Intelligent Design
jlynch | March 31, 2008The basic incompetence of the Expelled producers continues. This morning I received an e-mail telling me that the scheduled screening (7pm on April 3rd) as been re-scheduled for 6pm on that date. Where the incompetence of these boyos comes in is that they cc’ed a bunch of people on the message and I thus have contact information for attendees - folks with e-mails like "boughtbythecross," "homeschoolma," and "covenant-dad."
As it happens I can’t attend the showing ... wont be missing much.
jlynch | March 29, 2008Matt Nisbet has coughed up yet another post on PZ and framing. It begins:
You don’t have to be a social scientist to recognize that the distribution of opinion among people who comment at Scienceblogs is very different from the perspective found among the wider science community and even among leaders in the atheist movement.
As I pointed out:
This is a little data-free, now isn’t it? No information on views "among the wider science community" and a link to a single comment by D.J. Grothe (who may or may nor be a leader "in the atheist movement"). As I said before, the issue here is not…
jlynch | March 29, 2008
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.
jlynch | March 29, 2008If 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.
jlynch | March 29, 2008Troy 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…
jlynch | March 28, 2008PZ 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.
jlynch | March 28, 2008Christianity 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…
jlynch | March 28, 2008Caroline 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.
esiegel | March 28, 2008There's a movie coming out on Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution, called Expelled, and it's narrated/hosted by Ben Stein (right), a TV/film personality who is an overall intelligent guy (and used to have the TV show Win Ben Stein's Money), and used to be a Nixon speechwriter. Politically, he's quite conservative (for example, immediately following 9/11 he gave a speech where he called abortion "the worst form of terrorism"), but this movie is apparently one of the worst abuses of science since What the Bleep do We Know?! came out.
The movie has an innocuous enough premise: is…
jlynch | March 22, 2008The 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…
jlynch | March 21, 2008Phil 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…
jlynch | March 21, 2008Truth:
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…
jlynch | March 20, 2008This is absolutely hilarious.
After all, who is more famous?
This guy ....
or this guy
jlynch | March 18, 2008
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.
jlynch | March 8, 2008
The National Center for Science Education has launched ExpelledExposed.com which will contain responses to Ben Stein’s pro-ID crapola Expelled once the movie goes live on April 18th.
esiegel | February 26, 2008I was thinking about the timeline that brought us here, today, from the origin of the Universe up through the present day. I realized that the most uncertain thing that we know of, the step that we have the least information about, is the origin of life on Earth. All hypotheses about how life on Earth originated fall into three categories:
Abiogenesis, or the idea that life came from non-life, somehow, on Earth.
Life originated elsewhere in the Universe, and was brought to Earth, where it now thrives (e.g., panspermia, or exogenesis).
Life was created or designed by an outside force/being…
goodmath | February 24, 2008 Granville Sewell, over at UD, has decided to pretend that he just discovered
my earlier critique of his "though experiment" where he claims to simulate the universe. The reason that I say "pretend" is that Sewell originally edited the article that I was mocking in response to my post; now, months later, he's pretending that he just found it. Uh, yeah, sure, Gran, whatever you say.
(In keeping with my practice, I no longer link to anything at UncommonlyDense; since they feel free to lie, alter posts, and remove posts,
there's no way of knowing what my link will point to tomorrow. Similarly, I…
jlynch | February 14, 2008In The Chronicle of Higher Education (12/21/01) William Dembski had this to say about his publication strategy:
"I've just gotten kind of blase about submitting things to journals where you often wait two years to get things into print. And I find I can actually get the turnaround faster by writing a book and getting the ideas expressed there. My books sell well. I get a royalty. And the material gets read more."
which makes the following all the more ironic. On commenting of Dawkins' $3.5 million contract for Only A Theory? he says:
$3.5million is a lot of money. The question I have is…
jlynch | February 7, 2008
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.
jlynch | February 1, 2008PZ has noted that the boyos over at Uncommon Descent have deep-sixed a comment thread that (rightly) pointed out that he bested DI-fellow Geoffrey Simmons in their debate yesterday (it will be interesting to see how the DI spins this one). Happily, After The Bar Closes has the comments archived. Therein, you can find this gem from Louis Savain (yeah, that Savain):
The ID movement is wasting its time and resources, in my opinion. This ID vs. evolution fight will never be won with either debates, arguments, brochures, web sites or what have you. The opposition has a propaganda machine that is…