About a month ago, Bill Nye The Science Guy posted this video on Big Think:
And with that (and at this time 4.5+ million views), the creationists were in an uproar. Having one of the best known science educators in the US calling your entire educational program bad for children obviously isn't going to sit well. But the more prominent response came from the people at Answers in Genesis, run by Ken Ham.
Making their own videos in a similar style to the Big Think, they tried to say Nye didn't understand science, didn't want children to think critically, that creationists didn't fear evolution and teach it correctly, that evolution has nothing to do with engineering, and so on. All of which is laughably wrong, including the last statement.
And there is some joy in this video response to Ken Ham (though probably NSFW due to language and some female images).
I'm copying here the description in the video, in case it goes down and the good links and references get lost (as well as providing a buffer space to the video if you are at work).
Under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't have addressed a video like this because it's a little light on science, but since it was by one of the world's top-tier fucktards who happened to be rubbishing one of the most beloved educators in the country I decided that it was a golden opportunity to give the Reverend Ham the verbal drubbing he's been asking for for decades. As I said, a little light on science for a regular HH, but nevertheless also a good opportunity to address some of the filthy creationist political propaganda that Mr. Ham was projectile spewing in his surpisingly amateurish video. Not sure whether there will be a censoring reaction to this, so please do what you can to help forestall, or failing that ameliorate, that eventuality as it's not clear to me as yet that creationists are smart enough to have realized that censorship only results in the object of their ire being exposed to a vastly larger audience than it would have been had they acted like decent human beings. For those who don't know how, the video can be downloaded by pasting the URL into the box at www.keepvid.com. If you feel the need to hear Ken Ham vomiting up his worthless opinions you can do so here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxX11c1cSWU If you want to see the Reverend Ham lying to children about biblical glasses you can do so here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5d3AaAL10U And if you want to have a laugh at Ken's monkeys, whom I mention in the video, you can find them in their enclosure here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-AyDtD6sPA Bill Nye's Big Think video can be enjoyed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbYJfwFgOU KnownNoMore's channel is here (please watch and sub -- he's *excellent*): http://www.youtube.com/knownnomore Wisdominnature7's channel (see note above regarding KnownNoMore -- the same applies): http://www.youtube.com/wisdominnature7 Scripts to this and all my other videos can be found here: http://thelivingdinosaur.webs.com/transcripts.htm Intro by the one-and-only ONESPECIES (check him out too!): http://www.youtube.com/ONESPECIES Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Symphony No. 9 in C major (K 73) References: Arias-Montaño , A. (2011). Evolutionary Algorithms Applied to Multi-Objective Aerodynamic Shape Optimization. Studies in Computational Intelligence 356: 211-240. Asoutia , V.G. and Giannakogloua, K.C. (2009). Aerodynamic optimization using a parallel asynchronous evolutionary algorithm controlled by strongly interacting demes. Engineering Optimization 41: 241-257. Berard, Y. (2003). Experiments with Hybridized Genetic Algorithms in Aerodynamics. EUROGEN 2003 International Congress on Evolutionary Methods for Design, Optimization and Control with Applications to Industrial Problems. pp 1-12. Giannakoglou ,K.C. et al. (2006). Aerodynamic shape design using evolutionaryalgorithms and new gradient-assisted metamodels. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 195: 6312--6329. Jones, B.R. et al. (2000). Aerodynamic and Aeroacoustic Optimization of Rotorcraft Airfoils via a Parallel Genetic Algorithm. Journal of Aircraft 37: 1088-1096. Obayashi, S. and Guruswamy, G.P., (1995). Convergence Acceleration of an Aeroelastic Navier-Stokes Solver. AIAA Journal 33: 1134-1141. Obayashi, S. et al. (2000). Transonic Wing Shape Optimization Based on Evolutionary Algorithms. ISHPC '00 Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on High Performance Computing. PP Pages 172--181. Ong, Y.S. (2003). Global convergence of unconstrained and bound constrained surrogate-assisted evolutionary search in aerodynamic shape design. CEC '03 The 2003 Congress on Evolutionary Computation. pp 1856-1863. Oyama, A. et al. (1999). Fractional Factorial Design of Genetic Coding for Aerodynamic Optimization. AIAA Paper 99-3298. Oyama, A et al. (2000). Aerodynamic Wing Optimization via Evolutionary Algorithms Based on Structured coding. CFD Journal 8: 570-577. Sasaki, D. (2001). Aerodynamic Shape Optimization of Supersonic Wings by Adaptive Range Multiobjective Genetic Algorithms. EMO '01 Proceedings of the First International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization. pp 639-652. Tubbs, A.D. and Wolfe, A.M. (1980). Evidence for Large Scale Uniformity of Physical Laws. Astrophy. J. 236: L105-L108. Webb, J. (2003). Are the laws of nature changing with time? Physics World 16(4): 33-38.
