Combatting IDiots in the School Board

Spencer, Iowa kids are going to get the science education they need, thanks to folks who ensured the school board didn't get snookered by shysters.  And the lessons learned there can apply to anyone whose district is facing an invasion of IDiots:

The defeat of this "religious liberty" policy does harbor potential lessons for others trying to fight these anti-science actions in local school districts. First, college faculty members should not underestimate the power of their opinions on these issues even in school districts where these faculty members do not live.

Yes, some school board members might resent outsiders, but others welcome expertise and attention from respected institutions. This is especially the case if advice is given with courtesy and tact. The school board must be convinced that the aim is to further good science education rather than to impose some ideological hegemony on a small school district. One should try to contact school board members, and see how open they are to outside advice before dismissing any interaction as a lost cause.

Good coordinated actions by coalitions are extremely important. Although I am an incompatibilist in terms of religion and science (i.e., I don’t think that religion and science are philosophically compatible), the fact remains that many religious people do support evolution, science education, and the separation of religion and government. When a common goal is to keep creationism out of schools, and good science education in schools, then the practical thing to do is to work together with interfaith alliances.

Finally, vigilance and rapid action are always important. This means having shoes on the ground -- a ready group of educators, scientists, and other allies ready to write letters, draft petitions, and even travel (in our case, about 3-4 hours) in person to places where we could make a difference.

 Good advice, all.  Keep it handy just in case DIsco comes dancing into town...

(Tip o' the shot glass to the Panda's Thumb)

PWN o' the Day

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love Ron Britton:

[IDiot writer] Westad started out as a science major at a Christian college.

[Ron] Then he wasn’t a science major.

Shazam!

Ron annihilates an entire column entitled, I shit you not, "Intelligent Design for Dummies." As you can see, it was indeed for dummies. And Ron does not suffer fools kindly.

Go. Enjoy.

Of Weasels and Wankers

I'm currently reading Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker (which is a book guaranteed to make creationists sob). By computer standards, the book is ancient - the computer he wrote it on had a memory measured in kilobytes. Nowadays, of course, that's laughable.

But he still managed to get that wee little machine to sit up and do tricks. One of his tricks was the Weasel program. It's a simple, elegant display of random mutation vs. random mutation with selection. It all had to do with monkeys writing Shakespeare, and the power of evolution to bring order from chaos. In just a few dozen generations, selection causes random mutations of letter strings to converge on "Methinks it is a weasel." The need for infinite monkeys, time and typewriters is eliminated when you throw a little selection into the mix. It's an outstanding tool for understanding how a little thing like natural selection combined with a bit o' mutation can produce all the brilliant complexity life demonstrates.

This, apparently, has made creationists sob for over 20 years. In fact, William Dembski, hereafter more aptly named Dimski, just can't let it go:

Over at uncommon descent William Dembski is musing over Richard Dawkins Weasel program. Why you may ask?

[snip]

Such is its power, the Issac Newton of Information Theory, William Dembski, spent a not inconsiderable portion of his time attacking this toy program. In particular, he claimed that after every successful mutation, the successful mutation was locked into place, and couldn’t be reversed. But he was wrong, and it seems he just can’t admit it.

As you can see, by using the Courier font, one can read up from the target sequence METHINKS*IT*IS*LIKE*A*WEASEL, as it were column by column, over each letter of the target sequence. From this it’s clear that once the right letter in the target sequence is latched on to, it locks on and never changes. In other words, in these examples of Dawkins’ WEASEL program as given in his book THE BLIND WATCHMAKER, it never happens (as far as we can tell) that some intermediate sequences achieves the corresponding letter in the target sequence, then loses it, and in the end regains it.

Selection strikes again! In the book, instead of plumping for 160 pages of gibberish, Dawkins presents us with every 10th fittest string. Dawkins even kindly provided the rules he gave the program. Someone who isn't a complete Dimski can whip up a version for themselves, and watch the strings wander all over the place, even indeed losing and regaining target letters, before landing on the target sequence. Indeed, there's even a BBC documentary in which Dawkins puts his program through its paces, and you can watch it happen.

A normal person would go, "Whoops." Dimski screams "Conspiracy!"

That leads one to wonder whether the WEASEL program, as Dawkins had programmed and described it in his book, is the same as in the BBC Horizons documentary.

What a doofus.

