Re: Creationism in the news: New film EXPELS fairness

On Sep 29, 6:16 am, Ron O <rokim...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 29, 12:18 am, Desertphile <desertph...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Creationists are stirring up a new controversy-a story that made
the front page of the New York Times today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnbEgOFGbJ4

At issue is whether movie makers of a new Creationism film
misrepresented the nature of their production to scientists who
were invited to be interviewed. Scientists include
Richard Dawkins -- an evolutionary biologist biologist at Oxford,
Eugenia Scott, head of the National Center for Science Education,
among others.

Dr. Dawkins, in particular, states that he was told that the film
would be called Crossroads, a film about the intersection of faith
and science. Instead, clipettes of interviews will appear in the
Creationist film: "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed."

On the Expelled Movie trailer, the creators state "Big Science has
expelled smart new ideas from the classroom. What they forgot is
that every generation has its rebel. Ben blows the horn on
suppression!" Ben is Ben Stein, the celebrity we all know, who's
involvement may have made the effort appear to be a legitimate
exploration of faith and science.

Instead, this creationist creation, due out in February of 2008,
apparently pushes the same stale arguments that ID'ers and
Creationists have touted for years. In Creationist's hands, simply
put, scientists are likely to be treated unfairly and made to look
bad.

By bad, I mean intolerant. What free-thinking person would not
want to hear all sides of an argument? Why, after all, shouldn't
school children be able to learn about creationism along side of
evolution?

This, again, is a stale argument, but Creationists continue to
exploit people's inherent sense of fairness. The arguments that
creationists make are not science, so they just do not belong in
science class. Claims that life was created in its current form
and are immutable are and have been falsified through multiple
lines of exciting evidence. Creationist's claims that profound
questions-like where did we come from--can be answered in a
drop-dead simple way are unsupportable. The curious among us have
discovered that there are testable explanations that are so much
more enriching than to simply say that somebody more powerful than
me wanted it that way.

The simple reason that intelligent design does not belong in
science class is that is makes a mockery of the time tested
scientific method. ID is a form of thinking that serves to erode
science, not to build it. The failure of students to understand
science threatens our ability to be globally competitive. It
threatens our ability to make scientific medical progress. It
threatens our ability to explore who we are, and where we may be
headed.

As molded, the ID movement has been embarrassingly unenlightening,
and this current effort, by early signs, appears no different. The
initial stated goal of the movie makers-to explore the
intersection of faith and science-remains a noble goal, however,
only if produced without the pathetic biases that pervade
Creationist media.

Reconciliation of faith and evolution is an avenue that many
people struggle with, and there are few real leaders. This lacuna
has been filled, not by vocal scientists of faith, but by radical
anti-scientists with a subversive agenda.

In the name of fairness, the Expelled movie makers have played
unfair. Instead of helping people explore how they might reconcile
their faith with the scientific fact of evolution, they expel
reason, like a playground bully set to have things his own way at
all costs.

--http://desertphile.org
Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
"Why aren't resurrections from the dead noteworthy?" -- Jim Rutz

Do you have a link to the Times article?

Ron Okimoto

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/science/27expelled.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1191071948-Opib7nVdXjhBVmP/e59d7Q


A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received
an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be
interviewed for a documentary called "Crossroads."

The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance
columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant's Web site as an
examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins
was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford
University in England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has
repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.

But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed
say they are surprised - and in some cases, angered - to find
themselves not in "Crossroads" but in a film with a new name and one
that makes the case for intelligent design, an ideological cousin of
creationism. The film, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," also has a
different producer, Premise Media.

The film is described in its online trailer as "a startling revelation
that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from
publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions."
According to its Web site, the film asserts that people in academia
who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological
processes have unfairly lost their jobs, been denied tenure or
suffered other penalties as part of a scientific conspiracy to keep
God out of the nation's laboratories and classrooms.

Mr. Stein appears in the film's trailer, backed by the rock anthem
"Bad to the Bone," declaring that he wants to unmask "people out there
who want to keep science in a little box where it can't possibly touch
God."

If he had known the film's premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail
message, he would never have appeared in it. "At no time was I given
the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front," he
said.

Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National
Center for Science Education, said she agreed to be filmed after
receiving what she described as a deceptive invitation.

"I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions
where people's views are different than mine, and that's fine," Dr.
Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. "I
just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren't."

The growing furor over the movie, visible in blogs, on Web sites and
in conversations among scientists, is the latest episode in the long-
running conflict between science and advocates of intelligent design,
who assert that the theory of evolution has obvious scientific flaws
and that students should learn that intelligent design, a creationist
idea, is an alternative approach.

There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution
as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth.
And while individual scientists may embrace religious faith, the
scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about
nature. As scientists at Iowa State University put it last year,
supernatural explanations are "not within the scope or abilities of
science."

Mr. Stein, a freelance columnist who writes Everybody's Business for
The New York Times, conducts the film's on-camera interviews. The
interviews were lined up for him by others, and he denied misleading
anyone. "I don't remember a single person asking me what the movie was
about," he said in a telephone interview.