Over the weekend, I was chatting with a good friend of mine, and he brought up the very interesting biographical story of Mary Schweitzer who started as a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) as a child, but because of interest in science became an influential paleontologist, showing how dinosaurs were likely warm-blooded and the ancestors to modern birds (which means when you eat chicken, you are eating a dinosaur!). I also added the interesting tangent that YECs have tried to use Schweitzer's work on blood cells found in dino bones as proof of a young earth (or at least that fossils are not millions of years old), my friends had heard of as well. But this then got into the conversation of misinformation and if creationists are liars or simply misinformed.
Now, I definitely think that the vast majority of average folks that believe in YEC are not dishonest, nor do they think what facts they have are lies. They are two things: suffering confirmation bias (only hearing that which reinforces their beliefs) and misinformation (perhaps even propaganda). That will cause many people to truly and honestly think the science is on their side. It just has the irony factor that science can explain to a large degree why they don't believe the science (something articulated in Chris Mooney's The Republican Brain).
However, I think it better to focus on the people that make the claims to support creationism, from the creation scientists of old to the modern Intelligent Design proponents. Are they all liars? Some? Just a few bad apples?
However, I won't simply post the opinions of others, no matter how well-founded. Let's consider this from two points: the prior probability that creationism is advanced by dishonesty, and examples of it in action.
First, how likely is it that good, Christian leaders could promote things that are positively false yet peddled as absolute truth? Isn't there a significant disconnect between defending a system of morality and violating the 9th commandment? Well, that is something that can be overcome with a bit of rationalization, and not much really. In the minds of YEC leaders, evolution is not simply a scientific theory, it is a force trying to undermine the whole of society. As is seen in this illustration from creationist literature, evolution supports Nazism, abortion, sexual perversion, racism, radical feminists, and more things seen as terrible. And Creation "Science" is the remedy, or so it seems. So whatever tool it takes to take down evolution is given great moral weight. Such a precedent can be seen in the Church historian Eusebius, who advocated (from the idea in Plato) it is sometimes necessary to use a lie for medicinal purposes, sort of speak. In another context, there is pseudo-historian David Barton who is now too widely considered a liar to be publishable by anyone with a reputation (which is why he has gone to Glen Beck). He really was a liar for Jesus, making up quotes and making claims such as the Founding Fathers had settled the evolution vs. creationism issue back in the day... even though they were most all dead before Charles Darwin could even read, let alone publish his Origin of Species.
Moreover, there is the point to consider of how a position such as YEC can survive when it was been falsified since the early 19th century. How can a position be supported by educated people, given the information resources of modern times, when each and every claim said to be indicative of a young earth and against common decent are not only proved false, but even nicely sorted against the claims? There are no facts one can point to that actually indicate the earth is less than 10,000 years old, while there are a significant number in favor of an earth million and billions of years old. Can someone, let alone numerous people research a topic and get their facts wrong time and again without intellectual dishonesty?
