Expelled the Movie

[TAP]

It is religion that causes the conflicts of the world ... always has been, always will be.

Totalitarianism is really the problem in my opinion, and religion remains just about the best tool for enforcement with its eternal rewards and punishments that no one can ever disprove. Nazism and Stalinism were like religions without supernatural gods - Hitler was opposed by western democracies born of the Enlightenment, not by religion and certainly not by the Vatican for example.

I agree with you, just ranting

[fuckin crazy]

Well, this putrid piece of crap masquerading as a documentary is finally hitting the theaters. To counter the lies of Stein and the producers, the National Center For Science Education has created a site that debunks the nonsense of these fools.

Pass it along.

Expelled Exposed

[freedom78]

First review on the list:

Intelligent Design Goes to the Movies

According to Of Pandas and People, a textbook outlining the essentials of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary biology:

    "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact: Fish with fins and scales; birds with feathers, beaks and wings; etc. Some scientists have arrived at this view since fossil forms first appeared in the record with their distinctive features intact and apparently fully functional rather than gradual development."

But you'll stay awake through the one-hour-and-forty-five-minute film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" - if you can manage it -- without ever hearing this or any other definition of intelligent design. This seems a curious omission in a movie seeking to poke holes in evolutionary theory and by doing so establish some scientific credentials for ID.

"Expelled" stars Ben Stein. It was produced by Premise Media. The film will be released to general audiences in April. ColoradoConfidential was invited to a preliminary screening of "Expelled" - probably by mistake - that was held last week in a meeting room at the Archdiocese of Denver. They were kind enough to invite us, so I feel guilty about hating the thing so much.

Ben Stein is one of those people whom I recognize, but I'm not sure why. He seems to be mostly famous for being famous. His online bio says that he was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon. The bio adds, "He did NOT write the line, `I am not a crook.'" This is a shame because as far as I can tell that's the only memorable thing Richard Nixon ever said. Stein played the boring teacher in the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." His style is the definition of "deadpan." Stein is apparently aiming for a religious right niche similar to the one held by Michael Moore on the left. Judging from this effort, he has a ways to go.

You won't hear a coherent definition of evolution in the "Expelled," either, even though it bashes this scientific theory incessantly. So we'll offer this one as a public service:

    Evolution is descent with modification. Random changes in the genetic makeup of an organism result in changes in the phenotype. The organism interacts with its environment. If the changes to the phenotype give it an advantage over others - the vast majority of genetic changes are deleterious -- it leaves more offspring, who are also endowed with this advantageous genetic makeup for dealing with their environment. This latter is known as "natural selection." This simple but powerful process leads to new species through separation of organisms in time and place.

The above is the ten cent course in evolution, but it's more than you'll get from "Expelled." In fact I've even already told you more about both intelligent design and evolutionary theory than you'll get from "Expelled."

I can hear you saying, "Okay, so what is it about?" A fair question. But the film is so intellectually garbled it's hard to summarize. "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is Summa Theologica compared to "Expelled."The film starts off as a stirring defense of academic inquiry, charging that Darwinists are squashing debate by depriving researchers in intelligent design of positions in academia. I suppose I should mention that Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is the founding intellectual giant behind evolutionary theory. Were he alive today, however, I can't guarantee that he would ascribe to my ten cent version of evolutionary theory above. Genes, for instance, had not been discovered as agents of heredity when Darwin did his work.

"Expelled" trots out several martyrs to the Darwinist inquisition. The poster boy is Richard Sternberg, whom the movie says was ousted from his position at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and from his editorship of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington when he published in that publication a peer-reviewed article of scientific evidence that supports intelligent design. There is some dramatic if unfocused footage of Ben Stein being denied admission to the upper floors of the Smithsonian by a security guard when he tries to grill muckety-mucks at the museum about these injustices.

This repression of scientific thought, we can all agree, is horrible if true. But it isn't true.

This is a dispute among academics. Faults on both sides, I'm sure. Perhaps because there is so little at stake in these fights, they are among the most vicious known to political man. A lot of cyber-ink was spilled over the Steinberg tussle long before Ben Stein got around to it. You can read Sternberg's version of his persecution here and  a non-ID rebuttal here. It's even made Wikipedia, which has got to be the high water mark for a bureaucratic pissing match.

