Pharyngula

Perhaps we could try to convince them all this bad PR and ridiculous bungling of th entire issue is a sign from god?

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

Posted by: Chad | March 25, 2008 9:36 AM

You'd think that by this point they would tuck tail and hide. No they rally the stupid and try to out shout the rest of us.

As far as the burning in hell while they laugh I have only one regret. If there is nothing after death there will be no one to laugh at them when the pop out of existence.

Posted by: vlad | March 25, 2008 9:43 AM

PZ - you may wish to splice your two postings together (repeated).

Too bad no one had a video of the incedent. (cam phone?)

Posted by: philos | March 25, 2008 9:49 AM

By the way, here's something you can use to counter the crap being spewed by the Concern Troll/Energy Critters seeking hits from attacking you:

The best way to get a right-winger's attention (and to convert him/her): Drop the mealy-mouthed 'nice guy' crap and go straight for the gut. Right-wingers, who make up a large chunk of the creationist crowd, find it easier to listen to reason if the person doing the reasoning looks tough and not wimpy.

Posted by: Phoenix Woman | March 25, 2008 9:53 AM

As Hatfield so eloquently explicated, there is not one iota of science expertise in this shitball flick. Anywhere? Anywhere? No, none allowed.

Posted by: danley | March 25, 2008 10:07 AM

Oh, and Scott Hatfield is awesome.

Posted by: Carlie | March 25, 2008 10:10 AM

So was it clumsy of Dawkins to link Darwinian evolution with fascism, too?

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/03/dawkins_expelled_and_the_nazis.html

Posted by: dsmvwld | March 25, 2008 10:16 AM

"ID is religious."

Myers, you really, really need walk yourself across campus and spend some time in the philosophy department. (Unless you are deliberately playing on your audience's ignorance of epistemology.)

Thus the question "Why science?" leads back to the moral problem: Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are "not moral"? No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this "other world"--look, must they not by that same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world?--But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests--that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine.
-Nietzsche

Posted by: wnelson | March 25, 2008 10:19 AM

Everyone please ignore teh troll 'disemvoweled'. Believe me, it's not worth it.

Posted by: ennui | March 25, 2008 10:26 AM

Everyone please ignore teh troll 'disemvoweled'. Believe me, it's not worth it.

Posted by: ennui

Yes, facing the inconvenient truth is never worth it. Just ignore it.

Posted by: dsmvwld | March 25, 2008 10:40 AM

dsmvwld: Your concern is noted. Jog on, muppet.

Posted by: ennui | March 25, 2008 10:47 AM

Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are "not moral"?

Wnelson, that Neitzsche guy is a notorious troll; I saw him posting on another blog a few days ago and he was saying something even stupider. You shouldn't let him trick you into repeating his nonsense.

The reason we have morality is that people who live in societies with a sensible moral code tend to be better-off than people who live in a state of anarchy. People want to be better-off, so they tend to gravitate towards sensible moral codes. (But it takes a lot of trial-and-error to identify the most sensible moral code; we've made a lot of progress over the past million years but there's still room for improvement.)

There's no "faith in science" as such. Some people think science is interesting, so they study it. Other people think science is boring, so they don't study it. Applied science frequently makes people better-off, so many societies have made a pragmatic decision to encourage or even subsidize people who find science interesting.

Posted by: chaos_engineer | March 25, 2008 10:53 AM

wnelson,

Which specific morals do you pretend to be exclusive to you and your religion only?

Posted by: Eric | March 25, 2008 11:02 AM

Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are "not moral"?

Why have red hair when nature isn't red-haired? Why have a sense of humor when history isn't funny? It's the nature of the beast.

Posted by: Cheezits | March 25, 2008 11:09 AM

Which specific morals do you pretend to be exclusive to you and your religion only?

The ones that make lying okay. HTH.

Posted by: Cheezits | March 25, 2008 11:10 AM

#21 "wnelson: If, as you say, ID is not religious, then kindly explain a) the Wedge Document and b) the rewrites of the book 'Of Pandas and People'. Thought so."

It helps if you read the whole post. ;-) The point is that the term "religious" is misdirection -- everyone has to have faith-based presuppositions in order to function. I can't prove God exists, anymore than Pascal could, or someone that believes Kant prove that his noumenal world exists -- the same goes for the paradigms of Hegel or Sartre. You start with your beliefs, then validate them in specifically "religious" ways. Epistemology isn't something you opt out of.