The problem becomes all the worse considering that many YEC organizations proudly put up their statements of faith. For example, Answers in Genesis (AiG) has a Statement of Faith that includes the following:
By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.
(And no, this is not the only example.) Such a statement indicates that from the start, no evidence can go against what is already believed. If you already "know" the "answer", then the research becomes farcical. And while scientists can indeed fall into cognitive traps and fail to see evidence that undoes their own pet theories, they don't make statements in advance of what the evidence must be.
So, initially we can see that there are potential motivators for being dishonest for the sake of taking down evolution. But what about actual cases where this happens? Let's start early in history.
If we look to the beginning of the fight against Darwin's theory, we ought to consider Sir Richard Owen, a brilliant anatomist and founder of the British Museum and the coiner of the word "dinosaur." However, he was a staunch opponent of Darwin and a supporter of a theological interpretation of life's past rather than the mechanistic account of Darwin and his bulldog Huxley. And so it seems that Owen invented the claim that a brain structure (the hippocampus minor) was only possessed by humans and not other primates, thus undercutting common ancestry. But investigations by others showed Owen to be wrong, and considering Owen's prowess in anatomy, it becomes hard to believe he could make such a mistake. There was Huxley's book written for those unexposed to advanced anatomy that these structures were indeed in both humans as well as monkeys, so the feature was rather obvious to all observers (including scientists such as Charles Lyell). That Owen evaded this, along with creating inaccurate drawings to hide other features of primate brains, had to further claim that the hippocampus minor was not only missing in lower primates and "idiot" further indicates his stubbornness to the obvious, and having been caught he finally admitted that the structure was in other primate brains (though with caveats), all indicates he was protecting other interests. This is detailed in the book Owen's Ape and Darwin's Bulldog and this rather good Wikipedia page on the subject. Also, this video:
In addition, Owen tried to discredit the usefulness of Archaeopteryx (discovered in 1861) as a transition between reptiles and bird by comparing the fossil to pterosaurs rather than dinosaurs. Again, hardly an innocent mistake since Owen had been the definer of dinosaurs, so this made it easy for Huxley to expose him again. (Obviously there wasn't much love between these men.) Owen also was not a terribly moral man who squished those that got in his way, wrote letters in the third person to papers attacking his enemies and praising himself, and was also accused of plagiarism.
So, it seems in the case of Owen, he was willing to present falsehoods in order to advance his career and attack evolution, and he was widely considered towards the end of his life to have been a dishonest man. But he is hardly the only case to present. If we move on to the Scope Monkey Trial of 1925, we can see another case there it was seen as useful to take a position believed to be false in order to attack evolution. Here we had a titan of American politics, William Jennings Bryan, fighting for Christ and society against the great agnostic Clarence Darrow (though they were in fact friends and Darrow helped Bryan in his bids for the presidency). Now, an interesting fact that the movie and stage performance of the trial, Inherit the Wind, doesn't properly represent is that Bryan was not a YEC, but instead he did not disagree with the geologists. However, when on the stand, he did try to argue for a young earth, citing the "research" of George McReady Price, the effective founder of Young Earth Creationism. Price was not a geologist or trained scientist, and also on the stand Bryan admitted the antiquity of the earth (see The Creationists, pp. 58, 89, 116-7). So again, we have a person willing to use research that was not only outside of the scientific mainstream but even at odds with his own beliefs, all for the sake of fighting Darwinism because of its perceived moral issues. Not unlike that seen in the illustration above: using "science" that supports creationism to stop some other evil.
However, these figures are long dead and do not promote things today, obviously. What about living proponents of creationism? As another case example, consider Duane Gish, a founding figure in creation "science" and a trained biochemist. So he ought to know basic biology and chemistry. As one of his famous cases against natural selection and the piecemeal origins of biological systems, he pointed to the bombardier beetle, a bug that can squirt a boiling liquid at predators for protection. Gish claimed that the chemicals in the liquid used by the beetle, hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, explode without an inhibitor; thus, the beetle could not have existed without the inhibitor, giving nothing for nature to select, thus meaning the creature had to be formed the way it was, otherwise Kaboom! But what happens if you do mix these chemicals together? Actually, no boom. At all. You can test this yourself with store-bought supplies.