Walt Ruloff, a producer and partner in Premise Media, also denied that
there was any deception. Mr. Ruloff said in a telephone interview that
Rampant Films was a Premise subsidiary, and that the movie's title was
changed on the advice of marketing experts, something he said was
routine in filmmaking. He said the film would open in February and
would not be available for previews until January.

Judging from material posted online and interviews with people who
appear in the film, it cites several people as victims of persecution,
including Richard Sternberg, a biologist and an unpaid research
associate at the National Museum of Natural History, and Guillermo
Gonzalez, an astrophysicist denied tenure at Iowa State University
this year.

Dr. Sternberg was at the center of a controversy over a paper
published in 2004 in Proceedings of the Biological Society of
Washington, a peer-reviewed publication he edited at the time. The
paper contended that an intelligent agent was a better explanation
than evolution for the so-called Cambrian explosion, a great
diversification of life forms that occurred hundreds of millions of
years ago.

The paper's appearance in a peer-reviewed journal was a coup for
intelligent design advocates, but the Council of the Biological
Society of Washington, which publishes the journal, almost immediately
repudiated it, saying it had appeared without adequate review.

Dr. Gonzalez is an astrophysicist and co-author of "The Privileged
Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for
Discovery" (Regnery, 2004). The book asserts that earth's ability to
support complex life is a result of supernatural intervention.

Dr. Gonzalez's supporters say his views cost him tenure at Iowa State.
University officials said their decision was based, among other
things, on his record of scientific publications while he was at the
university.

Mr. Stein, a prolific author who has acted in movies like "Ferris
Bueller's Day Off" and appeared on television programs including "Win
Ben Stein's Money" on Comedy Central, said in a telephone interview
that he accepted the producers' invitation to participate in the film
not because he disavows the theory of evolution - he said there was a
"very high likelihood" that Darwin was on to something - but because
he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth.

He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and
ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it
were up to him, he said, the film would be called "From Darwin to
Hitler."

On a blog on the "Expelled" Web site, one writer praised Mr. Stein as
"a public-intellectual-freedom-fighter" who was taking on "a tough
topic with a bit of humor." Others rejected the film's arguments as
"stupid," "fallacious" or "moronic," or described intelligent design
as the equivalent of suggesting that the markets moved "at the whim of
a monetary fairy."

Mr. Ruloff, a Canadian who lives in British Columbia, said he turned
to filmmaking after selling his software company in the 1990s. He said
he decided to make "Expelled," his first project, after he became
interested in genomics and biotechnology but discovered "there are
certain questions you are just not allowed to ask and certain
approaches you are just not allowed to take."

He said he knew researchers, whom he would not name, who had studied
cellular mechanisms and made findings "riddled with metaphysical
implications" and suggestive of an intelligent designer. But they are
afraid to report them, he said.

Mr. Ruloff also cited Dr. Francis S. Collins, a geneticist who directs
the National Human Genome Research Institute and whose book, "The
Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" (Simon &
Schuster, 2006), explains how he came to embrace his Christian faith.
Dr. Collins separates his religious beliefs from his scientific work
only because "he is toeing the party line," Mr. Ruloff said.

That's "just ludicrous," Dr. Collins said in a telephone interview.
While many of his scientific colleagues are not religious and some are
"a bit puzzled" by his faith, he said, "they are generally very
respectful." He said that if the problem Mr. Ruloff describes existed,
he is certain he would know about it.

Dr. Collins was not asked to participate in the film.

Another scientist who was, P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University
of Minnesota, Morris, said the film's producers had misrepresented its
purpose, but said he would have agreed to an interview anyway. But, he
said in a posting on The Panda's Thumb Web site, he would have made a
"more aggressive" attack on the claims of the movie.

Dr. Scott, whose organization advocates for the teaching of evolution
and against what it calls the intrusion of creationism and other
religious doctrines in science classes, said the filmmakers were
exploiting Americans' sense of fairness as a way to sell their
religious views. She said she feared the film would depict "the
scientific community as intolerant, as close-minded, and as
persecuting those who disagree with them. And this is simply wrong."

.

Relevant Pages

  • 7 reasons to avoid, at all costs, wasting the price of a ticket to Expelled
    ... Ben Stein's speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup. ... ID and against "big science." ... "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who ... so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer because this ...
    (uk.philosophy.atheism)
  • Re: 7 reasons to avoid, at all costs, wasting the price of a ticket to Expelled
    ... Ben Stein's speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup. ... ID and against "big science." ... "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who ... so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer because this ...
    (uk.philosophy.atheism)
  • Re: 7 reasons to avoid, at all costs, wasting the price of a ticket to Expelled
    ... Ben Stein's speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup. ... ID and against "big science." ... "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who ... so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer because this ...
    (uk.philosophy.atheism)
  • Re: Creationist Movie Expelled Producers LIED...
    ... Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life's Origin ... There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution ... what the movie was about," he said in a telephone interview. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Gore Juggernaut Rolls on
    ... have seen the film or read the book. ... AP INCORRECTLY CLAIMS SCIENTISTS PRAISE GORE'S MOVIE ... science presented in former Vice President Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient ... "more than 100 top climate researchers" they attempted to contact to review ...
    (alt.politics.bush)
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