any incriminating production notes falling into the wrong hands. The receiver or liquidator will have no objection, because by overpaying for it, the creditors get a bigger dividend on what they're owed. As a result, I don't expect any legal issues to arise.

Pity, though.
Posted by: Kristine on June 29 2011,11:49

They still have to cough up the $$. Let's see if they do - or if, as someone at Pharyngula noted, they just bidded what they do not have to play for time and waste everyone else's.
Posted by: MichaelJ on June 29 2011,16:59

Quote (utidjian @ June 30 2011,01:26)
So um... if Premise Media went bankrupt on a venture that cost $3.5M and netted $8M .... then it appears it was mis-managed. Presumably there are businesses and people that didn't get paid what and when they were supposed to be paid by Premise. The former owners (until yesterday) of Premise get out of paying off those debts. Premise gets auctioned off and the proceeds from the auction are used to pay off the creditors.
The winner of the auction is the former financial backer of Premise (but not the owner?)

Something still seems awfully fishy here.

To complete this, could Ruloff hire Manning as CFO to manage his "new" property?

-DU-
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


.. but Premise media wasn't just a one movie company. It could have gone broke from it's other projects.

If there wasn't limited liability, nobody would ever invest in anything. Even with the best intentions a business can go broke. The bad guys who milk a company for all they can get give all businesses a bad name.
Posted by: Dr.GH on July 08 2011,12:27

Here is a bit of deja vu, before the vu.

< http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010....ys.html >
Posted by: Kristine on Sep. 22 2011,14:03

I have found < another journalist > who agrees with < my assessment > of the self-obscurantist tactics of the creationist-ID crowd:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
The problem with the genre is that many people who watch the film don’t have a scorecard to follow the inside baseball that ultimately makes them interesting. Do fans of Ben Stein the game-show host know that he was a longtime columnist for the notorious right-wing organ The American Spectator? Since Stein travels to Seattle to visit the offices of the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank sympathetic to Intelligent Design, should he I.D. interviewees who have connections to the foundation? He doesn’t, just as he fails to tell us that religion reporter Larry Witham, who talks about media coverage of Intelligent Design, was a longtime employee of the conservative newspaper The Washington Times.

The fact is, few filmmakers disclose such connections, partly because they haven’t time to do so in a feature-length movie, but mostly because they would undermine their own agendas. Ben Stein is about as fair and balanced as any of the new breed of documentarians, so the standard warning applies: Viewers beware.

---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: midwifetoad on Sep. 22 2011,14:22

I tend to ignore all documentaries that have an agenda.

If they have something to say, I'll red about them on forums where people can discuss the pros and cons.

Some years ago I quit watching Nova because they were being fair and balanced about UFOs and other pseudoscience.

Fair and balanced meaning they neglected to interview skeptics.

That seems to have been an aberration.
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 06 2011,04:28

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 22 2007,14:53)
"This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS."

It sounds like philosophy to me Ben, not science. You are perhaps confusing the two. Science is concerned with natural world:

< http://dictionary.reference.com/browse....science >

If God exists then surely it is outside of the physical universe?

Also, I don't thin you understand what 'hypothesis' means. In scientific terms, it doesn't mean belief:

"A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation."

Did they test their hypothesis? Did it become a theory?

People are of course free to believe what they would like. Science is actually evidence based, and ID has none - it is simply an argument from incredulity.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Please tell us where a Scientific Method has determined that a bacteria has evolved into anything but a bacteria or a fruit fly has evolved into anything but a fruit fly?

The practice of science involves formulating hypothesis that can be tested for falsifiability via observed data. A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. Basically, if evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, then the hypothesis can become accepted as a good explanation of a phenomenon. One definition of a theory is to say it's an accepted hypothesis.

Fossil were accumulated and faked, soft t-rex tissues disproved radiomagic dating, punctuated equilibrium was hypothesized to no avail, fruit flies were zapped but to avail, DNA hybridization is racked with fraud because its to no avail. The very fact that the basic tenets of evolution theory changes every decade is enough to expose its faith based pseudoscience.
Posted by: rossum on Oct. 06 2011,06:10

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 06 2011,04:28)
Please tell us where a Scientific Method has determined that a bacteria has evolved into anything but a bacteria
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Try mitochondria.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
or a fruit fly has evolved into anything but a fruit fly?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You don't understand common descent and the twin nested hierarchy, do you.  For your first piece of homework go and find out how many different species of fruit fly there are.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Fossil were accumulated and faked,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What do fakes prove?  Do the faked Hitler diaries prove that Hitler didn't exist?  There are plenty of non-fake fossils.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
soft t-rex tissues disproved radiomagic dating, punctuated equilibrium was hypothesized to no avail, fruit flies were zapped but to avail, DNA hybridization is racked with fraud because its to no avail. The very fact that the basic tenets of evolution theory changes every decade is enough to expose its faith based pseudoscience.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


We already know that creationist websites tell lies, and that some people believe that lies that they are told by creationists.  You don't need to tell us again.

rossum
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 06 2011,06:58

Quote (rossum @ Oct. 06 2011,06:10)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 06 2011,04:28)
Please tell us where a Scientific Method has determined that a bacteria has evolved into anything but a bacteria
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Try mitochondria.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
or a fruit fly has evolved into anything but a fruit fly?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You don't understand common descent and the twin nested hierarchy, do you.  For your first piece of homework go and find out how many different species of fruit fly there are.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Fossil were accumulated and faked,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What do fakes prove?  Do the faked Hitler diaries prove that Hitler didn't exist?  There are plenty of non-fake fossils.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
soft t-rex tissues disproved radiomagic dating, punctuated equilibrium was hypothesized to no avail, fruit flies were zapped but to avail, DNA hybridization is racked with fraud because its to no avail. The very fact that the basic tenets of evolution theory changes every decade is enough to expose its faith based pseudoscience.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


We already know that creationist websites tell lies, and that some people believe that lies that they are told by creationists.  You don't need to tell us again.

rossum
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Mitochondria? Why ya so hesitant to elaborate?

You dont have the slightest idea how many fruit flies there are but what is your point? Micro-adaptations are stem from preexisting phenotypes selected via an intelligently designed survival mechanism?

