Anti-evolution

Seed has been running an interview with the British author Will Self whom I first encountered by reading his wonderful Great Apes, the cover of which - a mash-up of a human and ape - is above. Every time I see this picture, I can only think of one person ... And ironically, Duane Gish says there is no evidence for human evolution.
If it wasn’t enough that PZ is wondering why Ben Stein doesn’t have it in for Newton (what with his clear connection to Nazism), Orac now wonders: The above principles for eliminating the Jew from Nazi territory are clearly those of Pasteur and Koch, not Charles Darwin, and Hitler repeated this rationale on many occasions, as did his underlings! Oh, the perfidy! Where is Ben Stein on this one? How is it that he can’t recognize the true sources of Hitler’s evil. Not Charles Darwin. Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur! All goes to show how simplistic the cdesign proponentsist view of history is.
Troy Britain has done some poking around regarding the RSVP system that Expelled is using: I go through this to show that they apparently have a system (at least now) to distinguish between truly private screenings with, I would imagine, an actual predetermine guest list, and other screenings that are perhaps demographically targeted (churchs and religious community leaders etc.) but not really private in the exclusive guest list sense. There has been no evidence presented that Myers signed up for one of the "invitation-only" events. So it seems that his "crime" here was taking advantage of a…
PZ linked to this earlier, but it’s just too good not to be posted here. Enjoy! One of PZ’s minions has transcribed the lyrics here.
Christianity Today has published a review of Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. The reviewer is Stephen Webb, a professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College, and Jason Rosenhouse wonders: Why would a serious magazine like Christianity Today ask someone so obviously unqualified to review so technical a book? Could it be that they had no serious interest in assessing the book’s arguments, but instead just wanted an opportunity to stick a thumb in the eye of establishment science? Of course, this isn’t the first time that Christianity Today has had a book reviewed by someone who knows…
Well it makes as much sense at the Darwin/Hitler claptrap the cdesign proponentsists over at the Discovery Institute spout: How many have died due to the tyranny of the gravity Newton put into the hands of conscienceless materialist scientists? Examine Hitler’s record, for instance. He was an ardent Newtonist who put his Wehrmacht to evil purpose, building machines that used the wicked geometries of Newton to shatter Europe. Nazi artillery and tanks used Newton’s tools to strike at his righteous opponents. Who can forget the V2 rockets lofting into the air on tongues of F=ma (another…
Hilariously, Myers does it again and invades an Expelled event only to get expelled again. This time it was a conference call. There was some mad rustling and flustering about on the other side of the phone some complaints, etc., and then one of them asked me to do the honorable thing and hang up...so I said yes, I would do the honorable thing and hang up while they continued the dishonorable thing and continued to lie. No doubt Nisbet will have an attack of the vapors any moment now. Update: Predictably the DI-hack spin has begun already. Denyse O'Leary claims "Myers apparently somehow got…
Never one who is afraid to paint with a very broad brush, Ben Stein gives us this gem (from a Christianity Today interview): I believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to…
Caroline Crocker is one of the ID martyrs for the faith featured in Expelled (and in now Executive Director of IDEA). The bogus nature of her case has been well known for a while, but over at Tiny Frog there is a useful "mash-up" of the available information about Crocker.
Jim Lippard has a good post on Expelled and the fact that its distributor (Rocky Mountain Pictures) is know for pushing movies such as Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 and Carman: The Champion (above; for more on Carman see here). As Jim notes: The two partners in Rocky Mountain Pictures are Ronald C. Rodgers and Randy Slaughter. Rodgers got his start in film with Sunn Classic Pictures in 1968, which made and distributed movies in the seventies and eighties like bad documentaries about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, The Bermuda Triangle, psychics, space aliens, conspiracy theories, and Noah’s…
It seems the producers of Expelled have gone back to the drawing board regarding their screenings. Last week I signed up for the April 3rd screening in Tempe. It now turns out that it has been canceled:Due to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of "Expelled", several of our screenings have been canceled or are being rescheduled to a new date or time. If you'd like to be notified once a new screening in your area is confirmed, please sign-up on one of the waitlists below. Waitlists, eh? A handy way to screen attendees so that no tough questions are asked.