Posted by: wnelson | March 25, 2008 11:18 AM

dsmvwld: you seem to be struggling with elementary reading comprehension. Dawkins is objecting to the crass and clumsy attempts of "Expelled" to suggest that Darwinism necessarily leads to fascist/nazi/totalitarian horrors, and perhaps even more to the way this is harped on in the film as if it somehow provided ammunition against the truth of evolutionary theory which, of course, it doesn't. It is this shameless propagandising which Dawkins finds to be an "outrage" rather than whether or not Hitler really did use "garbled Darwinism" to support his evil (and he freely concedes - both in the piece you linked and in his recent review - that maybe he did).

Let's look at a more complete quote from that recent review, shall we? Again, notice that Dawkins not only makes no attempt to deny his previous words on Darwin and fascism, he restates them. [The emphases below are mine]

"The alleged association between Darwinism and Nazism is harped on for what seems like hours, and it is quite simply an outrage. We are supposed to believe that Hitler was influenced by Darwin. Hitler was ignorant and bonkers enough for his hideous mind to have imbibed some sort of garbled misunderstanding of Darwin (along with his very ungarbled understanding of the anti-semitism of Martin Luther, and of his own never-renounced Roman Catholic religion) but it is hardly Darwin's fault if he did. My own view, frequently expressed (for example in the The Selfish Gene and especially in the title chapter of A Devil's Chaplain) is that there are two reasons why we need to take Darwinian natural selection seriously. Firstly, it is the most important element in the explanation for our own existence and that of all life. Secondly, natural selection is a good object lesson in how NOT to organize a society. As I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian. But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical fallacies to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. Stein (or whoever wrote his script for him) is implying that Hitler committed that fallacy with respect to Darwinism. If we look at more recent history, the closest representatives you'll find to Darwinian politics are uncompassionate conservatives like Margaret Thatcher, George W Bush, or Ben Stein's own hero, Richard Nixon. Maybe all these people, along with the Social Darwinists from Herbert Spencer to John D Rockefeller, committed the is/ought fallacy and justified their unpleasant social views by invoking garbled Darwinism. Anyone who thinks that has any bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsity of Darwin's theory of evolution is either an unreasoning fool or a cynical manipulator of unreasoning fools. I will not speculate as to which category includes Ben Stein and Mark Mathis."

In other words, Dawkins is being entirely consistent in what he says on this issue today, and what he has said in the past. Try again.

Posted by: Jack Rawlinson | March 25, 2008 11:19 AM

And of course, if you think Social Darwinism is THE ONLY THING that caused Nazi Germany (as the 'EXPELLED!' whackos do), then, well, you're an idiot.

Posted by: Stuart Ritchie | March 25, 2008 11:21 AM

chaos_engineer: "There's no "faith in science" as such."

Of course there is -- you've already decided, a priori, that the intellect is sufficient to individuate any and all relevant facts -- even facts that are by definition outside of your ability to perceive. By definition, you have dogmatically asserted what may or may not exist.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

Posted by: wnelson | March 25, 2008 11:26 AM

dsmvwld:

I realize that subtlety, nuance, accuracy and honesty are not exactly words that are associated with those at the forefront of the ID creationism movement.

Dawkins has been very clear about what he thinks a society run in accordance with Darwinian principles would be like - not pleasant, and why should they be? As MET is a scientific explanation and not a political ideology, it should be fairly clear that the two shouldn't mix. I promise you, sincerely, we cannot help it if nature doesn't conform to our own ideals.

Anyway, religion was invented to do just that - and you get a free bearded deity along for the ride, also. It is just a shame that so many religionists don't join us in the 21st century and update the story a little bit. You know, get with the times and all that, and stop thinking that gay bashing is all the rage? It's so first century.

Nobody has ever said that Hitler wasn't influenced in any way by his own strange perversion of science. He was. But he was also influenced by his hatred for the Jews and clearly credits religion, in part, for that, as well as many other things. Be a good boy - go and remind the Dishonesty Institute and the makers of Expelled of that, will you?