Lies? Can you actually defend your defensiveness?
Posted by: OgreMkV on Oct. 06 2011,07:09

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 06 2011,06:58)
Quote (rossum @ Oct. 06 2011,06:10)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 06 2011,04:28)
Please tell us where a Scientific Method has determined that a bacteria has evolved into anything but a bacteria
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Try mitochondria.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
or a fruit fly has evolved into anything but a fruit fly?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You don't understand common descent and the twin nested hierarchy, do you.  For your first piece of homework go and find out how many different species of fruit fly there are.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Fossil were accumulated and faked,
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What do fakes prove?  Do the faked Hitler diaries prove that Hitler didn't exist?  There are plenty of non-fake fossils.

 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
soft t-rex tissues disproved radiomagic dating, punctuated equilibrium was hypothesized to no avail, fruit flies were zapped but to avail, DNA hybridization is racked with fraud because its to no avail. The very fact that the basic tenets of evolution theory changes every decade is enough to expose its faith based pseudoscience.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


We already know that creationist websites tell lies, and that some people believe that lies that they are told by creationists.  You don't need to tell us again.

rossum
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Mitochondria? Why ya so hesitant to elaborate?

You dont have the slightest idea how many fruit flies there are but what is your point? Micro-adaptations are stem from preexisting phenotypes selected via an intelligently designed survival mechanism?

Lies? Can you actually defend your defensiveness?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Look, if you can't be bothered to learn anything that doesn't support your point of view, why are you here.  I could answer all of these, but there's no point because you will just whine and cry that it doesn't answer you question.

Why don't you tell us YOUR notion of how the diversity of life came to be and all the evidence that you have for it.

Remember, even if you disprove evolution right here, right now, it DOES NOT mean intelligent design or creationism is correct.  Only positive supporting evidence can do that.   You don't even have that.  I can point to literally millions of peer-reviewed papers over the last 150 years that support evolution.

You can't point to even one that supports your notions... whatever they are.

Do we have all the answers?  No, of course not.  But we have more than you do.

I'm willing to bet anything that you will not describe your notions of how life came about, provide evidence for it, and defend it in the same way that you demand we defend evolution and science.

This, if true, will make you an epic hypocrite.  Prove me wrong.
Posted by: rossum on Oct. 06 2011,07:44

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 06 2011,06:58)
Mitochondria? Why ya so hesitant to elaborate?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Why are you so hesitant to look?  Afraid that you might find some real facts that show you have been lied to by your creationist sources?



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You dont have the slightest idea how many fruit flies there are but what is your point?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How many species of Fruit Fly.  You haven't done your homework.  You haven't even read the question correctly.



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Micro-adaptations are stem from preexisting phenotypes selected via an intelligently designed survival mechanism?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


And your evidence for this piece of wishful thinking is?  The answer to your homework question is relevant here.  If you don't understand the relevance then consider the phrase, "...or a eukaryote has evolved into anything but a eukaryote?".



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Lies? Can you actually defend your defensiveness?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes.  Creationists have no evidence to support their position.  So they lie to try to concoct some evidence in their favour and they lie to try to disparage the evidence for evolution.  Google "Gish Bullfrog" for a notorious example of a creationist lying about the evidence.

rossum
Posted by: Louis on Oct. 06 2011,09:12

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 06 2011,10:28)
[SNIP]

Please tell us where a Scientific Method has determined that a bacteria has evolved into anything but a bacteria or a fruit fly has evolved into anything but a fruit fly?

[SNIP]
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Crocoduck!

< WE GOT ONE!!!!!! >

Don't stop, I'm off to get popcorn. We haven't had a creationist around here for a while.

Louis
Posted by: fnxtr on Oct. 06 2011,09:32

I predict this isn't a new one at all, just a new nym.

Though it's hard to tell 'cause even the new ones shovel out the same tired horseshit.

SSDD.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Oct. 06 2011,11:58



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Don't stop, I'm off to get popcorn. We haven't had a creationist around here for a while.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Don't bother, it's just another impotent dumb shit trying to get a rise.

Hey Forast-Joe, got that water/ice thing figgered out yet?

Didn't think so.  Run along, you annoying little fuck, this site is for adults.
Posted by: Louis on Oct. 06 2011,12:11

Quote (Doc Bill @ Oct. 06 2011,17:58)
[SNIP]

...this site is for adults.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You take that back. You take that back right now, mister!

Why I outta....

...one of these days... POW!!! Right in the kisser! One of these days AliceBill, straight to the Moon!*

Louis

*Ahhh nostalgic misogyny and celebrations of domestic violence FTW**

** Or, erm, not, actually.
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 19 2011,21:36

An elaborately designed endocrine system purposefully selects ancestral phenotypes in accord to environmental stimuli; which btw is just the opposite of the pseudo-scientific natural mutation selection theory that says miraculous genetic mistakes survive and often replace ancestors if they occur at just the right time and niche
Posted by: Kristine on Oct. 19 2011,21:53

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 19 2011,21:36)
An elaborately designed endocrine system purposefully selects ancestral phenotypes in accord to environmental stimuli; which btw is just the opposite of the pseudo-scientific natural mutation selection theory that says miraculous genetic mistakes survive and often replace ancestors if they occur at just the right time and niche
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Yes, and isn't it amazing that each and every puddle is exactly the right size to hold the particular quantity of water that they are holding!

This is the "Expelled" thread. Post here comments about "Expelled."
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 19 2011,22:05

Perhaps you should  watch Expelled < http://www.dailymotion.com/video....io_tech >
Posted by: Ptaylor on Oct. 20 2011,00:44

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,15:05)
Perhaps you should  watch Expelled < http://www.dailymotion.com/video......io_tech >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, at least now you're on topic, but why on earth do you imagine anyone here would be interested in a trailer for Expelled? You may notice that this threat is currently 118 pages long and has gone on for 4 years - the commenters here are very familiar with the movie. If I can presume to speak for others here I would say the consensus is that it is total dreck (a view shared by the scientifically literate community). Given what you've posted above I cannot see how you're going to change that.
Posted by: Cubist on Oct. 20 2011,01:34

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 19 2011,22:05)
Perhaps you should  watch Expelled < http://www.dailymotion.com/video......io_tech >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Perhaps you should browse < Expelled Exposed >, which would allow you to discover the truth of the various matters which Ben Stein & Co. obscured, dissembled on, and outright lied about.
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Oct. 20 2011,03:21

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 19 2011,21:36)
An elaborately designed endocrine system purposefully selects ancestral phenotypes in accord to environmental stimuli; which btw is just the opposite of the pseudo-scientific natural mutation selection theory that says miraculous genetic mistakes survive and often replace ancestors if they occur at just the right time and niche
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What does ID tell us about how that system came to be?

