The Institute for Creation Research (really!?) is suing the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board because the board will not accept their application to issue a master’s degree in science education. So now they’re suing in federal court.

Really, just how many things do they want to be wrong at? These are young earth creationists who have a literal interpretation belief in the Bible — meaning they think the world is actually 6,000 years old and was actually built in six 24 hour days.

And now they want to be able to issue science degrees that would allow their “graduates” to take jobs in Texas schools teaching science. I’m sorry, but when you have no basic foundation of the fundamentals of science, you are not qualified to teach it.

This would be like someone who actually believes that Field of Dreams happened teaching the history of baseball, only teaching what they were told by that movie.

Money quote from the original article:

Among the institute’s arguments in the lawsuit: “The monopolistic realities of the science education market in Texas (and in America generally) would limit creationist learners to science education opportunities from evolutionist graduate schools.”

It says the institute is “the only graduate school which specializes in creationism-informed science education.”

Here’s a tip for you — when you are the only “school” in the country offering a specific course, and every other school on the face of the Earth is telling you that you are 100 percent wrong about your science, there is a reason that you are the only one teaching it.

And for the record, graduate schools aren’t “evolutionist,” they’re scientific. Go ahead and take your creation theories to any of these “evolutionist” schools and put them through the scientific process. Perhaps engaging in actual science will allow you to see what science is and how it works. Only when you are willing to learn the facts are you able to understand them. Having a fairy tale and fighting anyone who dares tell you that you have no proof of anything is no way to conduct science.

I can take people going to church and being religious, but when it comes to trying to force people to believe in something that is so scientifically unsound is downright criminal.

Why is it that every creationist vs. school argument takes place in Texas? Really, at this point, that state deserves the population that it is trying to grow.

Also not to be ignored:

“Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has introduced a bill that would, in effect, exempt the institute from state rules that degree-granting universities must follow.”

Yeah, there’s a guy who deserves to be reelected (note: sarcasm). How do these people have jobs? Introducing a bill that would exempt an institute that teaches proven falsehoods from state rules for issuing degrees? Why not offer medical licenses to witch doctors while you’re at it — there’s about as much real science in each.

Thanks to Pharyngula, with a hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for this gem…

Summary:

The folks at the Discovery Institute (translation: Creation Propaganda Facility) wanted to invite a real-life scientist to come “debate” their fake scientists. So they asked Prof. Nicholas Gotelli, from the University of Vermont’s Department of Biology.

First, the invitation:

Dear Professor Gotelli,

I saw your op-ed in the Burlington Free Press and appreciated your support of free speech at UVM. In light of that, I wonder if you would be open to finding a way to provide a campus forum for a debate about evolutionary science and intelligent design. The Discovery Institute, where I work, has a local sponsor in Burlington who is enthusiastic to find a way to make this happen. But we need a partner on campus. If not the biology department, then perhaps you can suggest an alternative.

Ben Stein may not be the best person to single-handedly represent the ID side. As you’re aware, he’s known mainly as an entertainer. A more appropriate alternative or addition might be our senior fellows David Berlinski or Stephen Meyer, respectively a mathematician and a philosopher of science. I’ll copy links to their bios below. Wherever one comes down in the Darwin debate, I think we can all agree that it is healthy for students to be exposed to different views–in precisely the spirit of inviting controversial speakers to campus, as you write in your op-ed.

I’m hoping that you would be willing to give a critique of ID at such an event, and participate in the debate in whatever role you feel comfortable with.

A good scientific backdrop to the discussion might be Dr. Meyer’s book that comes out in June from HarperCollins, “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.”

On the other hand, Dr. Belinski may be a good choice since he is a critic of both ID and Darwinian theory.

Would it be possible for us to talk more about this by phone sometime soon?

With best wishes,
David Klinghoffer
Discovery Institute

Now, let the awesome begin. The response from Prof. Gotelli:

Dear Dr. Klinghoffer:

Thank you for this interesting and courteous invitation to set up a debate about evolution and creationism (which includes its more recent relabeling as “intelligent design”) with a speaker from the Discovery Institute. Your invitation is quite surprising, given the sneering coverage of my recent newspaper editorial that you yourself posted on the Discovery Institute’s website:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/02/

However, this kind of two-faced dishonesty is what the scientific community has come to expect from the creationists.

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren’t members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

“Conspiracy” is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn’t live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don’t maintain scientific standards.