So what does a Dimski do? Puts a "chief programmer" on the case:

In any case, our chief programmer at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab (www.evoinfo.org) is expanding our WEASEL WARE software to model both these possibilities. Stay tuned.

Say what? How long does it take someone to write a program that basically takes a string, copies it with mutations, compares it to a target, chooses the best mutant, copies and mutates the new string, and compares again until the target is reached?

Well, this is Dimski we're talking about.

*cue Musak*

Doop-de-doo. Dum dum dum. Hmm, I wonder what's mutating in the fridge?

My goodness, how that grass does grow.

Whelp. Let's check in and see how things are going:

It is now 62 hours since William Dembski posted that the Evolutionary Informatics lab was going to try and reproduce Dawkins Weasel Program according to how it was actually written, as opposed to their fantasy version. In that time I’ve resurrected an elderly program, and several readers have made their own weasels from scratch. Commenter Anders has even made a Python version that puts “freely mutating” and “locking versions” head to head with great graphs.

Y'know, Billy Dim, I do believe it's taking you so long because the program you're trying to create never existed. Makes it rather hard to duplicate, dunnit? It's kinda like trying to selectively breed for gryphons by way of proving all the myths are true.

This little dustup does demonstrate a rather powerful truth, although not the one Dimski intended. It's really hard to produce scientific results backing up claims that are just flat-out wrong.

Which goes a long way towards explaining why IDiots haven't managed any scientific proof yet, eh?

The Presuppositionalists

Science Sunday continues...

Two posts, one on The Panda's Thumb and one on Thoughts in a Haystack, explain brilliantly why creationists stubbornly stick to their pseudo-science in the face endless evidence debunking them mercilessly.

First, honored patron of the cantina Richard B. Hoppe gives us this fantastic analogy:

Once in a while an analogy comes along that deserves wide dissemination. I got one such this afternoon on the Ohio Citizens for Science list, and I’ve got permission to quote it from Joe Hern, its author. Joe was musing on the video of Michael Schermer interviewing Georgia Purdom, creationist geneticist at AIG. (I don’t know how long that URL will be good, so grab it if you want it.) Joe, who IIRC is a former YEC himself, captured the creationist mindset perfectly:

The psychology behind why Creationists seem to make up stuff that fit their theology is best understood by recognizing precisely how we feel when we see a magician pull a rabbit from its hat in a magic show. We do not need to know how it works to “know” it is not really magic. We do not entertain ideas that we may be ‘missing’ a step in our epistemology. We would roll our eyes at anyone who insists to us we are not thinking critically to accept that there may be true magic involved. The key component of this thought process is that we ‘know’ we do not have to look into it… it’s a foregone conclusion that there is no magic involved.

To the creationist, this is the exact same thought process. They ‘know’ God is real, that what he wrote is literal, and there is no reason whatsoever to even begin to entertain the idea that the ‘evidences’ for evolution are really evidence. It’s a foregone conclusion that such ‘evidences’, regardless how intellectual or damning they sound, are “simply” ways man makes data fit their own ideas, as Dr. Purdom stated.

[snip]

That really is what we’re up against: presuppositionalist thinking vs. evidential thinking, in Purdom’s terms. As I remarked in my AIG creationists on the jury post last week, for creationists evidence is not a means of testing presuppositions: evidence must be interpreted so as to corroborate them or one will fall into apostasy.

That being so, you can bet that when one of them starts to sound like they understand science, they're going to veer off into IDiocy within a few seconds. Friend and fellow Elitist Bastard John Pieret has a perfect example:

Dr. Terry Mortenson, of Answers in Genesis, described as an "apologetics ministry" rather than a scientific organization, places science and the Bible in direct conflict:

"The Bible says the earth was created before the sun, moon, and stars -- contrary to the big-bang theory. The Bible says that plants were created before sea creatures -- contrary to…evolutionary theory," Mortenson points out.

"And then the Bible says that there was no death before Adam's sin -- no animal death, no human death. But evolution says there were hundreds of millions of years of death in the physical world. So you have to ignore the details of the Bible to accept evolution."

[snip]

Naturally, Mortenson claims that there is "an enormous amount of scientific evidence that supports that God created separate kinds of plants and animals ... and there's an enormous, massive amount of evidence in the geological record for Noah's flood."