Now, Gish made this claim in a book from 1977. In 1978, he was informed of this, and though he still thought it impossible for the beetle to have evolved, he agreed that the chemical combo was not explosive. And yet, in 1980, he still made the same argument. He should have known better before making the argument (he was a chemist), and he admitted to knowing better two years before making the same claim again. And to this day, it is stillmade by creationists without fixing the errors (though elsewhere they do agree the description is wrong). So we have here another example of dishonesty and knowingly so.
But we still haven't gotten to perhaps the grand-daddy of the disingenuous, "Dr." Kent Hovind. As you may have noticed, I don't think him a doctor because his degree is fake, a printing from a diploma mill called Patriot Bible University (which is just this trailer house in Colorado), so his title is fake. Hovind is also currently in prison for tax fraud, so he is indeed a convicted liar. Other acts of being disingenuous include his $250,000 prize for any evidence of evolution which, upon inspection, can only be won by showing it is impossible in any way that God could have caused the evidence to be the way it appears. He also uses his own made-up definitions of evolution to further evade ever getting the evidence for the theory that biologists actually talk about.
But as an example of creating a falsehood to advance creationism over evolution, perhaps the best example is his case of a supposed conversation with a Berkeley professor while on an airplane. He never gives a name or department for this professor, and the professor's description of the Big Bang is amazingly wrong. In fact, it appears to have been manufactures by Hovind using elementary/middle school science text books (start viewing from 3:30).
If you watched, you would notice that even Hovind's slides show that he was mixing nebula collapse for star formation and the Big Bang, which he then uses for his angular momentum argument against the Big Bang. He is clearly off his rocker and is using an encounter that could not have happened unless such a person knew nothing of cosmology yet talked exactly like a children's textbook. A collection of Hovind's lies can be found using the wayback machine here. I should also include that Hovind's ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, filed many false DMCA take-down notices of videos critical of his seminars, claiming copyright infringement even though on his lectures and on his website he states none of his stuff of copyrighted to help spread it around. Perhaps then it is no wonder that he is in jail for tax fraud and trying to disguise transactions that would have tipped off the feds. However, it is unfortunate that his son, Eric, has continued in his father's line of work, selling the same bunk, just with better graphics.
And now for one last example: taken from the Dover trial about Intelligent Design (ID). In particular, consider two of the figures on the Dover school board, William (Bill) Buckingham and Alan Bonsell. These guys, and others, wanted to get straight-out creationism taught in the schools, even though it had been clearly found to be illegal by the Supreme Court in the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard. So they searched for an alternative to avoid the legal issue using ID. Part of that process was the inclusion of a textbook called Of Pandas and People. After the school board had agreed to including ID, the books appeared out of nowhere, apparently, at the school for use in the library. Sixty copies, in fact. Buckingham and Bonsell both claimed in their sworn deposition that they had no idea where the books came from.
But that was a bald-faced lie. In fact, Buckingham had gotten up in front of his church to ask for donations to buy these textbooks. He then gave a check for the books to Bonsell, who gave it to his father, who then bought the books. That is a pretty amazing lie, and told under oath no less. When the judge got wind of this, he took over the interrogation of the witness and put Bonsell up for perjury charges; Judge Jones said that the two men repeatedly lied.
Here then we have a super-clear case of lying, under oath even, in order to get creationism into the classrooms.