Finally, isn’t it sort of pathetic that your large, well-funded institute must scrape around, panhandling for a seminar invitation at a little university in northern New England? Practicing scientists receive frequent invitations to speak in science departments around the world, often on controversial and novel topics. If creationists actually published some legitimate science, they would receive such invitations as well.

So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn’t science and doesn’t merit an invitation.

In closing, I do want to thank you sincerely for this invitation and for your posting on the Discovery Institute Website. As an evolutionary biologist, I can’t tell you what a badge of honor this is. My colleagues will be envious.

Sincerely yours,

Nick Gotelli

P.S. I hope you will forgive me if I do not respond to any further e-mails from you or from the Discovery Institute. This has been entertaining, but it interferes with my research and teaching.

That is how science actually regards Creationism/Intelligent Design. Don’t believe the ridiculousness when the Discovery Institute tries to tell you that scientists are split on evolution and some support teaching ID. Don’t believe Ann Coulter or the rest of the idiots who think that evolution is “just a theory” or that scientists are just uppity liberals with an agenda.

It’s a simple scientific debate. One is right, or at least based on real science, and the other is a fairy-tale that changes every year with attempts to get accepted.

Please pass this along to the Boards of Education in Texas, Kansas, and wherever else some common sense is desperately needed.

The people of Texas will once again bring the issue of evolution in the textbooks to a debate and a vote, and it is expected to be close.

In the past, the code that Texas’ science curriculum went by required “students to critique all scientific theories, exploring ‘the strengths and weaknesses’ of each.” Since then, the creationist in Texas have changed their gameplan to be one of only examining the strengths and weaknesses in evolution as they see it. No longer are scientists being forced to defend against young-Earth theories and floods creating the Grand Canyon, but now they are bombarded with “strengths and weaknesses” that are being created as quickly as they can be dismissed.

The difference this year is that the panel that revises the curriculum decided to possibly drop the strengths and weaknesses phrase and instead use the phrase “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence.”

While teaching intelligent design and creationism are federally banned in the classrooms, the creationists and intelligent design supporters have changed their gameplan to only focus on trying to discredit evolution, hoping that will lead to inevitably getting acceptance for their religious beliefs.

The vote is expected to be close with the addition of seven social conservatives to the board in recent years, as well as the chairman of the board being a young-Earth believer.

It really is a scary thing when a chairman of a state’s school board can believe that the Earth itself is just a few thousand years old and he can keep his position. The state of Texas should be ashamed of themselves that the most powerful voice in their education system, a dentist, contradicts 100 percent of the world’s geologists, biologists and generally people with any formal education in the sciences. Perhaps this is why Texas ranks numbers 49 and 46 in SAT reading and math, respectively.

This debate needs to end once and for all. Scientists need to speak louder, and if necessary, more forcefully to get their point across. The average American still thinks that modern theories of evolution are as simple as “fish turned into ape, ape turned into man” and all of it is unchanged since Darwin’s days.

Science needs to fight back. Educate people, even if they are already adults. Most people don’t know the difference between the word ‘theory’ in conversation as opposed to in science.

When it comes to things like evolution and global warming, politics needs to stay away. The whole theory of evolution is getting the spin treatment that a Supreme Court decision will get, and that’s not fair to the scientists who have dedicated their lives to finding the facts. A dentist in Texas shouldn’t have the power to tell the next generation that he doesn’t think their life’s work is accurate because it goes against his gut feeling and a 2,000 year old book.

Global warming should not be a mulit-billion dollar industry. It should be about science. If a theory as young as global warming has so much evidence pointing to two distinctly different conclusions, then no significant action should be forced. Politics needs to take a step back and let the scientists figure out the science. The only people that are qualified to make decisions about science education are scientists. No one else. A dentist who believes that the Earth is a recent geologic event should not be dictating the future of your child’s science education.

And if you think this is just those in Texas that have to worry about it, you’re wrong. Texas is the nation’s biggest buyer of textbooks, so what they say ends up in the majority of textbooks around the nation. The makers of the books don’t want to make multiple versions of their books, so your child will likely end up being forced to learn what the dentists of Texas deem is the truth about science.

The evolution vs. intelligent design/creation in the classroom “debate” continues in Texas, as the two sides squared off in the most recent school board meeting.

My only information on the meetings comes from one witness, who as any right-minded individual should be, was there to support science.

