No evolutionist will be convinced of what the movie is about without seeing the movie.

@Quasidog,
Because it’s about politics, not church. It’s about trying to end the separation of church/state, thereby ending democracy, forming a republic and, to many, triggering violent ‘end times’.

I have had people at my church spout astonishingly bone-headed stuff at me of the “science is a lie” variety. They do seem to be a minority, at least. They seem to be the same people who regularly watch televangelists on TV, and are part of a “fundamentalist” anti-”anything that doesn’t involve selective quotation from (an inaccurate English language translation of) the Bible” group.

They seem to fear that science will somehow “disprove” their beliefs, so they actively seek out anything that purports to discredit science. Fear is very effective at killing thought. (*cough* Bush administration *cough*)

The USA either has a lot more of these people or they’re a lot louder over there. Perhaps the recent climate of fear (“the terr’ists are comin’ fer ya!”) is a big factor, too.

My suggestion is that you start to push back with “medicine is science”. I have yet to find a “fundamentalist” who will turn down medical treatment.

What bothers me most is that it’s bad THEOLOGY.

In fact, it’s /such/ bad theology, Christian theologians even have a name for it. They call it “the God of the Gaps”, and its been around ever since science began its progress in explaining the natural world.* Creationists have been reduced from claiming all of the creation, the heavens and the earth and the seas, for God’s handiwork, to conceding the entirety of the natural world /except for a short sequence of proteins that make up the eubacterial flagellum/.** That’s a pretty mighty God you’ve got there, son.

Personally, I have a hard time reconciling my faith with the idea of a God who is content to let the entire natural world develop and evolve according to its own laws and contingencies, but intervenes to make sure that the eubacterium gets it’s tail.

Sadly, I fear that the fight for Truth In Teaching ™ and against the lies of IDiocy will only be won when more /religious/ leaders are willing to stand up and tell these people: you are demeaning our religion and our faith and our God.

*Throughout the history of science, people with a limited grasp of Christianity have clung to ideas of the form of “Science can’t explain X, so God must have done it. OK, so gravity is what keeps the planets in their orbits, not angels pushing them along, but how do you explain the Sun’s heat? Huh? Huh?”. Of course, the nature of science is to constantly explain more of the natural world, leaving ever smaller Gaps for the creationists to cling to as their “proof”.

**And yes, I know that even that supposed example of ID has been debunked.

(crickets chirping)

Most creation belief systems are based on vague and often poetic descriptions of the account, like the ‘Genesis’ account for example. Every time science makes it plainly clear that something is fact, like a certain facet of evolution, rather than be dogmatic about the creation belief, why not just let science fill in the gaps. Being dogmatic about some bible text, either way, is a little bit silly if it is open to interpretation due to its lack of detail regarding science. Would it not be more probable, form the point of view of the religious person, that fallible humans just, read it wrong? People make mistakes, even religious people interpreting religious text. Look at the example of Galileo and the ‘moving moons around Jupiter’ saga vs. the Church at that time. The Church was wrong, and he was right. But all they had to do, (which eventually they did) was admit, they read it wrong, and reinterpret the text. Easy.

What bothers me is that they continually violate the “11th Commandment” :

Thou shalt not believe thine own BS.

The scary thing about people like Stein is that they’ve been spouting this kind of hateful BS for so long that they no longer possess the capacity to see reality, and so in their minds they aren’t lying. Which makes them credible in the eyes of people who just don’t know any better.

I would also question counterpoints that only offer ONE SOURCE as evidence. ExpelledExposed is only ONE source. And that makes it nothing more than agenda driven attempts to discredit it. Give us more sourcees. PROVE to us you’re more interested in TRUTH and FACT and less interested in an AGENDA.

Matt,

The ExpelledExposed site is a collection of references to other sources. It is not, in fact, a single source. It is a good jumping off point so that one does not need to spend an unreasonable amount of time doing due diligence. Go look at the site. Look it up. Do YOUR research.

The movie directly and without remorse attacks sciences, lies about sciences, creatively edits interviews so as to misrepresent those interviewed, lies about it’s purpose, and generally, lies about everything it comes in contact with. So, as a person on the side of science, should I lie back and take it? Should I let the one chance humanity has to make a better tomorrow be slandered and libeled? Do I allow a transgression go unchallenged? Absolutely not!

The movie Expelled is about the people whom science supposedly expelled unjustly. I knew about several of these people even before the movie was made, and followed many of the stories closely. They are completely misrepresented in the movie as some sort of Christian Martyrs, above reproach and completely innocent in their situations. This is complete fabrication on a grand scale. The authors of the movie, had they performed their due diligence, would have known this. They presented these stories even so. Check out the background stories, look it up. Do your own research.

The movie also conflates the Theory of Evolution with the Nazi party of Adolf Hitler. That is pure bunk. While Hitler may have had some base knowledge that Darwin wrote something about Natural Selection, his pogroms against the Jewish People were based on the more time honored and well understood Martin Luther treatise against the Jews and a little thing called Artificial Selection (google it to see how long humans have practiced this). Look it up. Don’t take Ben Stein’s word for it!

Quotes by the atheist Evolutionary Biologists (why didn’t they choose any theists?) were mangled and edited to make them look as silly as possible. For instance, Dr. Dawkins was asked if there were any possible situation he would entertain that could be equated with Intelligent Design. He may or may not have answered right away. The editing makes it seem he jumped right into explaining about alien overlords seeding the Earth as if that was any better than “Goddidit” – but he was entertaining a fancy that he, in fact, does not hold.

