Intelligent Design

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has, some time ago, filed for approval to run a masters degree program in life science education. The purpose of the degree is to train educators to present biology in a way that is consistent with Christian Biblical beliefs, as opposed to actual scientific knowledge. The Texas board in charge of these matters is taking the proposal under consideration this week. (Please sign the petition linked below!) The Texas Freedom Network has recently conducted a survey of Texas colleges and university faculty to get their opinions on this proposal. The…

A bill designed to make it easier to introduce creationism into public school classrooms has passed in the Florida Senate by a 21 to 17 vote margin. The bill was proposed by Senator Ronda Storms, Republican, and is modeled after a template provided by the Discovery Institute. Storms filed the bill shortly after the State Board of Education adopted new science standards that require for the first time the teaching of evolution. That was a controversial decision that upset many residents who argued evolution was unproven, in conflict with their religious beliefs -- or both. But Storms said…

Despite the fact that the producers of Expelled! have the most nefarious of motives in mind, and that we can expect more from them (we are waiting for the other shoe to drop), it is interesting to note how many conversations this documentary about Intelligent Design Creationism has sparked. Ultimately, the intended purpose of Expelled! is to silence real scientists and set back scientific research that is on the verge of filling one of the most important "gaps" in which the Christian God of the theistic evolutionist currently lives. In the long run, conversations that arise from movies like…

Evolving in Kansas provides a lie-fighting fact revealing review of Expelled!'s showing in Iowa. The film debuted at the Varsity Theater in Ames, Iowa on Friday night (April 18). Ames is important because it is the home of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, the pro-ID astronomer, who lost his tenure bid at Iowa State. He contends that it was purely because of his Intelligent Design work, while his opponents contend that ID either was not a factor or it was not the most important factor. In any case, the headline of the Discovery Institute reads "Expelled in Iowa gives Standing Ovation to Persecuted…

Now that Expelled! No Intelligence Allowed, the movie, exists, we wait not so quietly for the other shoe to drop. I'll tell you in a moment what that other shoe is going to look like and where it is going to drop. First I want to make a couple of topically linked but otherwise discombobulated comments. First, I want to express my heartfelt warm fuzzies for all those of you who have come out to tell me "Yes, Greg, you are an asshole, but that's OK. In fact, it's what we love about you" and shit. Appreciate it. Second, you did notice that the take for Expelled! fell short of the expected…

Chris Mooney has made an "appeal to authority" (Randy Olson) in asserting that Expelled is a success by Hollywood standards, and this may be correct. PZ Myers and his comet tail may have increased that success as per Mooney's Framing TOE, but the reverse is also true: the science blogging share of the blogosphere has expanded and participation in that community has significantly increased. Oh, and nobody understands me. What Chris actually does is to cite Olson, who in turn makes the argument. One could ask why Chris did not make the argument himself because the argument should stand on…

Chris Mooney, who every day seems to transmogrify more and more into a creationist apologist, makes the case that Expelled! is a box office success. He seems almost giddy about it in his post on the topic. I'm sure Chris will be blaming PZ Myers, me, the rest of us people for part of this. But see below. Elsewhere, and in contrast, we find evidence that Expelled is "on track to be a box-office bomb" (from Laelaps). There is other evidence of Expelled! lack of success. Playing in 1,052 theaters, the pic distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures earned $1.2M Friday for what should be a $3.4M…

Steve Mirsky does a little Darwin Quote Mining reversal exercise in a recent post called "Never You Mine: Ben Stein's Selective Quoting of Darwin:" One of the many egregious moments in the new Ben Stein anti-evolution film "Expelled" is the truncation of a quote from Charles Darwin so that it makes him appear to give philosophical ammunition to the Nazis. Steve Mirsky reports. Steve rightly corrects stein, but does not put the quote mining in sufficiently broad context. So I do: The original text from Darwin that Stein refers to in Expelled! expresses Darwin's ambivalence about the social…

Louisiana State Senate Bill 561 is an "academic freedom" bill intended to push discussion of creationism, global warming denialism, and so on into state public schools. This is the latest in a long series of efforts of right wing fundamentalist christians to indoctrinate public school students in their particular religious (and political) beliefs. In 1981, a law was placed on the books in Louisiana requiring that creationism receive equal time as evolution in public schools. The ACLU challenged the bill, and by 1987 it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court because, obviously, it…

The Seattle Times, which as far as I know is a regular newspaper, has published a guest editorial by Bruce Chapman in their opinion section. Chapman has published a lot of editorials in the Seattle Times, and in sum, they make him look like (I'm just sayin') he's on the payroll of both Microsoft and the Discovery Institute His editorial is loaded with the usual creationist crap ... claims that Darwin was forced on him in college, noting Haeckel's embryos, quote mining from Dawkins, etc. ...Darwinists have avoided debates, and in universities have stooped to denial of academic tenure,…

At this moment (noonish central time, April 16th) if you type "Expelled" into a google search, the results in order are: 1: The expelled movie site. 2: Another page on the expelled movie dite 3: The wikipedia entry for Expelled 4: A blog by PZ Myers at Pharyngula for when he got expelled from Expelled 5: The National Center for Science Education site Expelled Exposed.

The following video is on the NCSE Expelled Exposed web site, but that site is getting so much use it is broken! So enjoy the video while we wait for ExpelledExposed to come back up... Expelled exposed is here.

I've already announced to you, twice, the emergence of a new web site called "Expelled Exposed" developed by the National Center for Science Education. Chances are you already went and looked at the site. But, as of a few minutes ago, the site has been totally refined and updated. The site that is now up at www.expelledexposed.com is presumably the intended product, and it is quite different from, more extensive, more informative, fancier, than the earlier site. So if you looked at the one-page site I had sent you to before, please go back and have a second look. There is much more to be…

"Academic Freedom" bills seem to come in two flavors: Those that protect students from the possibility of learning certain things, and those that protect subversive teachers from getting in trouble for being bad teachers. In both cases, they are bills typically introduced into state legislatures by conservative republicans expressing concern with the Liberal Bias. There is a vague institutional connection between the concept of Academic Freedom Bills and the organization founded by conservative David Horowitz, "Students for Academic Freedom." The motto of this organization is "You can't…

Former conservative speech writer discusses economy (he feels that the economy is very strong) and intelligent Design Creationism here. [Hat Tip: Peter M.]

Dawkins Admits to Not Being Perfect Atheist: Consideres Possibility that Fairies and Green Unicorns May, just May Exist. (But almost certainly not.) Hat tip: Science and Religion News

Scott Hatfield of Monkey Trials reports that an infamous Young Earth Creationist Don Patton is planning a church sponsored talk in a local public high school on the topic of creationism. Scott is seeking help. If you live in the vicinity, please consider showing up and being a person with a brain in the audience. PZ Myers has outlined an excellent strategy for Scott (or anyone else i his position). I would add one more item: Scott, send off a note to the National Center of Science Education letting them know what's up.

And the review is very negative. Of Expelled, as well as of PZ Myers and atheists in general. The man made famous by Ferris Bueller, ... quickly wades into waters far too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth's primordial soup. The answer is it couldn't--and it didn't. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing. More…

Things are happening exactly as I predicted...(Expelled! The Movie To Be Pulled From Theaters Following Myers/Dawkins-Gate Screwup) The movie "Expelled!" with Ben Stein (you may have heard of it) includes a segment consisting of the animation of the inside workings of a cell. It is said to look a lot like a production that came out of Harvard and a private animation firm last year or so: People who saw the clip used in Expelled! were beginning to think that the video Expelled! used was not the Harvard video because there were some differences. However, this remains unclear. My thinking on…