Julia Sweeney on Ben Stein: Ben Stein once did a Groundling show, an improv show, that I was a part of. I found him to be spectacularly ill-informed and narcissistic and weirdly devoted to his schtick and worst of all, hacky. He didn’t listen to his fellow performers and played everything outward to his friends in the audience who laughed (fake, forced) at every single thing he did. When he became known as a "thinker" - when his public persona became the "smart guy" I was astounded. So this type of film does not come as any surprise. (HT to Jim Lippard)
Apparently Nisbet thinks we should desist from pointing out what a fiasco this whole affair has been for the supporters of Expelled. Apparently he thinks this is helping the enemy. He also thinks Dawkins and Myers should return to their seat at the back of the bus. Perhaps that might be true about "new atheism" (and I have stated my views on that before), but this isn’t about atheism. It is about a dumb move that was made by Mark Mathis and the supporters of Expelled. It is about how they are spinning their stupidity through lies and mistruths. It is about how their dumb little movie twists…
The Expelled boyos seem to be tightening up their act. Now you can’t RSVP for future events all of which have been removed from the list. Compare this (yesterday) with this. There’s a screening scheduled for Harkins Arizona Mills at 7pm on April 3rd. I RSVPed last night and got the following in reply: Dear John Lynch, This is a confirmation of your RSVP for the free "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" movie screening.Venue information is below. Theater: Harkins Arizona Mills 5000 Arizona Mills Circle Tempe, AZ 85281 Date: April3 Time:7:00 PM Number of seats reserved: 1 YOUR NAME WILL BE ON A…
Phil Plait on the reductio ad Hitlerum that is central to Expelled!: For the producers of this movie to continue this Big Lie tying evolution and Nazis together is an irony almost too big to comprehend, given that this is precisely how Nazi propaganda worked. In a rich field of creationist ironies, this may be the elephant in the room. They are projecting onto their enemies the very thing they are guilty of. For Ben Stein to go to concentration camps and promote creationism is beyond the pale. It’s a lie, it’s ugly, and it should spark universal condemnation from every thinking human on the…
Truth: This was a private screening with no admission charge, and you had to reserve seats ahead of time; you also had to sign a promise that you wouldn’t record the movie while you were there, and they were checking ID. Everyone in my family reserved seats under our own names, myself included. There was no attempt to "sneak in" [emphasis mine] Lie: Others may be crashing because they want to trash it before it even gets reviewed by the media. P.Z. Myers, who was not let into a showing last night in Minnesota, probably falls in the latter category. No surprises. Myers (and Dawkins) did not…
This is absolutely hilarious. After all, who is more famous? This guy .... or this guy
Ben Stein recently met with Ken Ham, prompting Mark Looy (an Answers in Genesis drone) to effusively declare: the brilliant Ben Stein, actor/economist/lawyer/presidential speechwriter/science observer-a 21st-century Einsteinian figure ... told Ken that he was aware of the "wonderful" facility near Cincinnati and hoped to visit one day No comment.
Since the whining has already started, it is worth reminding ourselves that Guillermo Gonzalez’s publication record at Iowa State University wasn’t as impressive as the Discovery Institute want us to think it was. He was not a "stellar astronomer" while at ISU - i.e. where it counted to getting tenure at ISU. Three first-author papers just aren’t going to cut it.
Readers may have seen the minor brouhaha over at bpr3.org about Casey Luskin (DI-flack extraordinaire) using the BPR3 icon on a post without registering with ResearchBlogging.org. When this was pointed out to Luskin, he then registered with the site, a move that lead to much discussion. Now Dave Munger - the administrator of ResearchBlogging.org - has announced that Luskin’s registration will be denied. I’m not going to take a stance on this, but want to highlight a comment by Andrea Bottaro: [L]et Luskin use the bpr3 logo, but add the general requirement that anyone using it should allow…