Let me guess, it was "designed"?

Very informative...
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 20 2011,03:33

Quote (Ptaylor @ Oct. 20 2011,00:44)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,15:05)
Perhaps you should  watch Expelled < http://www.dailymotion.com/video......io_tech >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, at least now you're on topic, but why on earth do you imagine anyone here would be interested in a trailer for Expelled? You may notice that this threat is currently 118 pages long and has gone on for 4 years - the commenters here are very familiar with the movie. If I can presume to speak for others here I would say the consensus is that it is total dreck (a view shared by the scientifically literate community). Given what you've posted above I cannot see how you're going to change that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you think that the thread has lost its salt then maybe you should take it up with the mode take it up a moderator instead. Come to think of it, I guess am accustomed to threads getting pushed pushed from the top of the first page after about a week so. Oh and Kristine was under the impression that my post on mutations had little or nothing to do with the movie "expelled" so I simply cleared that up for her.
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 20 2011,03:46

Oh and a way to edit this last post would be nice
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 20 2011,04:09

Oh and for some reason I do not have permission to post in the new threads. I figured it was due to some sort of probationary period prior to the security pass like they do at the JW Watchtower and Free Masonry
Posted by: oldmanintheskydidntdoit on Oct. 20 2011,04:51

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Oct. 20 2011,03:21)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 19 2011,21:36)
An elaborately designed endocrine system purposefully selects ancestral phenotypes in accord to environmental stimuli; which btw is just the opposite of the pseudo-scientific natural mutation selection theory that says miraculous genetic mistakes survive and often replace ancestors if they occur at just the right time and niche
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What does ID tell us about how that system came to be?

Let me guess, it was "designed"?

Very informative...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Coward.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 20 2011,05:52

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,04:09)
Oh and for some reason I do not have permission to post in the new threads. I figured it was due to some sort of probationary period prior to the security pass like they do at the JW Watchtower and Free Masonry
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


New users cannot create new threads, but should be able to post in threads of whatever age.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 20 2011,05:56

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,03:33)
Quote (Ptaylor @ Oct. 20 2011,00:44)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,15:05)
Perhaps you should  watch Expelled < http://www.dailymotion.com/video......io_tech >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, at least now you're on topic, but why on earthEditing is a privilege that is earned. Unfortunately, anti-science advocates have proven unreliable on this score in the past do you imagine anyone here would be interested in a trailer for Expelled? You may notice that this threat is currently 118 pages long and has gone on for 4 years - the commenters here are very familiar with the movie. If I can presume to speak for others here I would say the consensus is that it is total dreck (a view shared by the scientifically literate community). Given what you've posted above I cannot see how you're going to change that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you think that the thread has lost its salt then maybe you should take it up with the mode take it up a moderator instead. Come to think of it, I guess am accustomed to threads getting pushed pushed from the top of the first page after about a week so. Oh and Kristine was under the impression that my post on mutations had little or nothing to do with the movie "expelled" so I simply cleared that up for her.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Uh, Kristine *is* a moderator.

You might want to pay attention when she discusses topicality. You might also want to pay attention to one of the rules here that gets stricter enforcement than some of the others, that being that moderation messages from non-moderators and discussion of moderation issues are considered annoying.
Posted by: Louis on Oct. 20 2011,06:13

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,10:09)
Oh and for some reason I do not have permission to post in the new threads. I figured it was due to some sort of probationary period prior to the security pass like they do at the JW Watchtower and Free Masonry
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


BWAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

So because you don't get topic creation privileges we are like JWs and Freemasons? Yeah, it couldn't be a method of controlling spambots could it. Muppet.

Oh fuck, that has to be the funniest thing I have seen in a dog's age. Dude, you are a pure comedy. I look forward to your shellacking and subsequent mockery.

Louis
Posted by: Quack on Oct. 20 2011,06:22

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,03:33)
 
Quote (Ptaylor @ Oct. 20 2011,00:44)
 
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,15:05)
Perhaps you should  watch Expelled < http://www.dailymotion.com/video......io_tech >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, at least now you're on topic, but why on earth do you imagine anyone here would be interested in a trailer for Expelled? You may notice that this threat is currently 118 pages long and has gone on for 4 years - the commenters here are very familiar with the movie. If I can presume to speak for others here I would say the consensus is that it is total dreck (a view shared by the scientifically literate community). Given what you've posted above I cannot see how you're going to change that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you think that the thread has lost its salt then maybe you should take it up with the mode take it up a moderator instead. Come to think of it, I guess am accustomed to threads getting pushed pushed from the top of the first page after about a week so. Oh and Kristine was under the impression that my post on mutations had little or nothing to do with the movie "expelled" so I simply cleared that up for her.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I thought the title "Expelled" was chosen because the subject was the not so intelligently designed theory of expulsion? You know, Sternberg, Egnor ...

As chewed and dead as the fish I ate yesterday.
Posted by: OgreMkV on Oct. 20 2011,07:30

Let's see:

Sternberg was actually not expelled.  In fact, up until a few months ago he still had the Smithsonian Offices listed as his workplace.  [Note that he was never actually employed by the Smithsonian.  It's amazingly difficult to get fired from a job you don't actually have.]

Who else, that astronomer (what ever his name is) who didn't get a teaching position... the astronomer who hasn't published a peer-reviewed paper in 7 years.  No wonder he didn't get a job.  Even Behe says, 'publish or perish'.

That clown at JPL, who was fired not for his beliefs, but because he insisted on forcing those beliefs on his coworkers after multiples requests to stop.  It's called harassment.