The allegations made in "Expelled" are wrong. Sternberg never worked for the Smithsonian, so the Smithsonian couldn't threaten his job there. He was a visiting scholar with research privileges, assigned an office. He still has both the office and the research privileges. He wasn't deprived of his editorship. His term as editor had expired so he was stepping down anyway in favor of another editor when the controversial ID article was published.

In short, contrary to the assertions in "Expelled," Sternberg suffered no harm whatever from the dustup. Which is not to say that he wasn't criticized. He was. Harshly, rudely and sometimes childishly by fellow scientists. But rough and tumble argument is part of the world of science, whether you're studying intelligent design, string theory or evolutionary biology.

There are three or four other cases explored in "Expelled," all of which are presented in black-and-white terms as anti-ID intellectual repression by a Darwinist cabal. Closer examination of the specifics of each reveals pretty ordinary academic backbiting. There isn't space enough on the internet to go into them here. I'll leave it as an independent exercise for the morbidly curious.

After a half hour or so, "Expelled" wanders off to blame the theory of evolution for Communism, the Berlin Wall, Fascism, the Holocaust, atheism and Planned Parenthood. One of the few funny parts of the film, though, is Stein's interview with British philosopher of science Richard Dawkins. Dawkins' best-selling book The God Delusion is a clarion call for atheism, making him a bete-noire of the religious right. Ben Stein, marshalling the intellectual resources of Ferris Bueller's boring teacher, gets the better of him. Dawkins comes out of it looking pretty silly.

There are so many topics picked up, misrepresented and abandoned unresolved by "Expelled" that it is impossible to deal with them all. But they are typical of the intellectual dishonesty of the creationist-Intelligent Design cabal that wants to have this bankrupt hypothesis taught in the public schools.

For instance, the assumption by IDers is that if neo-Darwinian evolution can be shown to be largely incorrect, ID and creationism triumph. But this isn't so. There are other hypotheses besides design or God or Darwin that could replace it, if they were supported by the evidence. The trouble is that only evolution is so supported. "Expelled" doesn't try to build up a coherent alternative theory. It simply bashes evolution.

The confusion about the definition of ID is apparent throughout the movie. "Expelled" ridicules a hypothesis proposed some years ago called "panspermia." This conjecture - for which, I hasten to add, there is zero direct evidence (just like ID) -- is that life on earth was originated elsewhere in the galaxy and was planted here, either delivered by alien visitors or remotely somehow. "Expelled," and the audience I saw it with, found this idea laugh-out-loud funny. But think about it. This is exactly ID's hypothesis: Some superintelligence planted life on earth. IDers prefer that the "intelligence" be the God of Abraham, but there's nothing in the hypothesis to rule out visitors from another galaxy.

The visually most compelling scenes in "Expelled" were graphic representations of DNA replication. This is truly a remarkable process. I've taken a couple of classes in genetics. It's one of those things that is so cool right down to the details that it is hard not to stand back in awe of whoever thought it up, whether it was God or evolution. The ID take on it is: It's so beautiful and complex, a designer must have been behind it. My take on it is: It's so beautiful and complex, why would any designer bother with it? Something like 80 percent of the genetic material in a strand of DNA is not used for anything. It's junk DNA. Surely an intelligent designer could have come up with something simpler.

But this is a matter of interpretation. Other presentations of "Expelled" display intellectual dishonesty. For instance, most evolutionary biologists do not deal with the origins of life. Evolution acts on organisms that already exist. The question of how life came about is not something that Darwinian evolution deals with. "Expelled" acknowledges this, then proceeds to ignore this acknowledgement and fault evolutionary theory for misinterpreting the origins of life. Sigh.

There are scientists who are trying to learn how life originated on earth. They have ideas, some silly sounding - you can hear about these in "Expelled" - and some profound. But nobody knows. Apparently for the creators of "Expelled," saying that you don't know something is unacceptable.

continued

[Howard2k]

The earth is only 6,000 years old.


No more needs to be said.  If I was to start my own religion I'd come up with a much more robust story line.

[polluxlm]

There's a terrible truth in America alright, but this ain't it.

However, the point about the status quo is a good one. Life today is pretty much:

Mandatory conditioning through the school system. (brainwashing)
Get a job. (make someone else rich)
Get a wife, 2.1 kids and a station wagon. (produce the necessary units, consume)
Use half your paycheck to pay off your house for 40 years. (be a slave)
Die.

Don't question, you'll burn in hell.