I can’t even begin to tell you how upsetting it makes me to know that there are people out there whose life goal is to get evolution removed from classrooms. People who get all of their “science” information from the Discovery Institute, people who believe that 8th grade students are qualified to sort through the science presented to them. Their only goal is to try to discredit evolution, and they’ll do anything to succeed.

It doesn’t matter that they have no science, it only matters that they have a controversy.

Here’s my question to the creationist supporting school boarders: If evolution is removed from the classroom, what will you teach? What “science” will you consider worthy of being in a textbook, in the field of earth science?

The thing is, without evolution, they have no science. The entire foundation of ID and creation is to counter the facts of evolution. If they have no science to try to discredit, they are left with nothing.

If it weren’t for the drastic results that I already know would occur, I’d love to have a social experiment where one school district gets taught science and facts and another gets taught creation. Then, let’s compare the students 20 years later to see who is smart and who is not. Since we don’t have 20 years and countless lives to ruin, I’ll tell you now — science will win 100 percent of the time.

The Intelligent Design backers have nothing. They fake science, they distort truths and the spin the facts. They are the equivalent of the most pathetic politicians on both sides of the aisle. They are fighting for a belief. A belief that no matter how much evidence is shown to them, they will never un-believe. They want to be right more than they are willing to be wrong. That is something that doesn’t exist in the real scientific community.

What the scientific community needs to do is take their top speakers and presenters and put together a documentary. Invite the top creationists to show their evidence, then show the real evidence. Make the whole thing for the layman and include everything that would be needed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what the truth is. Then, solicit private donations from those of us that would gladly pay, and put it on network television. Sure, they may try to counter with their own, but the truth will always prevail.

This is getting ridiculous. Science needs to stand up and be proud of itself. Sure, Dawkins and Hitchens and the like write wonderful books, but science and academia needs a spokesman who is likable and accessible to tell the people what they should be believing. That’s all America needs is the right voice to tell them what to believe, and if no one from the sciences is talking, they’ll gladly listen to whoever is.

Scientists need to stand up and get loud. Get mean if you have to. But these people need to be put in their place. It’s not about belief in anything other than the truth.

If a creationist wants to show me some evidence and submit their hypothesis to the scientific method, we’ll all gladly listen. But they won’t. They are poor attempts at bullies and somebody needs to metaphorically slap them upside the head.

One of the most frustrating aspects of discussing evolution with a creationist, or many plain old religionists for that matter is their simple lack of understanding the word “theory.”

All too often, a conversation between an evolutionist and a creationist will end up with the creationist saying, “evolution is just a theory,” and assuming that they just said something true. It’s the lack of the understanding of the word “theory” in science that causes people to make this mistake.

This mistake is also often made by those in the media. Ann Coulter, for instance, often refers to evolution as “just a theory” in her dismissal of it, among many other idiotic statements she has made about evolution.

So what is a theory?

In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, there are a variety of definitions for the word “theory,” but it’s the last one that is often mistaken as the only definition. The last definition offered is: “6 a: a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b: an unproved assumption.”

An unproved assumption.

This is the way that the word theory is often used when people are talking about evolution. They’ll say, “evolution is just a theory, and many scientists don’t believe in it.” Both of those statements are false in their use. Evolution is in fact a theory, but the implication here is that since it’s “just a theory” then it is an unproved assumption. And obviously the “many scientists don’t believe in it” is a common line used by creationists who are quoting their own made up propaganda. Sure, some scientists don’t believe in evolution, just not the ones that work in the field of evolution.

This is where they also conveniently tell you that gravity is not a theory, because it has been proven, further showing their lack of a grasp of scientific terminology.

The fact is, gravity is a theory, just as evolution is. And they always will be, no matter how proven they are.

Theories will always be theories. They can never graduate to facts or laws. They are different terms for different parts of science.

So what’s the difference between the common use of “theory” and a scientific theory?

Well, let’s define a scientific theory:

“A scientific theory or law represents an hypothesis, or a group of related hypotheses, which has been confirmed through repeated experimental tests. Theories in physics are often formulated in terms of a few concepts and equations, which are identified with ‘laws of nature,’ suggesting their universal applicability. Accepted scientific theories and laws become part of our understanding of the universe and the basis for exploring less well-understood areas of knowledge. Theories are not easily discarded; new discoveries are first assumed to fit into the existing theoretical framework. It is only when, after repeated experimental tests, the new phenomenon cannot be accommodated that scientists seriously question the theory and attempt to modify it. The validity that we attach to scientific theories as representing realities of the physical world is to be contrasted with the facile invalidation implied by the expression, ‘It’s only a theory.’ For example, it is unlikely that a person will step off a tall building on the assumption that they will not fall, because ‘Gravity is only a theory.’”