No serious historian believes that the Theory of Evolution, or science in general, was even close to being the main influence behind Nazism, yet that is how it is portrayed by the makers of Expelled, and has been in ID creationism circles, for some time. Rewriting history; especially one that is so painful, to so many people, is beyond contempt. That is the complaint. It is dishonest propaganda, pure and simple. You don't argue against a scientific theory by lying about who it has influenced, and to what extent.

It is fairly clear that Expelled is exploiting images of the Holocaust, disgracefully, and in an attempt to motivate its audience emotionally in to opposing what really is just a scientific theory. You may approve of that. I think that it is nearly as low as you can get.

I will leave you with a quote from someone who really cared about what happened in Nazi Germany:

"It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz, this is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge or error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

... We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people."

-Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, (passage spoken at Auschwitz)

Now, go shit on someone else's lawn.

Posted by: Damian | March 25, 2008 11:39 AM

Right, Stuart. Of course the IDer wants to misinterpret that as "Darwinism necessarily leads to Fascism." What they want, of course, is "Darwin created Hitler," which as we all know is nonsense.

Anyway, it's all crap. It's argument from consequences, and has nothing to do with the science. If we want to live in a society that protects, rather than rejects, its weakest members, then that's what we should strive to create. It has nothing to do with the correctness or even the appeal of the ToE. Anyway, the idea of weeding out the weak predates Darwin by millenia - another inconvenient truth the creationists always choose to overlook.

Well, it's often been said: creationism is a dishonest enterprise at its core, and leads to dishonest behaviors. Thank you, Blake Stacey.

dsm-v's link points here.

Which in turn points here, which is the full article in German. David in particular may be interested in taking a look at it.

WNelson, I have a terrible problem, which is that whenever I read your posts, I see hear them spoken in Willie Nelson's voice, with "On The Road Again" playing in the background. I'm trying to retrain my brain not to do that, cuz it's making me... well... Crazy. ;-)

Posted by: Kseniya | March 25, 2008 11:41 AM

ennui: "wnelson: Sure, no one can ever know a ding an sich, and I understood your point that everything reduces to faith because of first assumptions. I do not agree.
While we may not be able to 'look behind the veil' to see whether our sensory perceptions correspond to Reality™, it is an inductive process that guides us, not one of pure faith."

You can't get away from pure faith though -- it's not possible to separate ourselves from something like assuming that the universe is composed of brute facts, and that our intellects can string them together -- that is a powerful, powerful ethos.

About all that a theist is saying is that God dictated -- named -- the facts, where a positivist will say that naming ultimately begins/ends with the namer. (I-it/I-thou)

I'm getting the sinking feeling that this is all about who gets the credit, not about who can develop the cure for cancer.

Posted by: wnelson | March 25, 2008 11:50 AM

nelson said:
"ID is religious."
Myers, you really, really need walk yourself across campus and spend some time in the philosophy department. (Unless you are deliberately playing on your audience's ignorance of epistemology.)

Few things are more irritating than an idiot who's flicked through a couple of philosophy books.

Your particular logical fallacy is known as equivocation. Yes, it could be argued that confidence in science is a form of faith. (Not that all philosophers would agree. You see, copying something out the Reader's Digest Guide to Philosophy doesn't turn it into an unimpeachable truth.) However, confusing such a faith with religious faith is absurd. It's like eating the dates from a calendar.

P.Z. wasn't saying that Intelligent Design was a form of faith per se. Instead, he was saying that it was a manifestation of organised religion.

Posted by: hyperdeath | March 25, 2008 11:57 AM

Tell me, PZ, how do you respond to this story over at uncommondescent.com? I'm on the verge of issuing a retraction of my apology unless you can prove it's not true. I think all of your posse that has spent so much time calling me a liar and a hypocrite may have to turn their guns on you for a while for making them look bad: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/dawkins-myers-and-what-rsvp-means/

Posted by: Kevin Miller | March 25, 2008 12:09 PM

You didn't just link to that piece of drek by Davescot did you Mr. Miller?

You'd best note the history of the stupidity that man has vomited on the rest of the internet before you start trusting his logic.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 25, 2008 12:13 PM

wnelson: Being an economist, I love assumptions. And most everyone has asked themselves at some point, 'What if it is all an illusion.' But to assume that our senses do, in fact, correspond to the brute facts of reality does not necessarily require pure faith. The argument can take the form of a sort of Scientific Wager©.