In fact, the only person that I am aware of who has actually been fired over 'the controversy' was a Texas Education Agency employee who was fired for forwarding an invitation to a pro-evolution talk by (IIRC Eugenie Scott... or maybe it was Barbara Forrest).  

So, in the expelled camp, we have a bunch of creationists who are lying and an evolutionist who was fired for promoting reality.
Posted by: Kristine on Oct. 20 2011,07:45

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,03:33)
Quote (Ptaylor @ Oct. 20 2011,00:44)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,15:05)
Perhaps you should  watch Expelled < http://www.dailymotion.com/video......io_tech >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, at least now you're on topic, but why on earth do you imagine anyone here would be interested in a trailer for Expelled? You may notice that this threat is currently 118 pages long and has gone on for 4 years - the commenters here are very familiar with the movie. If I can presume to speak for others here I would say the consensus is that it is total dreck (a view shared by the scientifically literate community). Given what you've posted above I cannot see how you're going to change that.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


If you think that the thread has lost its salt then maybe you should take it up with the mode take it up a moderator instead. Come to think of it, I guess am accustomed to threads getting pushed pushed from the top of the first page after about a week so. Oh and Kristine was under the impression that my post on mutations had little or nothing to do with the movie "expelled" so I simply cleared that up for her.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This may be my personal moderation style, but I do not consider "is not/is too designed" arguments about claims within "Expelled" to be about the film, as it was a political film, rather than actually advancing a coherent definition of Intelligent Design.

I saw the film. Boy, did I see it! You should read this thread.
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 20 2011,11:12

I havnt tried to create any new threads but whenever I try to respond to any new threads, I get a message that says: "You are logged in as forastero but You do not have permission to post in this thread"

Which isnt really weird when one considers the following  


Posted by: forastero on Oct. 20 2011,11:26

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 20 2011,05:56)
Uh, Kristine *is* a moderator.

You might want to pay attention when she discusses topicality. You might also want to pay attention to one of the rules here that gets stricter enforcement than some of the others, that being that moderation messages from non-moderators and discussion of moderation issues are considered annoying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmm, thats weird because the Penn & Teller forum also found me to be very annoying after just a few posts but they just erased them and banned me a few days after my registration.  :(
Posted by: Louis on Oct. 20 2011,12:02

So you have amazing arguments to present eh? Stick a couple on the Bathroom Wall. When people have stopped laughing there might be some kind soul that creates a thread for you to present your "arguments".

Place your bets Ladies and Germs. Old wine in new bottles or merely lightly warmed over garbage? This chew toy has its persecution complex set up early. I predict 0.1 Timecubes, a flounce and a series of "you're all fundamentalists".

Any takers?

Louis
Posted by: OgreMkV on Oct. 20 2011,12:59

Quote (Louis @ Oct. 20 2011,12:02)
So you have amazing arguments to present eh? Stick a couple on the Bathroom Wall. When people have stopped laughing there might be some kind soul that creates a thread for you to present your "arguments".

Place your bets Ladies and Germs. Old wine in new bottles or merely lightly warmed over garbage? This chew toy has its persecution complex set up early. I predict 0.1 Timecubes, a flounce and a series of "you're all fundamentalists".

Any takers?

Louis
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


11 posts and no actual comments on the comments in question.

Sorry Louis, I know better than to take sucker bets.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Oct. 20 2011,13:09

I'll make you a thread of your own if you like. Why don't you tell me what you want to discuss so I can set it up for you?

Thanks.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Oct. 20 2011,14:06

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,09:26)
Hmm, thats weird because the Penn & Teller forum also found me to be very annoying after just a few posts but they just erased them and banned me a few days after my registration.  :(
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Well, that might be because you are an asshole.

Just a helpful suggestion.
Posted by: Cubist on Oct. 20 2011,17:42

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,11:12)
I havnt tried to create any new threads but whenever I try to respond to any new threads, I get a message that says: "You are logged in as forastero but You do not have permission to post in this thread"
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I see. Clearly, this site censors you in a most brutal and efficient manner, which explains why you did not manage to post any replies to this thread...
Hmmm. What's wrong with this picture?
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 20 2011,19:48

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 20 2011,11:26)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 20 2011,05:56)
Uh, Kristine *is* a moderator.

You might want to pay attention when she discusses topicality. You might also want to pay attention to one of the rules here that gets stricter enforcement than some of the others, that being that moderation messages from non-moderators and discussion of moderation issues are considered annoying.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Hmm, thats weird because the Penn & Teller forum also found me to be very annoying after just a few posts but they just erased them and banned me a few days after my registration.  :(
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Please use the link to the "Board Mechanics" thread to discuss problems with the board software.

Please take discussion of moderation to private message or email. Second warning.
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 21 2011,00:05

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 20 2011,19:48)
Please take discussion of moderation to private message or email. Second warning.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you going to expel me? :O
Posted by: Dr.GH on Oct. 21 2011,00:50

There is a thread called "The Bathroom Wall."

That is where you can piss, and scribble.


Posted by: forastero on Oct. 21 2011,01:26

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Oct. 20 2011,03:21)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 19 2011,21:36)
An elaborately designed endocrine system purposefully selects ancestral phenotypes in accord to environmental stimuli; which btw is just the opposite of the pseudo-scientific natural mutation selection theory that says miraculous genetic mistakes survive and often replace ancestors if they occur at just the right time and niche
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What does ID tell us about how that system came to be?

Let me guess, it was "designed"?

Very informative...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Designed" appeals much more to Occam's Razor than your pantheism below

Once upon a time in a material world, the citizens worshiped a messiah named SuperPan whom they believed brought random gifts of new life every now and then. SuperPan was the god of chaos who had to constantly battle with orderly gene codes, purposeful endocrine, and intelligent DNA repair man who he conquered with his trusty spontaneous generation. Always in just the right niche and time, SuperPan would be blessed by mighty Mother Nature’s hand to constantly renew the land. Unfortunately, this belief made man not give a damn about what he already had and survival of the fittest fads and Orwellian scams. They began to chant their creationism del evolution with its primordial brew, mystical mutations, crystal ball chronologies, ape animism, new-age aliens, and radiomagic wands, that proved  way wackier than even the pantheism of Pan

Moral of the story:  test all things and don’t take creation for granted
Posted by: Cubist on Oct. 21 2011,01:56

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,00:05)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 20 2011,19:48)
Please take discussion of moderation to private message or email. Second warning.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you going to expel me? :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That depends. Are you going to continue to violate this board's rules of conduct after your two warnings?
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 21 2011,01:56

Quote (OgreMkV @ Oct. 06 2011,07:09)
Look, if you can't be bothered to learn anything that doesn't support your point of view, why are you here.  I could answer all of these, but there's no point because you will just whine and cry that it doesn't answer you question.