[Atillla]

There's a terrible truth in America alright, but this ain't it.

However, the point about the status quo is a good one. Life today is pretty much:

Mandatory conditioning through the school system. (brainwashing)
Get a job. (make someone else rich)
Get a wife, 2.1 kids and a station wagon. (produce the necessary units, consume)
Use half your paycheck to pay off your house for 40 years. (be a slave)
Die.

Don't question, you'll burn in hell.

Exactly. You forgot to mention the "freedom" you have to be a paycheck slave for a corrupt economical system and then pay taxes over it too

But it must be said, for free thinking people to be free men (which is the minority), the majority need to be the way they are. Production puppets and consuming drones.

There is a clever design and if you notice it, you will see the loophole which enables you to be a free man. Independant from the system itself while living in it and benefitting from it.

No brainwashing, no paycheck slave, no taxes, no nothing. The majority will look down upon you of course, but they are the clueless ones 

[SLCPUNK]

There's a terrible truth in America alright, but this ain't it.

However, the point about the status quo is a good one. Life today is pretty much:

Mandatory conditioning through the school system. (brainwashing)
Get a job. (make someone else rich)
Get a wife, 2.1 kids and a station wagon. (produce the necessary units, consume)
Use half your paycheck to pay off your house for 40 years. (be a slave)
Die.

Don't question, you'll burn in hell.

Not everybody does this you know. Plenty of people pay their homes off early, retire early, don't succumb to marketing to keep up with the Jones, enjoy their jobs (even if it's low paying), and even their life.

Imagine that.

[polluxlm]

I didn't say everybody.

[fuckin crazy]

Micheal Shermer Ph.D, a former bible thumper, Creationist, and now columnist for Scientific American, was granted a screening of the film. See his review HERE

[Axl_owns_dexter87]

but communism?

I think you are confusing communism with dictatorial authoritarianism.

Ok, give me some examples of real life communism.  Just to clear up the confusion.

[SLCPUNK]

Ok, give me some examples of real life communism.  Just to clear up the confusion.

Lately?

Bush's version of Wall Street.

[fuckin crazy]

but communism?

I think you are confusing communism with dictatorial authoritarianism.

Ok, give me some examples of real life communism.  Just to clear up the confusion.

Read "The Paris Commune". Then, contrast that with the policies of Chairman Mao, and Comrades Stalin and Brezhnev.

[Axl_owns_dexter87]

Ok, you read the book, I haven't.  What real life examples of communism are there?

I ask you, because communism (or supposed communism) has this habit of not taking any blame for its failings and just blaming the dictator in charge.

For example, some people say the cold war communists were not communists at all.  They were Khrushchevists and Brezhnevists.  How about all the millions killed by the communists in China?  Was that Maoism or communism?  What about Viet Nam, communists or Ho Chi Minhists?  Did communists take over Cuba or was it Castroists?  How about all the people they executed in their death camps?  Were they killed by communists or Cheists?

It gets confusing because all of them were waving the communist flag while they were murdering all these people.

[fuckin crazy]

Ok, you read the book, I haven't.  What real life examples of communism are there?

I ask you, because communism (or supposed communism) has this habit of not taking any blame for its failings and just blaming the dictator in charge.

For example, some people say the cold war communists were not communists at all.  They were Khrushchevists and Brezhnevists.  How about all the millions killed by the communists in China?  Was that Maoism or communism?  What about Viet Nam, communists or Ho Chi Minhists?  Did communists take over Cuba or was it Castroists?  How about all the people they executed in their death camps?  Were they killed by communists or Cheists?

It gets confusing because all of them were waving the communist flag while they were murdering all these people.

It has been years, but I have Marx' treatise. In fact, I have a fine leather bound and gilded copy. While one may beg confusion, in your instance, I have a feeling it is not the situation portrayed.

Regarding your examples, they are all dictatorial authoritarianism; except perhaps, the early years of Castro, and Minh.

[Axl_owns_dexter87]

Ok, you read the book, I haven't.  What real life examples of communism are there?

I ask you, because communism (or supposed communism) has this habit of not taking any blame for its failings and just blaming the dictator in charge.

For example, some people say the cold war communists were not communists at all.  They were Khrushchevists and Brezhnevists.  How about all the millions killed by the communists in China?  Was that Maoism or communism?  What about Viet Nam, communists or Ho Chi Minhists?  Did communists take over Cuba or was it Castroists?  How about all the people they executed in their death camps?  Were they killed by communists or Cheists?