P1: Either my senses perceive reality, or they do not.
P2: I can either believe the information from my senses, or not.

Now, if my senses do not perceive reality, I'm screwed no matter what. I have no path to knowledge or action, regardless what I believe. (Zero-sum or negative outcome)

If my senses do perceive reality, and I believe them to be false, then I have lost a highly useful tool for knowledge and action (Negative outcome)

The only chance for a positive outcome is to assume that my senses correspond, to some non-zero degree, to reality. Now I have, in theory, a powerful tool for knowledge and action. It's not so much faith as a cost-benefit analysis for assumptions.

C1: I will assume that my senses can perceive reality.

Posted by: ennui | March 25, 2008 12:23 PM

Unfortunately for them, if you read the succession of accounts they give -- and do note, none of these people were there -- they are mutually contradictory and completely divorced from the facts.

This reminds me of a famous book....

Posted by: Brownian, OM | March 25, 2008 12:26 PM

Kevin,

Zachriel has given links to two pro-expelled sites encouraging people to visit the page and reserve places at private screenings:

You are invited to a FREE PRIVATE SCREENING and
You are invited to a FREE private screening ... Forward this email to a friend!.

It looks like these people, at ,were under the impression that it was OK to them to pass the invitations on to a wider audience, and in the second link, encourage them to do the same.

Posted by: steve_h | March 25, 2008 12:32 PM

wnelson, you can indeed get away from pure faith, in at least two ways. Science entails a collective, democratic, and widespread 'naming' that is subject to individual veto if it does not correspond to reality. This is a one-way naming and a one-way veto (in the opposite direction). No faith or other system of knowledge has that. The other disproof is darwinian. If our perceptions of the world do not correspond to reality in crucial respects, we die. Reality is a limiting case, as some Darwin Award winners attest posthumously. Faith in the possibility of conceiving alternative realities does not imply that all realities are alternative realities.

Posted by: Hal | March 25, 2008 12:40 PM

Hey, dsm v wld (comment #14), why don't you write a supportive comment for that dishonest attack on Dawkins at the Discovery Institute page you link to, where you found it? Oh right, I forgot, the gutless liars don't allow comments at their site.

Anyway, congratulations on finding out that Dawkins vigorously opposes legislating Darwinism as a code for human behaviour, he just wants it recognized as a scientific fact of nature. Those of us who actually read Dawkins instead of creationist lies about his work knew that quite a long time ago.

Posted by: oriole | March 25, 2008 12:48 PM

Anyway, congratulations on finding out that Dawkins vigorously opposes legislating Darwinism as a code for human behaviour, he just wants it recognized as a scientific fact of nature. Those of us who actually read Dawkins instead of creationist lies about his work knew that quite a long time ago.

That strange screeching sound you just heard is the sound of that sailing high over dsmvwld's head.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 25, 2008 12:51 PM

BS from Premise, which contradicts some of their previous BS:

EXPELLED Controversy Top Issue in Blogosphere SANTA FE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Something amazing happened yesterday. The controversy around Premise Media's upcoming movie Ben Stein's EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed became the hottest topic in the blogosphere. According to BlogPulse, a service of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the issue held the number one slot throughout the day on Monday, March 24th (http://www.blogpulse.com). There were also over 800 results on Technorati (www.technorati.com).

"It is amazing to see the reaction of PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and their cohorts when one of them is simply expelled from a movie. Yet these men applaud when professors throughout the nation are fired from their jobs and permanently excluded from their profession for mentioning Intelligent Design," said producer Mark Mathis. Mathis was at the event that has raised this controversy.

Mathis continued, "I hope PZ's experience has helped him see the light. He is distraught because he could not see a movie. What if he wasn't allowed to teach on a college campus or was denied tenure? Maybe he will think twice before he starts demanding more professors be blacklisted and expelled simply because they question the adequacy of Darwin's theory."

EXPELLED was screened for a select Minneapolis grass roots audience on Thursday night. Dr. Myers and noted atheist Dr. Richard Dawkins were not sent invitations to the screening from the producers. Nevertheless, they acquired access to a proprietary online RSVP site, along with a group of other atheists. The producers were notified that Myers and others who were not invited had signed up for the screening. They were also aware that Dawkins, who oddly used his formal surname "Clinton" instead of Richard to sign up, was in attendance.