Why don't you tell us YOUR notion of how the diversity of life came to be and all the evidence that you have for it.

Remember, even if you disprove evolution right here, right now, it DOES NOT mean intelligent design or creationism is correct.  Only positive supporting evidence can do that.   You don't even have that.  I can point to literally millions of peer-reviewed papers over the last 150 years that support evolution.

You can't point to even one that supports your notions... whatever they are.

Do we have all the answers?  No, of course not.  But we have more than you do.

I'm willing to bet anything that you will not describe your notions of how life came about, provide evidence for it, and defend it in the same way that you demand we defend evolution and science.

This, if true, will make you an epic hypocrite.  Prove me wrong.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You call me a hypocrite yet you defend a poster who alludes that science proves that mitochondria evolved from bacteria.

The Big Bang's order from disorder, your own reverence for puncuated equilibrium, the myriad of machines all scurrying around all point to sudden design
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 21 2011,02:01

Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 21 2011,01:56)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,00:05)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 20 2011,19:48)
Please take discussion of moderation to private message or email. Second warning.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you going to expel me? :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That depends. Are you going to continue to violate this board's rules of conduct after your two warnings?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Its a double standard to keep asking me to talk about it and also break rules of conduct and intolerance yourselves?
Posted by: Cubist on Oct. 21 2011,02:12

1
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,01:26)
 
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Oct. 20 2011,03:21)
 
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 19 2011,21:36)
An elaborately designed endocrine system purposefully selects ancestral phenotypes in accord to environmental stimuli; which btw is just the opposite of the pseudo-scientific natural mutation selection theory that says miraculous genetic mistakes survive and often replace ancestors if they occur at just the right time and niche
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What does ID tell us about how that system came to be?

Let me guess, it was "designed"?

Very informative...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Designed" appeals much more to Occam's Razor than your pantheism below

Once upon a time in a material world, the citizens worshiped a messiah named SuperPan whom they believed brought random gifts of new life every now and then.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's all very nice (albeit a bit of a re-run of Harter's 1998 < Small and Stupid Gods > extended analogy/essay), but it doesn't seem to address the question it's ostensibly a reply to. So... what does ID tell us about how that system came to be?
Posted by: forastero on Oct. 21 2011,03:02

Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 21 2011,02:12)
1  
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,01:26)
 
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Oct. 20 2011,03:21)
   
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 19 2011,21:36)
An elaborately designed endocrine system purposefully selects ancestral phenotypes in accord to environmental stimuli; which btw is just the opposite of the pseudo-scientific natural mutation selection theory that says miraculous genetic mistakes survive and often replace ancestors if they occur at just the right time and niche
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What does ID tell us about how that system came to be?

Let me guess, it was "designed"?

Very informative...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Designed" appeals much more to Occam's Razor than your pantheism below

Once upon a time in a material world, the citizens worshiped a messiah named SuperPan whom they believed brought random gifts of new life every now and then.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's all very nice (albeit a bit of a re-run of Harter's 1998 < Small and Stupid Gods > extended analogy/essay), but it doesn't seem to address the question it's ostensibly a reply to. So... what does ID tell us about how that system came to be?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha..so you feel my busting rhymes about divine designs was nice but plagiarized? Nice try but that lie dont fly. So recheck your cite big guy

You say puncuated equilibrium via solar radiation (sun god) zapped a bacteria into a mitochondria that eventually turned into horseflies, raccoons, T. rex, and baboons but we say orderly miraculous design.

We IDers havnt figured it all out just yet but you have to admit that 99.9 percent of the greatest scientists believed in ID
Posted by: Louis on Oct. 21 2011,03:48

Ahhh the heady scent and mind numbing combination of clueless arrogance and awesome ignorance that creationists exhibit. Truly the Farce is strong with this one.

Although I will confess attempting to rap one's stupidity is a new one. I give it a D-.

Louis
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 21 2011,06:02

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,02:01)
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 21 2011,01:56)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,00:05)
 
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 20 2011,19:48)
Please take discussion of moderation to private message or email. Second warning.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you going to expel me? :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That depends. Are you going to continue to violate this board's rules of conduct after your two warnings?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Its a double standard to keep asking me to talk about it and also break rules of conduct and intolerance yourselves?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You'll find that your posts now appear in one thread only. It's a thread where no matter what you decide to talk about, you'll at least be topical.
Posted by: Richardthughes on Oct. 21 2011,09:01

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 21 2011,06:02)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,02:01)
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 21 2011,01:56)
 
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,00:05)
 
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 20 2011,19:48)
Please take discussion of moderation to private message or email. Second warning.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you going to expel me? :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That depends. Are you going to continue to violate this board's rules of conduct after your two warnings?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Its a double standard to keep asking me to talk about it and also break rules of conduct and intolerance yourselves?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You'll find that your posts now appear in one thread only. It's a thread where no matter what you decide to talk about, you'll at least be topical.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Death by cop" FAIL, martyrdom revoked!
Posted by: Louis on Oct. 21 2011,09:36

Quote (Richardthughes @ Oct. 21 2011,15:01)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 21 2011,06:02)
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,02:01)
 
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 21 2011,01:56)
 
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,00:05)
   
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Oct. 20 2011,19:48)
Please take discussion of moderation to private message or email. Second warning.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Are you going to expel me? :O
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That depends. Are you going to continue to violate this board's rules of conduct after your two warnings?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Its a double standard to keep asking me to talk about it and also break rules of conduct and intolerance yourselves?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You'll find that your posts now appear in one thread only. It's a thread where no matter what you decide to talk about, you'll at least be topical.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Death by cop" FAIL, martyrdom revoked!
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I confidently predict: I ONLY HAVE TEH ONE THREAD ZOMG TEH CENSORSHIPISMS!!!!!!