It is true that gravity is just a theory. Should we not teach it? Or provide a creationist rebuttal or their own theory, that completely lacks scientific merit?

Why evolution is taught and creationism (or intelligent design if you’re being sneaky) is not is that creationists don’t play by the rules of science. If they want to disprove evolution, they can try all they want. That’s the whole point of science.

You come up with a hypothesis of something you observed, you make predictions and test your hypothesis, and you repeat until it works the same way time after time. At this point, you have a theory. It’s called the “scientific method” and it’s the way real science is studied.

I don’t want to make this another evolution/creation article, since there are plenty of those around. I do want to make this about the word “theory” and its misuse by those attempting to disprove evolution.

Science is not all that difficult if you are willing to be patient. The scientific method is not complicated. Evolution is not word-for-word what was in Darwin’s Origin of Species. He simply presented a theory. That theory has been observed and tested for the last century, as scientists do, and cannot be disproved.

I’m sorry to all of the Ann Coulters out there who only get their “science” from the Discovery Institute, but evolution is a fact. It’s technically a theory also, but it is just as much fact. If you spent half of the time you spent learning actual science about global warming, you’d understand that this is not a giant hoax to mess with the religionists. I don’t care about your religion. I don’t agree with it, but I really don’t care what you believe. But you don’t have to fight scientific facts because you think I give a shit who you pray to.

Evolution is a fact. It’s also a theory. (Sorry religionists, I linked to the pinko Wikipedia, so you’ll have to take their facts/theories with a grain of salt)

Do some research and it’s not that difficult to understand.

Not that I needed to be told that I wouldn’t enjoy a trip to The Creation Museum outside of Cincinnati, but I’ve found out that I apparently won’t enjoy it. Shocking. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d enjoy Cincinnati, but that’s for completely different reasons.

Thankfully, Christopher from Fabulously in the City took one for the team and went for the rest of us.

Among the things we learned and saw at The Creation Museum:

“I lost count of how many times I read claims such as, “The evidence suggests…”, yet none of the supporting evidence was shown. For example, a claim was that, “The Evidence suggests Lake Hopi was formed after The Great Flood”. Yet, after searching the whole museum, there wasn’t an inch of this so-called evidence, not even a reference!”

Also:

“In the entire museum, there was not a single fossil. There was a replica of one fossil, Archaeopteryx, but even that replica didn’t focus on the science–instead the supporting plaques spewed out the same hackneyed conspiracy of how this was a made up fossil.”

Also for your $8, you get:

“There was an entire room devoted to “same evidence, different perspectives”, saying that both creationists and scientists study the same evidence, but Creationists instead come with the belief that the bible is 100% accurate, and thus they make science fit its way into that mold. Unlike scientists, who continually question everything and do everything within their will to remain objective, these Christians admittedly are perfectly fine with their bias and would rather manipulate evidence than question a text written by cavemen. So much for that pesky scientific method.”

And in conclusion:

“Fellow atheists, learn from my mistake: there is absolutely, positively nothing about this debacle that is worth seeing. This is not like Expelled where you should see it just so you can say you know first hand how bad it is. No. Instead, The Creation Museum is kind of like choosing between a white wedding cake or one made entirely out of horse shit. Sure, people always like more options, but sometimes its better just to trust common sense and admit that you don’t have to test an idea to know it’s a bad one.”

Christopher, I’m sorry I quoted you so much, but I can’t do justice to the inhumanity of your trip with my words, having not been there and all. I don’t envy you, and I feel for the knowledge you surely lost on your trip.

I picked out a few quotes, but I suggest reading the whole thing to truly understand what this must have felt like.

The conservative answer to Wikipedia, Conservapedia, scares the living daylights out of me. I’ll be honest — I’d never even known that Conservapedia existed, and right now I wish I could go back in time to when I didn’t know about it. Despite being an atheist, I actually tend to lean to the right politically, as odd as that sounds, but I can’t find a single thing that I like about this site.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan, I was sent to the Conservapedia page for Barack Obama, as he promised it would offer a glimpse into the conservative mind when it comes to Obama. Wow, is this scary?

