What am I supposed to do when all three candidates for the presidency turn out to be credulous, anti-science ignoramuses? Obama thinks there’s a link between vaccines and autism, and now Hillary has jumped off the cliff with him. They’re both nuts, or at least suck-ups to the kooks.
Orac, of course, weighs in.
A while back, I pulled down a pdf of something called the “Leader’s Guide” from the Expelled website. I was agog. It’s flat-out fundamentalist Christian creationism, through and through — quote-mines, sermon suggestions, etc., etc., etc. I was thinking that here’s another nail in the coffin for the next time this garbage comes to trial, and that I should dig through it and pull out the tired old creationist quotes from it.
Now I don’t have to: Troy Britain has put together a two-part dissection. Take a look, and be amazed. Henry Morris would be so proud.
Michael Korn, the crazed creationist from Colorado who has threatened evolutionists with physical harm, keeps sending me email. His latest is an enumeration of the sins of evolutionists as exhibited in the movie, Expelled, which seems to have him quite worked up. He ranks us by evil; I’m #2*. I’m going to have to try harder.
Here’s a generous idea: if you join the NCSE, this blogger will match your donation, up to a total of $500. If you aren’t already a member, take this as further incentive.
I think I’ve said just about everything I can about that contemptible, dishonest propaganda movie starring Ben Stein, so I’ve been fairly quiet about it lately. It will run its short course in the theaters, and the main result will be that we’ll get a few more creationists who, in addition to being grossly ignorant, will be grossly disinformed about science. Thanks to the Expelled gang, creationist arguments will be a little bit stupider.
So here are what I think are the best of the responses I’ve seen so far.
Sahotra Sarkar succinctly guts the main points of the movie. (It’s also partly in response to the very worst defense of the movie, by David Klinghoffer, who somehow ties it to the glory of circumcision — cringe before the stupid.)
Richard Dawkins writes a letter to a disinformed viewer who suddenly thinks biologists and atheists are plotting another Holocaust. That’s another outcome of this movie: It’s going to inflame more than a few crazy people.
Arthur Caplan excoriates the movie: it isn’t just bad, it’s immoral. Stein is practicing a form of Holocaust denial.
Use them in future arguments with creationists; you’ll need to.
As for all those people who are arguing from box office grosses that the movie is a success or a failure, grow up. We have a large population of miseducated evangelical lackwits in this country who will fork over money for exactly this kind of crap, so we knew ahead of time that the producers were going to get some small pots of cash out of this; worrying over exactly how much they got or will get is a pointless exercise. All it tells us is roughly how many people were motivated enough to see a bad movie because it caters to their prejudices. The issue at hand is dealing with the substance of the movie’s claims and the reactions of the viewers. If you’re counting dollar signs and using that to opine over the worth of the movie (in either direction), you’re being part of the problem.
It’s the same problem that we see in press reports on politics right now. Everything is focused on the horse race — how many votes do they have so far, how much money have they raised? — and next to nothing on what the people actually say. Stop it!
I think this is my favorite newspaper headline yet: Priest attached to party balloons vanishes in Brazil. Now you know what to bring to the next party at your local church: a lawn chair, a bunch of balloons, and a helium tank. I am imagining a day when every priest in the world stands smiling beneath a great happy bobbing collection of many-colored balloons, and they all joyously loft themselves up, up into the sky, joyfully drifting away before the winds until they are just a tiny speck and then … gone. It will be a miracle.
This will be my new dream. It will bring a smile to my face as I fall asleep.
And as long as I’m dreaming, I’ll imagine myself with an ultralight aircraft and a BB gun, buzzing above a great Sargasso of wind-gathered balloons.
Nothing to celebrate there, but you could instead say happy birthday to ERV.
We’re seeing a lot of new traffic here, and a lot of it seems to be people hunting down that infamous P.Z. Myers dude because they read about his evil ways in some publication, or saw the name in some really bad movie. You’re at the right place, welcome, go ahead and leave a comment. If you’re a creationist, the other commenters here are always hungry for a little fresh meat, and if you’re just generally interested in the subjects discussed here, join the conversation. You can find a list of my science articles here, but as long as you’ve found the place, may I suggest you take a look at the ScienceBlogs main page? There’s a legion of other science blogs right here, my next door neighbors, and they’d probably appreciate some visits, too.
And who knows? You may have really bad taste and think one of those other guys has a better blog than mine, and you’ll hang out there. I might forgive you.
We have a confession! It was made by Michael Edmondson, and it was produced by the people behind Expelled. He wrote to me, and says, “The intent of the video has been questioned a lot…I suppose the answer is that I tried to make something that was funny to me and It’s not really meant to convince anyone of anything.” That’s how I felt about it: it’s amusing, and that’s all that matters — it’s vague enough that it can be read any way you want.
Edmondson has also made a brief sequel.
Note that Stein is wearing a t-shirt that says “Poe’s Law”.
