Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

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''Expelled'' is being promoted by Motive Entertainment (Irony? - You decide!), which was responsible for marketing such wonders as Mel Gibson's ''The Passion of the Christ'' and ''The Chronicles of Narnia''. They claim to be concocting a [[viral]] advertising campaign.<ref>[http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-22-2007/0004649742&EDATE= Expelled Press Release]</ref>  Ben Stein was on the O'Reilly Factor to defend his "creation" <nowiki><snicker></nowiki>.<ref>O'Reilly Factor, available illegally [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWMGD1Dg6L8 here].</ref>
 
''Expelled'' is being promoted by Motive Entertainment (Irony? - You decide!), which was responsible for marketing such wonders as Mel Gibson's ''The Passion of the Christ'' and ''The Chronicles of Narnia''. They claim to be concocting a [[viral]] advertising campaign.<ref>[http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-22-2007/0004649742&EDATE= Expelled Press Release]</ref>  Ben Stein was on the O'Reilly Factor to defend his "creation" <nowiki><snicker></nowiki>.<ref>O'Reilly Factor, available illegally [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWMGD1Dg6L8 here].</ref>
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The producers have created (it sure wasn't intelligently designed) a "Leader's Guide", whatever that means, to go along with the film.  You are encouraged to enjoy our [[Expelled:Leader's Guide|critique of it]].
  
 
== Intelligent deceit? ==
 
== Intelligent deceit? ==
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==See also==
 
==See also==
[[Expelled:Leader's Guide]]
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*[[Expelled:Leader's Guide]]
  
 
==References==
 
==References==

Revision as of 02:11, 28 March 2008

Advertising.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a creationist propaganda docu-drama starring Ben Stein as a "rebel" out to stick it to "big science" for its repression and suppression of poor little intelligent design. In it, Ben Stein pretends to interview various avid public supporters of evolution and intelligent design.

Expelled is being promoted by Motive Entertainment (Irony? - You decide!), which was responsible for marketing such wonders as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia. They claim to be concocting a viral advertising campaign.[1] Ben Stein was on the O'Reilly Factor to defend his "creation" <snicker>.[2]

The producers have created (it sure wasn't intelligently designed) a "Leader's Guide", whatever that means, to go along with the film. You are encouraged to enjoy our critique of it.

Contents

Intelligent deceit?

The movie has been severely criticized for conducting the interviews of the people who represent the scientific consensus on evolution in the movie under deceptive circumstances. The scientists, who included noted blogger P. Z. Myers, Richard Dawkins, and Eugenie Scott, were told they were being interviewed for a movie called Crossroads on the Intersection of Science and Religion. In fact, they were being interviewed for creationist propaganda.[3][4] Intrepid internet researchers have uncovered[5] that the domain name ExpelledtheMovie.com was already registered as of March 2007.[6] Though Crossroads may have been the working title, but no comparable domain name was registered. Myers was contacted in April 2007, after the title Expelled had apparently been chosen.

The producers have also been accused of bribing schools into forcing kids to see the movie. [7]

Apparently intelligent design is creationism. Thanks for the assist, Ben Stein!

Pro-science readers, however, may be pleased to note one bit of good news from Expelled. While the Discovery Institute and other ID-pushers continue to contend that intelligent design is not just creationism in disguise, the movie's production company apparently is placing sponsored Google ads on G-Mail that frame the "Ben Stein vs. Evolution" debate as "Creationism vs. Evolution," equating intelligent design and creationism in the process. Lovely.

The poor oppressed IDers

For detailed discussion of these examples see Intelligent design and academic freedom

The film interviews the following people about their horrible repression by the Darwinian establishment[8]:

  • Dr. Caroline Crocker, who lost her position at George Mason University after she gave a lecture using long since discredited creationist arguments in her class on evolution.
  • Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig is a geneticist at Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany. He got his feelings hurt after being told to "shut up" about his whining about how much Darwinism sucks.
  • Dr. Richard Sternberg is an evolutionary biologist who threw a fit after he got called out on slipping a paper from the Discovery Institute into a journal and bypassing peer review.
  • Dr. Michael Behe is a Lehigh University Professor of Biochemistry who is shackled by the horror of having the biology department issue a disclaimer about how they don't support his views.
  • Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez is an assistant professor of astronomy and physics at Iowa State University who was denied tenure and despite many, many reasons for the denial claims it was only about his support for intelligent design.

"The Expelled Challenge"

As part of the marketing for the movie, its website is offering a $10,000 donation for students at one "Christian school or a Christian home school group"[9] to view the film.

External Reviews and Response

  • Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel published an early review.[10] (This stirred a lot of controversy since he had been invited, then disinvited to a showing of the movie. Moore muses as to why a movie that will be public has restricted access.) Moore's thought? "Expelled makes good points about academic freedom and the ways unpopular ideas are shouted down in academia, the press and the culture. But not offering evidence to back your side, where the burden of proof lies, makes the movie every bit as meaningless and silly as that transcendental metaphysical hooey of a couple of years back, What the Bleep Do We Know?" Moore tired of repeated references to Stalin, Hitler, and points out the straw man tactics the film uses.
  • The National Center for Science Education set up a website[11] about the movie.
  • Opinion editor of New Scientist Amanda Gefter comments on a Q & A period after a screening: "Throughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn't help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was a sort of microcosm of America, and let me tell you - it's a scary place. I also couldn't help thinking that the intelligent design folks aren't being silenced, so much as they're being silent. Because when it comes to actually explaining anything, they've got nothing to say."[12]

PZ Myers incident

On March 20, 2008, blogger PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, along with several other biologists and relatives, attended a pre-release private screening of the film in the Mall of America near Minneapolis, Minnesota. While the group was standing in line outside the theater, Myers was apparently recognized by someone affiliated with the film and was ordered to leave the premises by security personnel.[13] That's right, PZ Myers was singled out and booted from a film that complains about exclusion. However, in an amazing oversight, the production crew somehow failed to recognize Richard Freaking Dawkins, who was standing right next to Myers but was allowed in. Dawkins, presumably to the great surprise of the filmmakers, proceeded to participate in the Q&A session following the film.

Freedom of assembly or association -- or even market -- rights do not apply, of course, since the screening was on private property. However, the irony of the incident is too great, given the film's intent to "grant more freedom to creationists" when it comes to spewing their crap in our classrooms.

Richard Dawkins later commented on richarddawkins.net on the film, with many similar criticisms as the reviews above.[14]

See also

References

  1. Expelled Press Release
  2. O'Reilly Factor, available illegally here.
  3. Blog post about how he came to be interviewed
  4. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/science/27expelled.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
  5. [http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=5152;st=630#entry101123 Antievolution.org forum post
  6. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=expelledthemovie.com
  7. http://theframeproblem.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/producers-of-expelled-trying-to-bribe-christian-schools-into-forcing-their-students-to-see-their-movie/
  8. Film website
  9. http://www.getexpelled.com/schools.php
  10. http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_movies_blog/2008/02/is-ben-stein-th.html
  11. http://www.expelledexposed.com/
  12. http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/03/are-id-proponents-being-silenced.html
  13. Myers documented the event in a few blog posts. [1] [2]
  14. http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins

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