If you investigate the hypothesis that the first life was created on the backs of crystals, you might find a thing based on catalytic reactions. These are real, and works just like the theory about the clays of ancient Earth providing a scaffolding for the first proteins to be build on – so it is science and not silly – even if it turns out this isn’t how it happened. Look it up.

If you don’t do your research, how can you have any pudding…. er, um. Or something like that.

(Oh, and Blake Stacey – I get spam blocked all the time too – I think the BA has to approve my posts. My be my ISP or my IP address range, or something).

JBS

wow… if only we’d managed to have this EXACT discussion with you before… Oh wait! We have! And you’ve learned nothing.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/04/17/npr-science-channel-and-expelled/#comments

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/04/15/expelled-exposed/#comments

So… here we go again…

It’s about whether teachers who mention alternative theories other than your sacred ToE should be fired for mentioning it. It’s about silencing opposition rather than embracing alternate ideas AND LEARNING FROM THEM.

The biggest problem with this isn’t that you are clearly unaware of what the REST of us already know… namely that your ENTIRE PREMISE is a lie (not one single person named in this film has ever been fired, released, dismissed, or otherwise “Expelled”)… no… the problem is that in a subsequent post, you mention ExpelledExposed, while clearly demonstrating that you refuse to look at the site’s contents, where you would have learned that this premise was a lie. So how are we to take you seriously when you clearly show that you are unwilling to even review the very sources you refer to?

So… moving on…

Why are you so afraid of people learning another concept and deciding for themselves? If evolution has the evidence behind it you state it does, then certainly you have nothing to fear, do you?

Matt, do you read anything else on this blog before you decide to spout off? If you did, you’d know that this topic was well covered in another thread just a few posts down. But I’ll say it for you again. And please pay attention this time: No-one here is either afraid of nor against ANYONE learning ANYTHING… what we are against, for like the billionth time, is presenting non-science in a science class. I will say this to you, Matt Garrett, only one more time, so please listen: ID / Creationism is NOT science… therefor it does not belong in a science curriculum. Period.

Please gain some understanding of why some things are taught in a science class and why some things are not acceptible for a science class before you continue to spout off about what science is “afraid of”.

Unless, of course, you’re more insecure about it than you’re willing to admit. Because all I see here is a campaign to discredit the film and it’s producers AT ALL COSTS.

Is there an actual point or argument in here? Which “costs” would those be? Didn’t cost me a thing to rip this movie apart… nor did it cost any of the dozens and dozens of movie critics who’ve done the same. I think we’re getting a little dramatic with the “AT ALL COSTS” statement, don’t you?

I would also question counterpoints that only offer ONE SOURCE as evidence. ExpelledExposed is only ONE source. And that makes it nothing more than agenda driven attempts to discredit it. Give us more sourcees. PROVE to us you’re more interested in TRUTH and FACT and less interested in an AGENDA.

Ugh… Matt… please actually VISIT the site. Seriously. oh… and actually read stuff on it while you’re there. The site itself is not a source… it’s more of a source aggregator. The whole site is dedicated to providing OTHER SOURCES. In fact, if you go to the “Resources” page on that site, you’ll see dozens of them. You should do that… and please read the reviews from places like MSNBC and NYTimes… I think it would do you some good to see that it’s not just us hethens at this site on a crusade to discredit the movie.

Once you’ve done that, do yourself a favor Matt… stop defending this movie… you’re going to end up looking really silly.

The people mentioned in Expelled were not fired for disagreeing with evolution. ExpelledExposed is not “ONE source” (if I capitalize every other word, does it make me right?). ExpelledExposed is a site that gathers information from many sources and your description is disingenuous at best. Your claim of censorship is bizarre. The movie is in theaters and everyone is discussing it all over the net. How is that censorship?

Science is not a popularity contest – we don’t vote on which theories make us feel good. ID is not science and asking non-scientists to decide that it is science is ridiculous.

Every time I see one of your posts about “Expelled” you keep insisting that the movie is just about people being persecuted for having a differing opinion.

Admittedly I haven’t seen the movie, but just about every review and online account from people who have seen the movie has mentioned the second half of the film tries to tie Darwin and evolution to the Holocaust.

To be honest, the fact that you keep driving home the whole “persecuted ID proponent” plot while ignoring the movie’s other theme(s) is becoming a bit tiresome. There’s enough evidence to indicate that the film is not about these supposed science martyrs.

As far the BA and the rest of the Evil Big Science Cabal (TM) censoring ID: dude, INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE. A Bush-appointed Republican judge was able to figure that out. Based on facts and evidence. What’s not to get?

On another note: why do you keep posting here, anyway?

“Go ahead and hate your neighbour, go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end.”

Why are you so afraid of people learning another concept and deciding for themselves? If evolution has the evidence behind it you state it does, then certainly you have nothing to fear, do you?

Unless, of course, you’re more insecure about it than you’re willing to admit. Because all I see here is a campaign to discredit the film and it’s producers AT ALL COSTS.

That sounds a hell of alot like censorship to me.

I never said children shouldn’t think outside the box. I said religion shouldn’t be taught in school.

For example, if an adult makes a movie that says Darwin is indirectly responsible for the Holocaust, children should question if that adult has the science education to understand what evolution is actually about.