Ptaylor
Posts: 1180
Joined: Aug. 2006
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(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.
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We no longer say: “Another day; another bad day for Darwinism.” We now say: “Another day since the time Darwinism was disproved.”
-PaV, Uncommon Descent, 19 June 2016
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