Now, this post has already gotten long, but it is hardly complete. I haven't considered the ever-present use of quote-mining in creationist literature, especially against Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould, or the dishonest editing of Dawkins or the propaganda film Expelled which tries to say evolutionary scientists are really Nazis. I haven't touched the geologists like Andrew Snelling who gets a PhD in the subject and writes papers, but thinks all his work is false and promotes YEC to whomever he can. And I haven't talked about ID which tries to hide what it is as subterfuge, avoiding legal barriers to teaching creationism while not providing anything that can get into peer-review (and they don't even try). Heck, documentation shows that they really have the goal of doing all that they can to destroy "Darwinism" to make way for Christian scientific approaches (see the Wedge document). The blog site The Panda's Thumb has also been tracking the falsehoods and dishonest for many years now. There is a massive industry of pseudo-science, and it truly looks like it cannot be advanced honestly.
Creationism is certainly advanced by ignorance of the facts. However, there does appear to be a significant factor of dis-ingenuousness on the part of proponents. And those that were actively listening to these false prophets do feel they were lied to after they realize how wrong they were. But still, nearly half the US buys into YEC teachings.
Perhaps I need to pay more attention to the Old Testament prophets, because it looks like there are some interesting gems there.
A blogger, Joel Watts, a theology student has come up with a great passage from the Old Testament that can be quite the dirge against literalist creationists. He noted in Jeremiah 31:35-6 that God says he would not circumvent the regularity of nature lest he end his covenant with his people Israel. Now, he doesn't believe that one should take the whole thing literally, as there are miracles in the Bible, but that's the whole point! If you are a literalist, this passage will contradict a miraculous creation; if you want a miraculous creation, you have to not be a literalist.
Will this convince any Young Earth Creationists? I doubt it, but it is one more example of why students of the Bible are so much more interesting than those that only act like they are Bible lovers.
As many know, notorious Ray "Banana Man" Comfort has come out with his version of Darwin's classic Origin of Species since it is in public domain after 150 years of existence. The primary advertised difference between most versions of the book and Comfort's is the inclusion of an introduction that tries to say that "Darwinism" is a false religion, and all of the creationist canards that have become familiar to those that read the works or talk to those that are believers in creationism, especially the young earth variety (YEC for short). By calling Darwin a racist, a misogynist, and the philosophical influence to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, Comfort's introduction is both a long ad hominem as well as scientifically dubious.
Previously I had written on the subject of Nazism and Darwinian evolution in response to the movie Expelled. I noted that Darwin's book had been banned in Germany, that Hitler was himself not an atheist or "Darwinist", but instead a Catholic creationist. In other words, Comfort is absolutely wrong about the connection between Darwin and Hitler, and it is painful to keep hearing that Hitler was an atheist and "evolutionist" when it is so demonstrably wrong.
But I have learned something else that is quite upsetting to any critical mind. Comfort has said that he wants his readers to read past his introduction and read Darwin's book, which Comfort had made easy for the reader. However, as I had suspected, it is an abridged work. So when Comfort claims that there is no evidence for evolution, he is correct because he edited out the evidence! This has been noted by Eugenie Scott: chapters about biogeography, one of the strongest pieces of evidence in Darwin's day and today for common decent with modification, as well as chapters on embryology, morphology, and classification, are missing, as well as Darwin answering some of the objections to his theory, such as concerning transitional forms. Scott does not say if Darwin's response to the evolution of the eye is intact, but part of that passage is a favorite for creationist quote-mines, including Ray Comfort (see Nothing Created Everything, p. 18). One can view Comfort's book online, and the part about the eye evolving in Darwin's book is intact; however, in the introduction Comfort does a massive quote-mining operation (from a physicist, no less) to "prove" the eye could not have evolved (which the author does not say, but instead says the eye evolved!) rather than, say, read about the evolution of the eye in Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Land's and Nilsson's Animal Eyes (2002), or more recently in Science a paper by Fernald and Russel (2006). The 1994 paper by Nilsson and Pleger showing a pessimistic calculation that the eye could have evolved in a few million years (in ~364,ooo generations). See an nicely condensed version of these results here and here.