Louis
Posted by: Gunthernacus on Oct. 21 2011,12:19

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 06 2011,05:28)
The practice of science involves formulating hypothesis that can be tested for falsifiability via observed data. A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. Basically, if evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, then the hypothesis can become accepted as a good explanation of a phenomenon. One definition of a theory is to say it's an accepted hypothesis.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


 
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,04:02)
We IDers havnt figured it all out just yet but you have to admit that 99.9 percent of the greatest scientists believed in ID
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


How did they use ID - or is ID useless for doing science?  I won't ague about the 99.9% or who was/wasn't an IDer - I'll just note that they weren't expelled, and that their work is taught in public school.  You claim the vast majority of the greatest scientists, yet ID is a threadbare set of vague notions and your martyr complex is a sad little fiction used to sell movies and books to the gullible.

ETA:  Wrong thread - copied to correct one.
Posted by: Cubist on Oct. 21 2011,19:55

Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,03:02)
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 21 2011,02:12)
1    
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 21 2011,01:26)
   
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Oct. 20 2011,03:21)
     
Quote (forastero @ Oct. 19 2011,21:36)
An elaborately designed endocrine system purposefully selects ancestral phenotypes in accord to environmental stimuli; which btw is just the opposite of the pseudo-scientific natural mutation selection theory that says miraculous genetic mistakes survive and often replace ancestors if they occur at just the right time and niche
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What does ID tell us about how that system came to be?

Let me guess, it was "designed"?

Very informative...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


"Designed" appeals much more to Occam's Razor than your pantheism below

Once upon a time in a material world, the citizens worshiped a messiah named SuperPan whom they believed brought random gifts of new life every now and then.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


That's all very nice (albeit a bit of a re-run of Harter's 1998 < Small and Stupid Gods > extended analogy/essay), but it doesn't seem to address the question it's ostensibly a reply to. So... what does ID tell us about how that system came to be?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Ha..so you feel my busting rhymes about divine designs was nice but plagiarized?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, I don't, forry, because you didn't present any of Harter's words as if they'd been written by you. Instead, what you did was present a scenario whose basic premise is fairly similar to that of Harter's essay, thus my note about "a bit of a re-run", in somewhat the same way that the Roger Corman sci-fi flick Battle Beyond the Stars could be thought of as "a bit of a re-run" of Kurasawa's The Seven Samurai. Personally, I don't think that noting Theme X exists in an earlier work constitutes an accusation of plagiarism; your mileage may vary...
Still nothing on the topic of what ID tells us about how that system came to be, I note.


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
You say puncuated equilibrium via solar radiation (sun god) zapped a bacteria into a mitochondria that eventually turned into horseflies, raccoons, T. rex, and baboons but we say orderly miraculous design.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


No, 'we' don't say that. Would you like to learn about what 'we' actually do say? If so, would you like to discuss what 'we' say before or after you explain what ID tells us about how that system came to be?


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
We IDers havnt figured it all out just yet...
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


As best I can tell, you IDiots haven't figured out anything, ID-wise. This does not surprise me, because all throughout its existence, the ID movement has always been a wholly-owned subsidiary of good old Creationism, and the scientific content of ID (such as it is) can be accurately summarized in two sentences whose total word-count is less than 15 words. One of these sentences is Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, somebody intelligent did something, and the other is, Somehow, somewhere, some way, evolution is wrong.
If you disagree that the above two sentences constitute an accurate summary of ID, forry, I invite you to identify any point of inaccuracy in them. For instance, you could explain what ID has to say about its Intelligent Designer other than what little information is contained in the phrase 'Intelligent Designer'..?
Posted by: Ptaylor on Nov. 08 2011,20:44

I don't know how long Amazon has been featuring user-contributed "So you'd like to..." guides. but the first one I noticed was just yesterday and it gave me a laugh: "So you'd like to...Lower Your I.Q." You know what DVD was featured.
< Link >
Edited for readability and to mimic original style.
Posted by: Kristine on Nov. 09 2011,13:30

Quote (Ptaylor @ Nov. 08 2011,20:44)
I don't know how long Amazon has been featuring user-contributed "So you'd like to..." guides. but the first one I noticed was just yesterday and it gave me a laugh: "So you'd like to...Lower Your I.Q." You know what DVD was featured.
< Link >
Edited for readability and to mimic original style.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Bwahaha! I love it.

BTW, have you seen what Ben Stein entitled his latest book? Take a friggin' guess!

What Would Ben Stein Do? Applying the Wisdom of a Modern-Day Prophet to Tackle the Challenges of Work and Life  

This after he denied the 2007 economic downturn right before it happened. If he's a prophet, I'm a supermodel!
Posted by: Quack on Nov. 09 2011,16:25

Edit: Enigmatic and confusing text that I haven't been able to make sense of is no longer here.
Posted by: Doc Bill on Jan. 24 2012,20:05

Hey, our pal Kevin 11, not to be confused with 7-Eleven which is actually useful, has received an honor.

Drum roll, please!

< Encyclopedia of American Loons >

Bottom line description:  Typical hack.

I'm sure we can agree with that.

*golf clap*
Posted by: The whole truth on Mar. 01 2012,00:29

Speaking of "Expelled", have you all seen this?

< catholic cult hypocrite >

Yeah, like the catholic pedophiles have any room to preach morals to anyone.


Posted by: Robin on Mar. 01 2012,14:17

Quote (The whole truth @ Mar. 01 2012,00:29)
Speaking of "Expelled", have you all seen this?

< catholic cult hypocrite >

Yeah, like the catholic pedophiles have any room to preach morals to anyone.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It boggles my mind that some clown priest would have the audacity to single out some person as "sinner" and refuse him or her communion. What part of this is hard to understand:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
37And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,

38And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

39Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.

40And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on.

41There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.

42And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?

43Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Or this:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
3And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

4They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

5Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

6This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

7So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Such Church "morals" are worthless. Jesus was pretty clear:



---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



A priest of all people should know better. Those who do not should be removed from their position.
Posted by: Kristine on Mar. 01 2012,21:48

Okay mateys, let's get this thread back to the topic of "Expelled," shall we?
Posted by: Arctodus23 on April 17 2013,22:52

< RationalWiki: Expelled >
Posted by: Sealawr on Sep. 02 2013,13:46

Kevin Miller has been "Expelled."


< http://www.patheos.com/blogs....ing-job >
Posted by: Dr.GH on Sep. 02 2013,17:08

Quote (Sealawr @ Sep. 02 2013,11:46)
Kevin Miller has been "Expelled."


< http://www.patheos.com/blogs......ing-job >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Something about reaping and sowing vaguely comes to mind.
Posted by: Dr.GH on Sep. 02 2013,20:48

< Blogged on Kevie >
Posted by: olegt on Sep. 02 2013,21:22

Quote (Sealawr @ Sep. 02 2013,13:46)
Kevin Miller has been "Expelled."


< http://www.patheos.com/blogs......ing-job >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


< It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. >


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I probably shouldn’t be surprised by this decision, but I am surprised–and terribly disappointed. Not only that I won’t be able to teach, but also by the way things were handled. In my view, the one place where a diversity of views should not only be tolerated but encouraged is at a university. I realize that, as a faith-based institution, Trinity has to establish some sort of boundaries in order to maintain a consistent identity, donor base, etc. But as I endeavored to demonstrate in Hellbound?, the Church has always maintained (and at times, even welcomed) a wide diversity of views on hell and all sorts of other theological issues. So why this college would slam the door in my face on what is essentially a peripheral issue–especially when I’m teaching filmmaking, not theology–is beyond me.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Woodbine on Sep. 02 2013,22:01

I'm positive the DI will be outraged at this gross violation of academic freedom.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Sep. 02 2013,22:59

And Kevie was going to teach the students how to leave theistic evolutionists out of movies in a flagrantly dishonest attempt to pretend that theists are persecuted, rather than the bullshitters.  Then he was expelled by theists for, ahem, not being the right sort of theist, just like those heretics, the TEs.

Petards tend to uplift those who wield them.

Glen Davidson
Posted by: Cubist on Sep. 02 2013,23:07

I left a comment on Miller's blog…


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled for failing to adhere to a dogmatic orthodoxy? Interesting. Do you think there might be a movie in that, Kevin?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It is being held in moderation. We shall see if Miller chooses to let it out of moderation, and if he does that, whether/how he will choose to respond to it.
Posted by: socle on Sep. 02 2013,23:58

Quote (Cubist @ Sep. 02 2013,23:07)
I left a comment on Miller's blog…
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
Expelled for failing to adhere to a dogmatic orthodoxy? Interesting. Do you think there might be a movie in that, Kevin?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


It is being held in moderation. We shall see if Miller chooses to let it out of moderation, and if he does that, whether/how he will choose to respond to it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------



Posted by: sparc on Sep. 03 2013,05:25

Quote (Sealawr @ Sep. 02 2013,13:46)
Kevin Miller has been "Expelled."


< http://www.patheos.com/blogs......ing-job >
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I hope he will give < the same advice > to those future Sternbergs, Dembskis, Coppedges, Gonzalezes and Freshwaters out there:  

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
And while the temptation to castigate and scapegoat the “evil institution” is ever-present, I don’t think such feelings are warranted in this case. And they’re never a constructive way to respond in the long run anyway.
[...]
So I’m going to chalk this one up to experience and move on. No hard feelings.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Posted by: Lou FCD on Sep. 03 2013,12:13

Quote (olegt @ Sep. 02 2013,22:22)
 

---------------------QUOTE-------------------
But as I endeavored to demonstrate in Hellbound?, the Church has always maintained (and at times, even welcomed) a wide diversity of views on hell and all sorts of other theological issues.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


---------------------QUOTE-------------------


...as if we needed more evidence that he's completely delusional...
Posted by: midwifetoad on Sep. 03 2013,12:26

Even in theology, a theory that explains everything explains nothing.

As long as your ideology is evidence free, it might as well be specific.
Posted by: Henry J on Sep. 03 2013,13:19

Quote (midwifetoad @ Sep. 03 2013,11:26)
Even in theology, a theory that explains everything explains nothing.

As long as your ideology is evidence free, it might as well be specific.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


But if it's too specific, you get schisms! :O
Posted by: Dr.GH on Sep. 03 2013,15:52

< Oh noes! I blagged again! >

The "Statement of Faith" has even more problems than Kevie's objection to sadistic eternal torture so warmly embraced by Christofascists .


Posted by: Cubist on Sep. 03 2013,17:29

Interesting. My comment did show on Kev's blog—rather, my pair of comments. Silly me, thinking that when a comment doesn't show up immediately, it's because it vanished into the bit-bucket, as opposed to, say, it was waiting in the moderation queue… Anyway, the spirit moved me to post a follow-up:


---------------------QUOTE-------------------
I apologize for leaving two substantially-identical comments. In my defense, all I can say is that the vast bulk of my blog-commenting experience is restricted to blogs that are largely unmoderated. If you wish to delete one of the two near-duplicates, and this comment as well, I'm okay with that, Kevin.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


This comment, like my first pair, is currently in moderation, but given that the first pair did appear, we may presumably expect that it will not be trapped there forever.

Edited to add: And now it looks like this comment went thru, too.
Posted by: fnxtr on Sep. 04 2013,01:06

Nice one, socle.
Posted by: Cubist on Oct. 25 2013,06:23

Anyone who would like to own a legit copy of< Expelled > without sending any cash to the lying weasels who made it, would be well advised to check eBay now. As I write this post, the cheapest used copy on eBay has a "Buy it now" price of $1.50, a seller-specified minimum bid of $0.10, and exactly 0 (zero) bids…
Posted by: midwifetoad on Oct. 25 2013,07:39

Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 25 2013,06:23)
Anyone who would like to own a legit copy of< Expelled > without sending any cash to the lying weasels who made it, would be well advised to check eBay now. As I write this post, the cheapest used copy on eBay has a "Buy it now" price of $1.50, a seller-specified minimum bid of $0.10, and exactly 0 (zero) bids…
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've seen it at garage sales,  but can't affotd the time to watch it.
Posted by: KevinB on Oct. 25 2013,16:00

