Expelled producer admits lying to atheist interviewees : Evolving Thoughts

Search

Profile

John Wilkins is an eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and worked at the University of Queensland, in Australia, before taking up a research fellowship at the University of Sydney. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books.

This blog ~~is designed~~ evolved to host any random thoughts that happen to be passing through my forebrain at a given moment. So there will be errors...

Search old and new blogs

Other Information

The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.

: Technorati Profile

John Wilkins's Profile

« Basic Concepts: Mathematics, Philosophy, Logic and Computer Science | Main | A poem: Aubade by Philip Larkin »

Expelled producer admits lying to atheist interviewees

Posted on: January 4, 2009 8:23 AM, by John S. Wilkins

Well, he admits that it was a theist diatribe from the beginning, and not the even handed interaction between science and faith doco he told Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers among others. Always nice to find out that those who assert that only with faith in God can we have morals behave as if morals were an optional extra. Not surprising, but there it is. You can lie for your religion, to nonbelievers who do happen to behave morally and ethically.

Politics

Did you like this post? If so, please click on the "Share this" link above and add it to your favourite social bookmarking service, or submit it to the Open Laboratory 2009 via the link on the left bottom of the page. Many thanks. John.

Comments

Surprise!!!

Hypocrites all...

Posted by: DrGonzo | January 4, 2009 1:16 PM

Amateurish and heavy-handed, "Expelled" wasn't even effective as propaganda. And when you have to lie to make an argument, you never really had one in the first place. I think about the only people who saw this movie were the fundies, and that represents, if you'll pardon the expression, "preaching to the choir".

Posted by: Raymond Minton | January 4, 2009 1:47 PM

It's nice to see another so-called Christian outing himself as a liar who shouldn't be trusted for any reason at all. What a morally defective individual. Maybe people will eventually revolt against such behavior and get rid of such "Christianity".

Posted by: freelunch | January 4, 2009 1:49 PM

I'm shocked, shocked to find there was lying going on there!

Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | January 4, 2009 2:27 PM

You know, I'm not even sure what Expelled was supposed to accomplish. Did they actually think that it was going to be some sort of Michael Moore-esque extravaganza, that hundreds of thousands of people would flood theaters to watch Ben Stein, whose major claim to fame was a bit part in a movie released over 20 years ago, rail against Darwin and the scientific establishment?

What's happened, of course, is that it has become little more than church basement fodder, a bit of preaching to the converted. I doubt even a small fraction of those who reject evolution were interested in seeing it.

In a way, I'm glad the anti-science kooks are wasting their money, but at the end of the day I just can't quite figure out what they realistically think they're going to ultimately accomplish. In the US, at least, the First Amendment has shown itself to be proof against all the sneaky attempts to get Creationism into the public school classroom, even in jurisdictions where True Believers outnumber other folks by a considerable margin.

I honestly don't see the difference between Ben Stein and Erich Von Daniken, except of course that Von Daniken probably made a lot more money. The whole anti-academic slant is the same, the whole "the Establishment fears the truth" crapola. It just seems so futile and pointless, and, at the end of the day, I still am not convinced that Stein himself actually bought any of it. He's a minor celebrity who long ago entered the same forgotten dustbin with the stars of The Love Boat and Alf.

Posted by: Aaron Clausen | January 4, 2009 3:45 PM

John, I'm sorry to correct you, since you are a far more accomplished scholar than I will ever be where evolution is concerned. I have, however, kept close tabs on this Ruloff character. In fact, back in March I was one of the first to 'connect-the-dots' where Ruloff and Premiere Media were concerned, in this post.

However, on this topic, both you and PZ are overstating the degree to which this interview is an 'admission' of anything. If you read it, Ruloff is extraordinarily coy about his private life, including his private views on religion. The interviewer did not confront Ruloff about how a film ostensibly called 'Crossroads' was pitched to Dawkins, etc., so there is in fact no direct admission that they 'lied' to those interviewed. The fact that they were intending to make an anti-evolution screed from the word 'go' doesn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the original 'Crossroads' wasn't as advertised.

Now, do I believe the above? Hell, no! It's obvious to those of us on the inside that this amounts to an off-hand admission of their true intent, and thus by extension, an admission that they acted deceptively. The intended audience of this film is not, however, likely to 'connect-the-dots'. They are not going to see any admission of deception. Sadly, even if we spelled it out for them, many of them would not be impressed. They would just assume that using deception is part of the standard journalist bag of tricks, and 'all's fair in love and war', etc.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | January 4, 2009 5:13 PM

Raymond, #2: "And when you have to lie to make an argument, you never really had one in the first place."

That's quotable.

Should be on billboards.

Posted by: Susannah | January 4, 2009 8:15 PM

I read the original post cited, and I don't see where Ruloff "admits" to lying about anything. He says where they added the Nazi film clips in order to get an emotional impact, because a more cerebral movie is kind of boring. But is that an admission of "lying"? Certainly the whole enterprise is dishonest, but I don't see that this interview as reported supports the claim. Can someone point to what they think was such an "admission"? (Cross posted on Pharyngula.)

Posted by: Scott | January 4, 2009 11:28 PM

While irony is a subtle and slight trope that does not survive well on the interwubs, I would have thought heavy handed sarcasm worked just fine. Colour me surprised.

Posted by: John S. Wilkins | January 4, 2009 11:34 PM

Colour me surprised.

I plead guilty to often being tone-deaf in this department, not only online but in person. BTW, post #8 from Scott is not from yours truly. As an anthropically-minded ID type might remark, 'What are the odds?' that two guys with the same first name would have the same quibble? The mind boggles.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | January 5, 2009 1:59 AM

Apparently Bill Maher and his producers did the same thing to get interviews for Religulous.

http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/10/the_expelled_strategy_how_mahe.php

Posted by: Matthew C. Nisbet | January 22, 2009 8:01 AM

Matt, and your point is? Many people criticized Maher for that. The relevance is at best minimal.

Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky | January 22, 2009 12:23 PM

They'd have us believe that it's impossible to have morals without religion. Well if being moral means being a pathological liar you can stuff your morals where the sun don't shine.

And to Nisbet, Maher has been slammed on these blogs left, right and centre. No-one is paying attention to his film because it's essentially a comedy, hitting an easy target for a few laughs, and it's up-front about that fact. The reason we are angry at the makers of Expelled is that it was billed as a serious documentary looking at both sides of the argument. They lied in that fundamental respect which is an immoral thing to do. The whole "B-b-but Bill did it too!" argument is a bit childish don't you think?

Posted by: Cannonball Jones | January 22, 2009 9:17 PM

Matt, nobody was talking about Maher. The topic is the rank hypocrisy and lying nature of the Expelled team, who think that being religious makes one more moral and good than the awful atheists.

Posted by: Carlie | January 22, 2009 9:36 PM

Never mind Nisbet, he thought Expelled was a commercial success, and that the PZ incident helped the film. He's an anti-atheist zealot, unencumbered by evidence or sound reasoning.

Posted by: Science Avenger | January 23, 2009 1:58 AM