What Comfort has tried to do is leave Darwin's thesis with the appearance of a few hundred pages of speculation, when in reality he came up with this theory of natural selection and published on it 20 years later all the time in between collecting more evidence. Darwin also delayed publication due to his fears of religious upheaval, but nonetheless Darwin also continued to reinforce his ideas with evidence from a diverse number of fields. By editing out these chapters, as well as being behind the times on the evidence for evolution (by, say, 150 years), Comfort shows himself to be not simply ignorant, but a deceiver. Selectively removing some of the most important chapters from Darwin's book cannot be accounted for except by conscious dishonesty. After all, one should not say "look at the evidence" and then hide it away to "prove" there is no evidence.
Ray, that is why you were awarded by the Golden Crocoduck this year.
And here is a bit more from another intellectually honest YouTuber:
So Ray, what do you call someone who lies? Did I hear "A liar"?
Well, it looks like my critics of the film Expelled need not be looked at because the critics have weighed in.
Epsilon Cue has a post showing the rating of Expelled compared to many other movies that are considered by most thinking people to be absolutely terrible. The ratings come from Rotten Tomatoes, which gauges a movie's quality by the percentage of good and bad reviews from many critics. If a movie is 60% or better approved by critics, it is considered "fresh", and less it is rotten. Sometimes you get something pretty messed-up, such as the movie Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956) which is elevated more due to cult status than anything else. But here is some perspective given by Epsilon Cue:
Robot Monster (1953): 27%--this movie is simply terrible. I saw it through Mystery Science Theater 3000 which made it tolerable, but the level of thinking that went into the movie itself (especially the repetitive ending) must have been nonexistent. I can understand a low budget, but that is no excuse for a low movie-making I.Q. Dude, Where's My Car (2000): 18%--again, I have unfortunately seen much of this movie since my brother was somehow amused by it. Crap all the way through and it makes it difficult for me to give any credence to Ashton Kutcher's acting abilities. Crossroads (2002): 15%--before Britney was completely crazy, but when her acting skilled still sucked. I am glad I put a lot of distance between myself and this film. Left Behind -- The Movie (2001): 12%--it does well in church basements but it lacks much redeeming quality. However, I suspect it is still better than the video game based on the book series which every video game critic I have heard agrees it was terrible through and through. Catwoman (2004): 10%--argh, stay away. (I can't believe it's already four years old.)
I skipped a few of the movies on the list to avoid boredom, especially since some I am less familiar with. But how about a few more? Spice World (1997): 29%--wait, someone thought this movie was worth seeing? A movie about the pop group Spice Girls? And before Victoria was a Beckham? Manos: Hands of Fate (1966): 6%--this movie SUCKED! It is the worst movie I have yet come across. Acting, lighting, film angles, editing, music quality, plot, meaning; any criteria you can name, this movie failed. The only thing that made it possible to see is (again) Mystery Science Theater 3000, and even the people there agree it was the world movie they ever had to deal with. (RT gives the MST3K episode of Manos a 82%, very respectable and deserved.) Gigli (2003): 6%--everyone agrees this movie was a mistake. Ben is not the greatest actor and an excuse to see his chest is not worth a movie ticket, especially if you don't have any attraction to him. Battlefield Earth (2000): 3%--when Hollywood does a movie from the founder of Scientology, what should you expect? An A-List actor being brain-washed into selling out his career. John, Grease was great and all, and who can forget Pulp Fiction, but I can't give any respect for this film.
Hence, based on the current number of reviews (23) and the percentages, this movie is on par with Manos, Battlefield Earth, and Catwoman.
It perhaps should be no surprise that on the of the only two positive reviews of the movie come from a writer at Christianity Today, Mark Moring. He seems to be aware of the fiasco that went into the screening of the movie and the like, but still tries to squeeze out some redeeming value. A very odd this is mentioned by Moring: "And filmmakers can't be accused of denying Darwin proponents equal opportunity." Um, no. Their opinions were gathered, and under false pretenses to get the canned answers they wanted (Michael Shermer makes that point about his interview by Stein), and none of the people that promote and use evolution in their disciplines that are religious are avoided, such as Ken Miller. How can equal time be said to be given if only a few are shown and not about the evidence for or against evolution? This statement by Moring sounds like a ID talking point to me.