Included prominently in the Obama entry is the fact that he may become the first Muslim president in American history, along with seven bullet points of “Obama is likely to be Muslim because…” Things that are false beyond any shadow of a doubt are proudly displayed as facts, in order to “not allow liberal bias.”

Let’s get this clear, my conservative friends: Barack Obama is not now, nor has he ever been a Muslim. Religion is not inherited, so his father being a Muslim means absolutely nothing. My parents religion has no bearing on my religion, except for the fact that it was my first source of religious misinformation. If you want people to listen to you when you argue against global warming (I’m on your side), then you have to stop denying the facts of evolution and Obama’s religion.

I hate liberal bias as much as the next guy, but replacing it with conservative fiction is not really a better alternative.

Against my better judgement, I decided to check out a few more pages. My first two choices, atheism and evolution, confirmed my hunch that this site was just religious far-right propaganda. There is absolutely no desire to sort out facts, only the attempt to push an agenda.

Comparing the pages for evolution and Intelligent Design, you see that the evolution page offers only reasons why evolution can’t be true, while the ID page offers only selective “evidence” for it being true. The sources for both are almost entirely from creationist authors and sites.

The about page for Conservapedia says:

“Conservapedia is a clean and concise resource for those seeking the truth. We do not allow liberal bias to deceive and distort here. Founded initially in November 2006 as a way to educate advanced, college-bound homeschoolers, this resource has grown into a marvelous source of information for students, adults and teachers alike. We have received over 50 million page views!

The starting point for increasing your knowledge, your faith and the well-being of you and those around you is to understand concepts better. Conservapedia enables you to do that, and to impart what you have learned to others by editing here. The truth shall set you free.

No other encyclopedic resource on the internet is free of corruption by liberal untruths. Please look around while you’re here, share this with others, edit your favorite entries, and enjoy the benefits of new insights that you never realized before. For example, do you know why pretzels have their shape?”

Listen, if you are using Conservapedia as a source of actual information, or you are using it as a guide for homeschooling, you are beyond help. This is not accurate information, and this is not an “encyclopedia.” It is propaganda, and it is far worse than anything I’ve seen from the “liberal media.” Wikipedia may be unfair on some topics, I agree. But the answer is not to create a fictional encyclopedia site. The answer is to get your information from reliable sources, not make a fake one. When you go out of your way to only allow the “science” that you agree with, you are not partaking in the scientific debate.

Part of the “evidence” they use to show that “evolution is losing support” is that the public in the United States doesn’t believe in it. Maybe that’s because there are 50 million people willing to get information from hacks like this!

In several of the articles, the argument is made repeatedly that most people who believe in evolution are atheists, with the conclusion being that the two trains of thought go hand-in-hand. There is no mention that most scientists are atheists because the evidence led them to draw that conclusion, not that their beliefs led them to their profession.

There is also the mention that creationists tend to win most debates with evolutionists, so evolutionists refuse to debate them anymore. Again, the majority of their sources are creationists and the Discovery Institute (creationists).

I really am appalled at what this site has. If they are telling the truth that they have 50 million page views, then this country is in worse shape than I ever imagined. I don’t care what you believe, telling one side of a debate, or suppressing scientific knowledge is no way to teach or learn.

I genuinely fear for the generation of home-schooled children of right-wingers coming to power. I fear that the children of the left wingers who forced the right-wingers to become this way are also going to try to ruin everything, but today, I’m more worried about the conservative offspring.

Some other fun Conservapedia “facts:”

- James Madison is called the Father of the Constitution by liberals because he was against religion being more prominent in the Constitution. Nothing to do with the FACT that he wrote a large part of it, and that the three-armed government was based off of his Virginia Plan, and that he’s had that nickname for about 200 years.

- Atheist materialism is responsible for the crimes of the Nazis. No mention of Hitler’s Christianity.

- Thomas Jefferson was a failure.

- For an “encyclopedia,” you’d think that Bill Clinton did anything that was not a scandal. But apparently, he did not.

I really want to look for more, but it’s making me nauseous. I have to stop reading and never again visit this site.

Damn you Andrew Sullivan for pointing this out to me, I’ll never forgive you. It may be time to start looking for real estate in New Zealand.

Ben Stein is at it again, defying logic as well as anyone I’ve ever seen.