It gets confusing because all of them were waving the communist flag while they were murdering all these people.

It has been years, but I have Marx' treatise. In fact, I have a fine leather bound and gilded copy. While one may beg confusion, in your instance, I have a feeling it is not the situation portrayed.

Regarding your examples, they are all dictatorial authoritarianism; except perhaps, the early years of Castro, and Minh.

As far as Marx goes, a lot of his criticisms of capitalism at the time were valid.  However, his solutions were downright terrible.

And as far as implementing communism, I really don't see any way to do it but dictatorial authoritarianism, otherwise it just wouldn't last.

[AxlsMainMan]

While communism sounds alright on paper, it's ultimately never worked out that way.

As long as the dictator and military have steak and mashed potatoes for dinner, everyone else can have scraps or go hungry.

[fuckin crazy]

Expelled producers accused of copyright infringement


April 9, 2008
Logan Craft
Chairman
Premise Media Corporation
Suite K
1850 Old Pecos Trail
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
Re: Copyright infringement in ?Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed?
Dear Mr. Craft:
This letter will constitute notice to you, as Chairman of Premise Media Corporation, of the copyright infringement by your
corporation, and its subsidiary, Rampant Films, of material produced by XVIVO LLC, in which XVIVO holds a copyright.
It has come to our intention that Premise Media and Rampant Films has produced a film entitled ?Expelled: No Intelligence
Allowed,? which is scheduled for commercial release and distribution on April 18, 2008. To our knowledge, this film includes a
segment depicting biological cellular activity that was copied by computer-generated means from a video entitled ?The Inner
Life of a Cell.? XVIVO holds the copyright to all the models, processes, and depictions in this video, and has not authorized
Premise Media or Rampant Films to make any use of this material.
We have obtained promotional material for the ?Expelled? film, presented on a DVD, which clearly shows in the ?cell segment?
the virtually identical depiction of material from the ?Inner Life? video. Among the infringed scenes, we particularly refer to the
segment of the ?Expelled? film purporting to show the ?walking? models of kinesic activities in cellular mechanisms. The
segments depicting these models in your film are clearly based upon, and copied from, material in the ?Inner Life? video.
We have been advised by counsel that this segment in your film constitutes an actionable infringement of XVIVO?s intellectual
property rights, as protected by federal statutes, including Section 106 of the Copyright Act, the Visual Artists Rights Act of
1990, and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. Each of these statutes provides for judicial enforcement of their
provisions, with substantial civil penalties for their infringement.
We have also obtained legal advice that your copying, in virtually identical form, of material in the ?inner Life? video clearly
meets the legal test of ?substantial similarity? between the copied work and our original work.
This letter will also serve as notice to you that XVIVO intends to vigorously and promptly pursue its legal remedies for your
copyright infringement, unless and until Premise Media, Rampant Films, and their officers, employees, and agents comply with
the following demands:
1) That Premise Media, Rampant Films, and its officers, employees, and agents remove the infringing segment from all
copies of the ?Expelled? film prior to its scheduled commercial release on or before April 18, 2008;
2) That all copies of the ?Inner Life? video in your possession or under your control be returned to XVIVO;
3) That Premise Media notify XVIVO, on or before April 18, 2008, of its compliance with the above demands.
We have been advised, by a telephone conversation with Mellie Bracewell of Premise Media on April 8, 2008, that an e-mail
transmission of this letter to her will be promptly forwarded to you. A hard copy of this letter, on XVIVO stationary, will also be
sent to you today by express delivery.
We are sure that you will want to avoid legal action in this matter, and urge you to promptly notify us of your compliance with
the above demands. You may do so by return e-mail, directed to @ xvivo.net or @ xv ivo.net, followed by a hardcopied
letter indicating your compliance with the above demands.
Sincerely,
David Bolinsky
Partner and Medical Director
XVIVO LLC
Michael Astrachan
Partner and Creative Director
XVIVO LLC
Cc: Peter Irons, Esq.
Attorney at Law
2551 North Valley Road
Greenville CA 95947

[fuckin crazy]

Turns out they also stole material from PBS.

http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2008/04/expelled-erv-finally-gets-angry.html

[SLCPUNK]

Oopsie daisy!!!!!

[fuckin crazy]

Apparently the intellectually dishonest producers have also infringed the copyrights of John Lennon.