Quote (midwifetoad @ Oct. 25 2013,07:39)
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 25 2013,06:23)
Anyone who would like to own a legit copy of< Expelled > without sending any cash to the lying weasels who made it, would be well advised to check eBay now. As I write this post, the cheapest used copy on eBay has a "Buy it now" price of $1.50, a seller-specified minimum bid of $0.10, and exactly 0 (zero) bids…
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've seen it at garage sales,  but can't affotd the time to watch it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've occasionally thought of getting a copy of Paley's Natural Theology, but I can't afford the watch. :)
Posted by: Texas Teach on Oct. 25 2013,17:44

Quote (KevinB @ Oct. 25 2013,16:00)
Quote (midwifetoad @ Oct. 25 2013,07:39)
 
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 25 2013,06:23)
Anyone who would like to own a legit copy of< Expelled > without sending any cash to the lying weasels who made it, would be well advised to check eBay now. As I write this post, the cheapest used copy on eBay has a "Buy it now" price of $1.50, a seller-specified minimum bid of $0.10, and exactly 0 (zero) bids…
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've seen it at garage sales,  but can't affotd the time to watch it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've occasionally thought of getting a copy of Paley's Natural Theology, but I can't afford the watch. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe you'll get lucky and find a copy that assembled randomly.
Posted by: JohnW on Oct. 25 2013,18:04

Quote (Texas Teach @ Oct. 25 2013,15:44)
Quote (KevinB @ Oct. 25 2013,16:00)
Quote (midwifetoad @ Oct. 25 2013,07:39)
 
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 25 2013,06:23)
Anyone who would like to own a legit copy of< Expelled > without sending any cash to the lying weasels who made it, would be well advised to check eBay now. As I write this post, the cheapest used copy on eBay has a "Buy it now" price of $1.50, a seller-specified minimum bid of $0.10, and exactly 0 (zero) bids…
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've seen it at garage sales,  but can't affotd the time to watch it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've occasionally thought of getting a copy of Paley's Natural Theology, but I can't afford the watch. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe you'll get lucky and find a copy that assembled randomly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Go for a walk across the heath.  Maybe you'll find one.
Posted by: Glen Davidson on Oct. 25 2013,19:13

Quote (JohnW @ Oct. 25 2013,18:04)
Quote (Texas Teach @ Oct. 25 2013,15:44)
Quote (KevinB @ Oct. 25 2013,16:00)
 
Quote (midwifetoad @ Oct. 25 2013,07:39)
   
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 25 2013,06:23)
Anyone who would like to own a legit copy of< Expelled > without sending any cash to the lying weasels who made it, would be well advised to check eBay now. As I write this post, the cheapest used copy on eBay has a "Buy it now" price of $1.50, a seller-specified minimum bid of $0.10, and exactly 0 (zero) bids…
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've seen it at garage sales,  but can't affotd the time to watch it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've occasionally thought of getting a copy of Paley's Natural Theology, but I can't afford the watch. :)
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Maybe you'll get lucky and find a copy that assembled randomly.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Go for a walk across the heath.  Maybe you'll find one.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Best time is after a tornado.  

Best place is a junkyard.

Glen Davidson
Posted by: Lou FCD on Nov. 09 2013,11:26

Quote (midwifetoad @ Oct. 25 2013,08:39)
Quote (Cubist @ Oct. 25 2013,06:23)
Anyone who would like to own a legit copy of< Expelled > without sending any cash to the lying weasels who made it, would be well advised to check eBay now. As I write this post, the cheapest used copy on eBay has a "Buy it now" price of $1.50, a seller-specified minimum bid of $0.10, and exactly 0 (zero) bids…
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


I've seen it at garage sales,  but can't affotd the time to watch it.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


You're not missing anything.
Posted by: Cubist on June 27 2014,05:29

Just did an eBay search for expelled dvd. Right now, the least expensive result has a high bid of $0.39, plus $3.50 for shipping. Anybody who wanted to get their hands on a copy of this piece of shit without sending any money to the coffers of the deceitful weasels who created it, might want to take advantage of eBay.
Posted by: Henry J on June 27 2014,09:43

No thanks.
:p
Posted by: midwifetoad on June 30 2014,08:52

Saw one at a garage sale for a quarter. It isn't the price, but the thought of the wasted time. So I passed.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Oct. 29 2014,14:45

Started watching Expelled, along with GrrlScientist. We might have to stop the DVD to rant a bit.
Posted by: midwifetoad on Oct. 29 2014,15:27

Brave man. I saw it for a quarter at a garage sale and passed.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Oct. 29 2014,16:31

After watching the film & discussing it, we arrived at the conclusion that Harry Potter might actually exist, and J.K. Rowling is just covering for him.
Posted by: Texas Teach on Oct. 29 2014,19:02

Quote (Bob O'H @ Oct. 29 2014,16:31)
After watching the film & discussing it, we arrived at the conclusion that Harry Potter might actually exist, and J.K. Rowling is just covering for him.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


More evidence:< I am Harry >
Posted by: fnxtr on Jan. 14 2017,14:59

Cleanup on aisle 3
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 14 2017,16:43

Quote (fnxtr @ Jan. 14 2017,14:59)
Cleanup on aisle 3
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Done.
Posted by: Acartia_Bogart on Jan. 14 2017,18:37

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Jan. 14 2017,16:43)
Quote (fnxtr @ Jan. 14 2017,14:59)
Cleanup on aisle 3
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Done.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


What!? I just thought that it was Mullings finally commenting on another thread.
Posted by: Bob O'H on Jan. 22 2017,13:23

More mopping required...
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on June 28 2017,21:21

Re-opened. I don't know why or how it got locked.
Posted by: Wesley R. Elsberry on July 02 2017,16:35

Sorry, spammers; I did not reopen this thread for *you*.
Posted by: fnxtr on July 02 2017,18:12

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ July 02 2017,14:35)
Sorry, spammers; I did not reopen this thread for *you*.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Expelled. No intelligence displayed.
Posted by: Henry J on July 02 2017,21:37

Quote (fnxtr @ July 02 2017,17:12)
Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ July 02 2017,14:35)
Sorry, spammers; I did not reopen this thread for *you*.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Expelled. No intelligence displayed.
---------------------QUOTE-------------------


Stupid is as stupid does?
end


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