Expelled Expectorated!

It's been a busy day not seeing Expelled. I've spent the majority of it reading the flood of terrible reviews, the deluge of ridicule, and reflecting on the meaning of this meaningless film. I've also thought about what's likely to happen next.

I've a few predictions:

• Morbid fascination will keep the film in theaters longer than we expected, and help pay part of the enormous sum Yoko Ono will extract for use of 25 seconds of "Imagine." The rest of the settlement and attorney's fees will come from Mark Mathis's lecture tour on the rabid fundie circuit explaining how Yoko Ono persecutes ID advocates and leads to atheism. Meanwhile, XVIVO laughs all the way to the bank, and creates the animation for a wildly-popular anti-Expelled documentary entitled Expelled: When Fools Flunk.
• The next court case challenging ID's pathetic attempts to crawl its way into science classrooms will introduce Expelled into evidence. ID's final attempt to pass itself off as a non-religious alternative to evolution will meet a gruesome end when it runs full-tilt into the steel hawsers now tying God to ID. A gory decapitation will ensue. It will be years before another suitable euphemism is discovered and they can resurrect themselves for another attempt.
• In 2012, presidential candidates will no longer be asked, "Do you believe in evolution?" but "Did you fall for Expelled?" The gotcha question will turn from flag pins to questions about a candidate's fitness for office if he let a steaming pile of pig offal fool him.
• The extreme Christian right will do nothing but watch reruns of Expelled in church basements and whine about how persecuted they are. They will continue to confuse fact-based rebuttals to their bullshit with being thrown to lions.
• Scientists will release a flurry of popular science books, movies and websites that treat the American public as if they have a brain, and the American public may possibly remember that they possess one.

These are my predictions, founded on hope, grounded in weary cynicism. While there are a great many smart Americans, the country as a whole has seemed perfectly content with being bloody stupid for many years now, and I'm not sure how long it may take for that to change.

One thing I hope is that America's native sense of fairness, equality and lip-service to freedom doesn't rise up like Michael Behe to shoot us firmly in the foot. We need to remember that these people don't mean the same thing by fairness, values, morals, and rights that we do. We need to remember that while we are happy to give quarter, they are happy to give none.

I'm not sure how many of us are waiting for them to admit defeat, but I hope no one's holding their breath. They're already screaming "VICTORY!" Well, persecution, actually, but they're delighted by such things as Expelled Exposed and blog swarms and bad reviews. Proves they're persecuted, they say. They have no idea what persecution is. They think that criticism equals suppression. Their ideas are too weak to withstand the force of evidence, so they have to squeal about conspiracies. They think that the outcry we've raised is driven by something more nefarious than a genuine outrage at outright propaganda. They're dupes, but they can't admit that. They can't possibly be wrong. So if we counter their lies with truth, they're being oppressed. If we force ID to play by the rules of science in the science classroom, they're persecuted. If we stay silent, they've won. If we give them a hint of respect, they'll declaim victory.

We can't win. Not against them. But that doesn't mean we stop fighting for truth, justice and what was the American way before the lunatics took over the asylum.

We have to be loud. We have to hit back hard with every fact at our disposal. We're not doing it to change their minds and win their hearts - we can't. But there is a huge swath right there in the middle that still values truth. There's a great number of people who understand that being Christian means being honest. Christ himself said it: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Some still believe that. They aren't afraid of truth, and they have no reason to be. What they should be afraid of is lying sacks of shit who wrap themselves in a warped version of God and pretend to be righteous. What they should be afraid of is lies drowning the truth, and kicking this country right back into the Dark Ages.

Mathis and his ilk do Christians no favors. And most Christians will be smart enough to see that, especially if they're aware of just how extreme Expelled's dishonesty is. If movie reviews are anything to go by, plenty of Christians already are.

That gives me almost as much hope as the wrath of Yoko.


If you're not through expectorating Expelled, have some links:

Blake Stacey at Science After Sunclipse has posted a tour-de-force: Creation, Power and Violence. If you read nothing else today, read that. Should your horror and outrage grow too great, skip down to the link to fluffy kittens in the comments.

The Lippard Blog has news on Expelled's weekend box office.

The Panda's Thumb has an avalanche of truly awful reviews. There's also a contest!

Abbie put up a link to a pirated video of the Expelled animation that should lead to much courtroom goodness.

The Digital Cuttlefish has a few truly awesome poems up. What did I tell you about Expelled being good for the arts, eh?

Expelled Exposed grows all the time.

Bay of Fundie has an educational illustration of what will shortly happen to Expelled.

Thoughts in a Haystack has a quartet of extremely entertaining posts.

Laelaps exposes Expelled's true purpose: to get folks to stop thinking. That is, of course, the only way their ideas can possibly be accepted.

And, finally, Monty Python's classic treatise on rights, oppression, and babies in boxes: