Watch this appalling video of homeschoolers misusing the Denver museum to promote creationism. Aside from the general pattern of lies from the tour guides, two things jumped out at me.

The really awful pedagogy. Over and over again, the creationist says some stock phrase and then pauses, waiting for his kids to fill in the missing word. This is simply demanding rote learning. Similarly, he leads the kids in asking a good question — “how do you know?” — while training them to ignore any answers. Right there on the wall is a description of radiometric dating methods, for instance, and they turn their back on it.

Then there is the twisted logic. T. rex has big sharp teeth; they know, though, that he was a vegetarian, because “if this creature was designed to eat meat from the very start, what would he have to do until Adam and Eve sinned, and death entered the world? What would he have to do? Fast and pray for the Fall.” Oh, and of course, he then says, “Is that likely? Everyone look at me and say…<pause>no. Try that with me…no.”

This is child abuse. Those kids are getting their heads stuffed with ignorance.

At least this news report is unsympathetic.

(via Sandwalk)

My account of the affair at the Mall of America has been confirmed by none other than the movie producer, who wrote to Denyse O’Leary:

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.

This is what I’ve been saying all along; I was not “unruly”, nor was I “gatecrashing”; Mathis saw me there, and on a petty, arbitrary, vindictive whim decided to have me thrown out without legitimate cause. It really is that simple. That is how creationists operate.

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Hey, now Mathis repeats the same thing in IHE.

Mathis later confirmed in an e-mail that he had barred Myers from the screening. “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.

“Unlike the Darwinist establishment, we expell no one.”

Unless it’s someone they don’t like.

(The IHE article isn’t very good — it’s the usual media mush that runs away from the idea of actually calling idiocy idiocy.)

I was wrong — it’s not the Harvard multimedia video. It’s an independently generated copy. I grabbed a few images from the DVD I got at my truncated visit to the Expelled screening, and here, for instance, is the segment that shows that striking kinesin motor protein towing a vesicle down a microtubule. This is the version in the Expelled movie:

Now here’s an equivalent frame from the actual Harvard video.

Now I’m embarrassed to have mistaken one for the other, since the Expelled version is of much lower resolution and quality. However, do notice that they both have roughly the same layout and the same elements in view; this is a remarkable, umm, coincidence, since these are highly edited, selected renderings, with many molecules omitted … and curiously, they’ve both left out the same things.

Another curious coincidence: you’ve heard of the concept of plagiarized errors, the idea that the real tell-tale of a copy is when it’s the mistakes that are duplicated, in addition to the accuracies. In this case, I previously criticized the Harvard video for a shortcut. That kinesin molecule is illustrated showing a stately march, step by step, straight down the microtubule. Observations of kinesin show it’s more complex, jittering back and forth and advancing stochastically. That’s a simplification in the Harvard video that is also present in Expelled‘s version.

It’s clear that what they did was brainlessly copy what they saw in the original. I don’t know whether this is actionable anymore — that they slapped together a look-alike video to cover their butts makes the issue much more complicated.

Hmmm. I should have thought the powerful voices of communications experts shrieking at Richard Dawkins to hide under his bed would have had some effect, but no…he’s gone ahead and written his review of Expelled. And lo, in the camp of the Framers, there was much wailing and weeping and grinding of teeth, and rending of garments, and epic despair, because surely this will cause the destruction of Science.

The New York Times has weighed in, and they contacted the producers of Expelled…and what do you know, they’re still scrambling to find a credible story. They haven’t succeeded yet.

Mark Mathis, a producer of the film who attended the screening, said that “of course” he had recognized Dr. Dawkins, but allowed him to attend because “he has handled himself fairly honorably, he is a guest in our country and I had to presume he had flown a long way to see the film.”

Unbelievable. So basically it’s a baseless implication that I would be a troublemaker, and the arrogant and absurd assumption that Dawkins flew to Minneapolis from Oxford to see their preview of the movie.

Lying is just a reflex for them at this point. He also claims that he made Dawkins “shrink” in the Q&A, which is total nonsense. Mathis is a shrill and frightened man when he’s confronted; back in November, I called in to a radio interview he was doing, and he practically broke down in hysterics. He ended the “debate” by yelling into the phone, “Go to his website! Myers is an atheist! He’s an atheist!”, classic ad hominem.

I wouldn’t go so far as to claim Mathis was afraid of me — he was on home ground yesterday with a friendly audience — but it’s clear that he really, really dislikes me. The simple explanation for what happened at the screening is that he spotted me in the line, let his irrational venom get the better of him, and he had me evicted while he retreated back into the theater, and therefore missed spotting Dawkins. Everything else now is transparent spin to hide the fact that they were hypocritical about expelling me, and screwed up big time in allowing a more prominent critic slip by.

As for the implication that I’d be a horrible, disruptive presence, here’s one excerpt from the movie; it’s also on a DVD that they were giving away at a table at the screening^*. Look what a horrible, malign ogre I am.

I heard that people in the audience gasped in distress at my comment that I want to see religion reduced to a “side dish” instead of the “main dish”, but seriously — I saw that and thought that gee, I’m awfully conciliatory on screen.

Socratic Gadfly takes on the NY Times article in more detail; I’m getting a little tired of the story myself, after spending much of the afternoon with reporters. I think I’ll spend more time at the American Atheists meeting tomorrow, and look forward to our gathering of pharynguloids tomorrow night.

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The story is now also on Salon.

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By the way, one of the other things I’m doing here is taping some conversations with Richard Dawkins. Our discussion of our experiences at that movie are now on the web.

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^*By the way, another interesting thing is on the DVD. They’ve got excerpts from the Inner Life video. Creationists are certainly drawn to stealing that work, aren’t they?

I’m still busy at this conference, so I have to be quick — and here it is looking like this will be my all-time high traffic day, all thanks the hypocrisy and incompetence of the silly goofballs at Expelled. Anyway, Greg is collecting links, and here’s another eyewitness account.

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Skatje reviews the movie.

People are asking me to tell them more about the movie, Expelled. I can’t! I was thrown out!

Let me clarify a few things. This was a private screening with no admission charge, and you had to reserve seats ahead of time; you also had to sign a promise that you wouldn’t record the movie while you were there, and they were checking ID. Everyone in my family reserved seats under our own names, myself included. There was no attempt to “sneak in”, although apparently the producer, Mark Mathis, accused me of doing so in the Q&A afterwards (Mathis, of course, is a contemptible liar). We followed the procedures they set up, every step of the way, and were completely above board in all our dealings.

Mark Mathis was there at the screening, and apparently spotted me and gave instructions to the guard to throw me out. I asked the guard why I was being evicted, and he explained directly that the producer had given him that instruction.

They were well within their rights to exclude anyone. When I was told I would not be allowed in and threatened with arrest, I told the security guard that I would not cause any trouble. I stopped to talk with my family when they came over with a theater manager to evict me; again, I left peacefully. Apparently, the guards were talking about carrying out further measures when they saw me standing outside the theater, and speculated that I was going to harass other attendees. This was not true; I’d just had to leave my friends and family behind, and all I really wanted to do was tell them where I’d be. The last thing I wanted to do was spend two hours hanging around a movie theater.

This account is a complete fabrication. I was not disturbing anyone, was not trying to make a scene, and was only standing quietly in line. When I was taken aside by the guard, it was a complete surprise.

I was the only person evicted. The people I was with, which included my wife, my daughter Skatje, her boyfriend Collin, Richard Dawkins, and the entire staff of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, were overlooked. I was the lucky one.

Afterwards, we went out to eat and have a beer or two, which is why I didn’t give you all a more complete summary right away. We laughed over the movie, which I hear is not only boring and poorly made, but is ludicrous in its dishonesty. Apparently, a standard tactic is to do lots of fast cuts between biologists like me or Dawkins or Eugenie Scott and shots of Nazi atrocities. It’s all very ham-handed. The audience apparently ate it up, though. Figures. Christians have a growing reputation for their appreciation of dishonesty.

There are plans afoot for rebuttals. It’s hard to come up with much motivation to do so after discovering how bad this movie is, but yeah, both NCSE and the RDF will be doing something. Dawkins is going to mention it at least briefly in his talk tomorrow. He may write up a review, too, although I don’t think he considers it a high priority (did I mention what a piece of dreck this movie is?).

Kristine was there. You can read her summary.

The RDF crew are a fine bunch of people and we had a good time after the crappy movie. Which I have not seen. Apparently, I’ve been given a fair amount of time in the movie, too.

This outcome so far has been absolutely perfect, as far as I’m concerned. The hypocrisy of the Expelled makers has been exposed by their expulsion of one of the people they filmed (final lovely irony: I’m also thanked for my contributions in the credits), they’ve revealed their incompetence by throwing me out when Richard Dawkins was right next to me, and I didn’t have to waste two hours on a bad movie.

I’ve also got a story to tell: when the creationists saw me and Dawkins in a lineup, I am the one that had them so frightened that they had to call for the guards. I feel mighty.

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

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

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

I complied.

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

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

I’m a kind of sabot right now.

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

Richard Dawkins.

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

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

This bad propaganda film for creationism is going to come out soon, so I can sympathize with this call to put together an honest science movie in reply. However, I have huge reservations, particularly with the idea that we need to get people who understand science to write the movie. People who understand science might very well be the worst possible people to write it; the first priority ought to be get people who understand movies to write it. Someone like, for instance, John Rogers or Randy Olson — somebody who knows the movie business and also knows the science.

Then you run into another problem: these guys are professionals. You don’t go up to a pro and tell them that you’ve got a really important idea for a movie, could they please write it for you? For free? And, by the way, we don’t have a budget or any capital lined up, we just think it’s the right thing to do.

I’m afraid the place to start isn’t with soliciting manuscripts from scientists — it ought to be with an idea, something more specific than simply countering some other film that’s going to be a box-office flop, and getting backing so you can do it right, and do it professionally. And that means no amateurs from the ranks of scientists trying to do a job they aren’t trained for.

Can you imagine if Charles Darwin were asked to write the movie of his work? It would be five hours of barnacle anatomy and pigeon breeds.

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P.S. I don’t mean to be discouraging, but there really is expertise in the entertainment industry, and it does not help our cause of trying to emphasize the importance of knowledge of science to be so cavalier about other people’s knowledge.

Michael Egnor has made a blatant tactical error, and Larry Moran catches him on it. Note what Egnor says about evolution, that it is “obviously true”.

Dr. Wells pointed out that research on antibiotic resistance wasn’t guided by Darwinian evolutionary theory. That evolution occurred — that is, that the population of bacteria changed over time — is obviously true, and obviously was relevant to the antibiotic resistance research. Dr. Wells made the observation that the research owed little to Darwin’s theory that all biological complexity arose by natural selection without teleology.

Larry challenges the IDiots to ‘fess up and agree that they’ve conceded on the facts of evolution and are reduced to rhetorical sophistry, squabbling against this “Darwinism” thing of their own invention. I don’t expect they will; they’ll either pretend it was never said, or begin a little evasive dance, which will at least be entertaining.

I’d like to see the creationists do something else. Egnor’s redefinition shows that their objection is to the absence of teleology in evolutionary explanations, so let’s see them counter it with evidence for teleology. In those bacteria that evolved antibiotic resistance, for instance — show me the hand of a god reaching in and tweaking those genes.