All in all, the movie is agreed to be crap, not even counting the reviews by Richard Dawkins, Scientific American, or New Scientist just to name a few. And I suspect as more reviews come in, such as by Ebert and other film critics, the percentage will likely go down. I will update as I see fit.
Well, the movie Expelled comes out today in about 1000 theaters, and I haven't the foggiest idea how well it will do at the box office. They are doing some posturing, setting up a David vs. Goliath metaphor and saying they may do better than expected. But even if they do well, they have a significant legal battle with XVIVO and now Yoko Ono because of the unlicensed use of John Lennon's song Imagine. I wonder if Expelled Exposed will put up something on that subject in the near future; the blog Panda's Thumb has had numerous posts on the subject.
Speaking of that site, Dave Thomas recently put up a post with a scan from the of the "Leader's DVD" (whatever that means), and it has this to say:
"Whoa" indeed. The purpose of the movie is made clear by that key word: Faith.
Then again, which faith? Not Ken Miller's, or Francis Collins', and many others' faith in their respective religion. No, this is a very narrow take on what is "real" Christianity and "real" Christian faith. Obviously the issue of what is the "correct" way of reading Genesis is not black and white, and the people that have produced Expelledpurposefully avoided interviewing scientists that had no problem reconciling Genesis and evolution. Claiming that such people would have "confused the film unnecessarily" as producer Mark Mathis stated himself only shows that these people are not really about debate and open discussion but in trying to sell their particular brand of their particular religion.
Now, I am a critic of religion in general, but I also know that there is a massive continuum of positions in any religion. Buddhists can be pacifists, activists, or Kamikazes; Muslims can be advocates for freedom of speech and humans rights or terrorists; Christians can be generous or tyrannical. There is no one-size-fits-all to these sorts of things. Religion does not necessarily mean you have exactly the same view as your priest, pastor, rabbi, imam, guru, etc.
So, what we really have here is just on take on one major religion and pretending that there can be no debate on what is a "real" Christian. It seems ironic to me that many people criticize the "new" atheists like Dawkins and Harris for not seeing these nuances and not realizing there are many different ways to be Christian, Muslim, etc., but then some Christians shout that they are the true believers and all others are wrong. Hmm, imagine that. Someone thinks that their dogma is unassailable.
This movie is a disservice to any sort of dialog on what it means to have any faith, even if I think all religious faiths are extraneous. There are no fine lines, no simply black-and-white stances, and I think enough people realize that. Heck, even the "fundamentalist" atheists realize this from what I can tell. (Their point is that unreason and dogma can and will cause more harm than good and this must be dealt with head-on with philosophy, science, and debate--note that no guns or swords are supposed to be used to convert, which is what fundies may do if they could like they did in the Dark Ages.)
If you are religious and wonder about the intersection of science and religion, you won't be getting any straight or good or useful answers or discussions in this movie. There are much smarter people that Ben Stein that have been and are arguing on these subjects, such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
I know this is a link bomb, but I have two good reasons for doing it. 1. The movie is terrible in its scholarship and needs to be dealt with unless it should have its misinformation be unchallenged and do major damage to science and culture in this country. 2. I had emailed the people of that website to make use of my previous blog entry on the connection between Darwinism and Nazism. I was emailed back and told that it could be of use. So, all the more reason to link: I am linking to myself, sort of.
And from the reviews I have seen, they agree that the movie has a terrible premise and is poorly executed.
Note: At the time of this blog post, Expelled Exposed comes up on the sixth page when searching for the word "expelled". However, I have also noticed that Expelled Exposed is the only thing found in the Sponsored Link section on Google, just to the right of the searched links. So, Expelled Exposed could use a boost up, but it will be on every page Google turns up on Expelled now.