I’ve already said all I’m going to say about Expelled, and it’s bad science. For now at least.

Now, I’m taking issue with Ben Stein himself. Again, I loved him in Win Ben Stein’s Money, and of course Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but I’m a bit skeptical of him as a scientific film maker and the Al Gore of intelligent design.

In a recent interview with Beliefnet, Stein said,

“It is extremely well documented in a book called “From Darwin to Hitler” by an author named Weikart that the people who read Darwin’s book in Germany and then became important influential thinkers in German political life believed that Darwin’s views could be translated into the social realm. [They believed that] immediate actions should be taken to put those ideas into effect, especially by attempting to exterminate entire native African tribes.

The explicit connection of Darwin’s work with the Holocaust and with the belief of the Nazis that they were furthering Darwin’s agenda and Darwin’s discoveries and theories is explicitly documented in not just one, but many annals of the life and death of Nazi Germany.

Of course, today with the current intellectual beliefs, nobody’s going to say, “I’m in favor of exterminating the indigenous tribes in Southern Africa,” but they were then. And they explicitly said, “And Darwin says it’s the right thing to do.”

He also went on to say, “What we are saying is the history of Darwinism is littered with millions of innocent people who are in their graves prematurely and agonizingly because of those who read and believed in Darwin’s theories.”

Now, here is where the unfortunate rules of logic ruin Mr. Stein’s argument. Misusing someone’s writings does not make their writings right or wrong. How is it Darwin’s fault if Hitler misused his theory? What about all of the people who have been killed in the name of the lord? Wouldn’t that put God in the same position as Darwin, since the Bible is His word?

Blaming Darwin for the Holocaust (which he did, indirectly) is ridiculous and pure propaganda. Nazi’s found science (yes, science) that they thought would help them carry out their evil, terrible plan. The only thing Darwin did that was wrong was have a theory that was for the most part right. How people misuse his science is not on him.

How about Einstein’s work on the atomic bomb? Does that mean that any future nuclear warfare is proof tht the Theory of Relativity is to be discarded? Absolutely not.

Unfortunately, there is no logic to Mr. Stein’s statements, just a poor attempt at putting Darwin and Nazi in the same sentence to further his agenda.

It’s a shame that Ben Stein got baited into this movie. I don’t think he had any idea he’d completely ruin his name and image over evolution.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is under more and more scrutiny as publicity for the “documentary” grows. This Ben Stein joint is based on the premise that theories and evidence of intelligent design are being suppressed by “big science”, the ridiculous little phrase they use to refer to academia and scientists in general.

I’ve already given my take on this Michael Moore-esque hackery, but now Scientific American has stepped up and exposed Expelled.

Authors John Rennie and Steve Mirsky point out six things that Mr. Stein doesn’t want you to know about evolution and intelligent design. On the list are:

1. Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust.
2. Ben Stein’s speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup.
3. Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie.
4. The ID-sympathetic researcher whom the film paints as having lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution was never an employee there.
5. Science does not reject religious or “design-based” explanations because of dogmatic atheism.
6. Many evolutionary biologists are religious and many religious people accept evolution.

I think one of my favorite passages in the article is this one:

During Scientific American’s post-screening conversation with Expelled associate producer Mark Mathis, we asked him why Ken Miller was not included in the film. Mathis explained that his presence would have “confused” viewers. But the reality is that showing Miller would have invalidated the film’s major premise that evolutionary biologists all reject God.

The reason I feel inclined to point this all out is not only for matters of truth, which is far and away the most important, but also because the very people who made this film, and it’s target audience, are the same people who blast people like Michael Moore for making misleading and inaccurate “documentaries.”

And don’t get me wrong, I think Moore is a complete hack with no integrity, ethics, or authority. The amount of incorrect or misleading pieces of information in his films discredit everything he says. This film falls in the same category.

How in the world do you make a “documentary” where you stage your “star character” giving a speech about intelligent design on a college campus, and have the entire thing staged. A room full of extras giving Mr. Stein a standing ovation doesn’t mean a damn thing. Why not make a cartoon if you’re going to play the game this way.

I highly suggest anyone, agree or disagree, with even a slightly open mind, read Scientific American’s article before watching ridiculous propaganda like this film.

Having said all that, I loved Win Ben Stein’s Money, and I agree with his views on many, many issues. But he’s just out of his element here.

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