Recognizing the opportunity to make a point of the inconvenience and pain that they, and others like them, have caused to numerous scientists and educators, the decision was made beforehand to deny Myers access to the film if he actually showed up. PZ is one of the foremost proponents of expelling those who hold to any form of Intelligent Design: "The only appropriate responses [to proponents of Intelligent Design] should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many school board members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians." (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001143.html#comments Comment #35130 Posted by PZ Myers, 6/14/05, 07:50)

Executive Producer Logan Craft noted: "EXPELLED makes it clear that academic freedom is at stake. Yet Dawkins and his friends continue to misrepresent the film and slander the producers. It is obvious that they do not want to debate the real issues raised in the movie. Their only interest is to control the damage their interviews have done to their cause. We are happy to let the public decide where the truth rests on this controversial issue when the movie opens nationwide on April 18th."

Myers has apparently been asking supporters to sneak into the different private screenings for many weeks. After being denied his chance to see the movie, Myers blogged about his experience and expressed his outrage.

Executive Producer Walt Ruloff responded, "This is the typical reaction of Darwinists and atheists who are so blinded by their own self importance that they fail to understand what is really going on. They yell and scream when one of their friends isn't allowed to see a movie weeks before it goes public. All this outrage while these same people organize witch hunts to expel those who disagree with them."

Premise Media's new film, Ben Stein's EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed, opens nationwide on April 18th. You can learn more at www.expelledthemovie.com

[This article found at: www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080325006175&newsLang=en]

Sure, PZ's distraught. More like thrilled.

And the site was not proprietary, or at least not secret. I found it via Google here:

onegreatcityblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/private-screening.html

And I put the link here at Talkorigins, on AtBC, Talkorigins, PT, and Atheistnetwork, a week before the showing (actually, a bit later at Atheistnetwork).

Furthermore, they can't keep their story straight. Mathis told Denyse O'Leary that he just wanted to make PZ wait and pay for his ticket. Not that I find any of his stories believable (maybe the rationale is as stated above--who can say, when one can't trust these bozos?), it's just that this conflicts with the other spins bandied about the blogosphere.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Posted by: Glen Daviodson | March 25, 2008 1:12 PM

It's no secret that ID's pseudo-secularity is its greatest weakness. Not only do its advocates' frequent (and publicized) slips into creationist sentiment destroy any credibility it might have in the courts, their default political position represents, to many conservative Christians, the open denial of their god, similar to Peter's denial of Jesus in the courtyard.

To the most conservative of these, the company of outright heathen, even heathen motivated to persecute them, is vastly preferable than association with these political hypocrites, whom they find repulsive, blasphemous, and very likely more fit for the hell they imagine than the most strident atheist would be.

Posted by: Farb | March 25, 2008 1:17 PM

Kevin, you are so dishonest it's untrue.

This link is to the "private" events and has "special" in the URL:

http://rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/special/expelle...

The cached version of the RSVP for the Bloomington event has "events" in place of "special":

rsvp.getexpelled.com/events/events/rsvp/193

I have screen shots of the RSVP list and application form on my computer from the main website, inviting anyone to request a place. Surprise, surprise, when I clicked on the RSVP button for a particular showing it took me to exactly the same page and web address that the cached version shows.

Both the page that showed all of the dates, and the individual page where you signed up had "events" in the URL, not "special".

I will host both pages showing this if necessary.

In any case, Kevin, you are going to have to explain why so many people who went through exactly the same process as PZ, at various locations, were all sent confirmation emails, turned up, and were let in? If it was invitation only, they would have known who they had sent invitations to, wouldn't they?

Your dishonesty knows no bounds, it seems. Put down the spade, Kevin, and walk away. It's deep enough now. Put it down.

Posted by: Damian | March 25, 2008 1:19 PM

Some might be interested in a press release that has just hit the wire from the backers of the movie 'Expelled' making sure that it is their version of the story that is known to the public (outside of the atheist blogs).

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080325006175&newsLang=en

Posted by: Alonzo Fyfe | March 25, 2008 1:26 PM