In my previous post I talked a linked a lot in relation to the new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (and how!), which has exposed itself to be propaganda run by right-wing Christian control freaks lacking morality and decency, let alone a sense of irony.
And now a site has been put up call Expelled Exposed. It was put together by the good people at NCSE, headed by Eugenie Scott. Thus far there are links on the site which are mostly reviews of the movie. Most are from scientists, but one is from a film critic from Florida whom the Expelled people claim to have entered to see the film under false pretenses, though he was invited.
However, one of the most egregious points of the movie is the attempted connection between Darwinian evolution and the rise of Nazism and the events of the Holocaust. Uh huh. I think this picture sums the movie up:
What we have here is the belt buckle worn my Nazi soldiers during the time of the Third Reich, which same "Gott Mit Uns", German for "God With Us". Not that different from "In God We Trust" on American currency. Beneath the words is the unmistakable Swastika with an eagle perched and wings spread, one of the primary symbols of the Third Reich.
In a later post I will put together a number of quotes to demonstrate that the link between Darwinism, atheism, and Nazism, specifically Hitler's beliefs, are not nearly so well connected as many try to paint it.
Apparently, there is a concerted effort amongst member(s) of the Texas State Board of Education to remove a certain Chris Comer because he dared to want to listen to Barbara Forest talk about her work on the Dover trial which dealt with Intelligent Design. PZ Myers has been repeating these reports with his classic wit here and here and here. (See also Texas Citizens for Science on this subject.) It is obviously nuts.
What is supposed to be stressed by this effort is that members of the board of education are supposed to be neutral on the subject of evolution vs. intelligent design and the schools should "teach the controversy." All so rational on the surface, no? Of course, school boards are not neutral on the subject of chemistry vs. alchemy, at least I would hope the push for "teach the controversy" is not being pressed in Texas on this point, nor in mathematics vs. numerology, astronomy vs. astrology, etc. I also doubt that members of a school board can seriously be neutral on having good or mediocre standards compared to other states. If neutrality is apathy to the facts, then forget about education. If one wanted to avoid every possible argument, nothing would even be said. After all, there are still people arguing for a geocentric model of the earth and even a flat earth! (From what I can tell, people take this positions very seriously--I mean Art Bell seriously.)
Of course, I imagine that the members of this or any educational board/organization are not neutral on so many things. It is obvious that political pressures and member's own desires for creationist standards in schools that is driving this issue the way it is.
Now, I don't have the same level of pessimism as Phil Plait is showing right now (Texas being doomed and all), but it is certainly understandable and worth using the JPG he has up. The reason for this is because so many people are already blogging about it; hopefully this story will get a fair amount of main-stream media attention and cause this to get too hot for the creationists down yonder. Such actions would certainly cause another Dover trial, at best for the creationists. More likely, I would think, the judge, whoever that would be, will follow precedent set by the Supreme Court and Judge Jones in Pennsylvania and cause the forced standards to be unconstitutional.
But perhaps this is what the folks at the Discovery Institute want, another trial, one that could be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. With a majority Catholic block in the seats, maybe they desire for the Roberts court to overturn previous decisions, such as Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 587 (1987), which struck down hard on any attempts to get "creation science" into public school classrooms. I wouldn't think this court would be so willing to do such a thing, especially considering the stance the Catholic church has take on evolution (even the current pope isn't willing to undo the decree John Paul II, at least not yet), but then again I'm not Scalia.
Oh, and as for the very concept of teaching the controversy, a good idea if it wasn't for one detail:
WHAT CONTROVERSY?!?!
When it comes to taking down creationist claims, check out TalkOrigins.org (which apparently was recently hacked). On YouTube, there is a great debunking of the more popular anti-evolution videos produced by Extant Dodos. Great stuff out there, and you don't need to have a Ph.D. to understand that creationists are full of crap, in or out of jail.