But as we already know, that "scientific" evidence is evidence only if you ignore the "evidentialist approach" and, instead, adopt presuppositionalism by starting with the authority of the Word of God instead of with the "authority of human reasoning." In short, there is scientific evidence for the biblical account if, and only if, you start by assuming the Bible is true. Besides the danger of his disappearing up his own butt running in such tight circles, Mortenson is being less than honest in not explaining that the "evidence" is not coming from actual evidence but from assuming his conclusion from the outset.

I'm not ashamed to admit that "disappearing up his own butt" gave me one of the most amusing mental images of my young life. Icky, but amusing.

Here we have the reason why they must be "less than honest." Their religion doesn't allow honesty. When you've painted yourself into the corner of Biblical inerrancy, and your entire worldview - your very idea of salvation - is predicated on that perfection, facts either have to be doctored or denied. There's no other way out.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said something in his lecture that pertains here. When you memorize facts versus ideas, you're susceptible to thinking the world is coming to an end when facts change. And that's precisely where the creationists and IDiots are. Thus, presuppositionalism, and all of the antics that ensue.

All we can hope for is that enough evidence dogpiles on them to cause catastrophic cognitive dissonance, leading to a crop of ex-creationists. At least in the meantime, lookers-on learn a bit more science, and get to point and laugh as a bonus.

Absolutely Perfect.

Go. Behold photograph and caption. Do it now. Just make sure you've swallowed whatever you're drinking first.

Do you see now why I want to put this up on a billboard outside DIsco's HQ?

Luskin Does Lucy

It's too bad I didn't visit Lucy's Legacy on the same day Casey Luskin did. Watching an IDiot ponder transitional fossils is almost as entertaining as watching Cons try to employ clever rhetoric. It's even more enjoyable when people who know what the fuck they're talking about get their hands on his burble and take him apart with gleeful precision:

I don’t know why I do it to myself. Perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment and frustration. Every so often, I’ll feel the need to go to one of those Intelligent Design/Creationism blogs and get myself all angry and riled up. This morning I went over to Evolution News and Views and saw that Casey Luskin has been to the Pacific Science Center’s Lucy exhibit, and he’s soooooo not impressed. That’s okay though, because I’m not impressed with his critique.

Luskin says,

The first thing my friends and I noticed when seeing Lucy’s bones was the incompleteness of her skeleton. Only 40% was found, and a significant percentage of the known bones are rib fragments. Very little useful material from Lucy’s skull was recovered. (This seems to be common: many of the replica skulls of early hominids at the exhibit were clearly based upon extremely fragmentary pieces.) And yet, Lucy still represents the most complete known hominid skeleton to date.

I’m not sure if this is just a confusion of terms or just glaring ignorance, but Lucy is not the most complete fossil hominid known to date. Meet Nariokotome Boy. If you’re looking for complete skulls, let me introduce you to the Taung Child, Little Foot, Mrs. Ples, or KNM-ER 406. Or, open a book and introduce yourself to any number of the other skeletons that are comparatively or more complete than Lucy.

A Primate of Modern Aspect goes on to utterly demolish him, but the fun doesn't end there. Afarensis gets his smackdown on:

In the second section Casey tries to cast doubt on the bipedality of Lucy by quoting from a News and Views article by Collard and Aiello. The Collard and Aiello article reports on a "letter" to Nature by Richmond and Strait called Evidence that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor. In that paper Richmond and Strait claim to do two things. First they provide evidence that Australopithecus anamensis and A. afarensis both share wrist morphology indicative of knuckle-walking. They then argue that knuckle-walking is a synapomorphy that links the African apes and humans. Once upon a time, and not all that long ago, the relationships between chimps, gorillas, and humans was considered an unresolved trichotomy. Quite a few people argued that chimps and gorillas were more closely related to each other than either was to humans. Others argued, based on morphological and genetic evidence, that chimps and humans were more closely related. Richmond and Strait's results took away a crucial piece of evidence for the gorilla-chimp clade. Casey, having "...studied about Lucy and other fossils..." doesn't mention any of this. Of course, if Lucy really is the commingled remains of who-knows-what as Casey argued above, then none of this matters and one has to wonder why Luskin goes futher. But he does. Says Casey:

Lucy did have a small, chimp-like head, but as Mark Collard and Leslie Aiello observe in Nature, much of the rest of the body of Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was also "quite ape-like" with respect to its "relatively long and curved fingers, relatively long arms, and funnel-shaped chest."

Given that Luskin is dedicated to exposing the misreporting on evolution, I'm sure you will be shocked as I am to find that this is only kind-of sort-of what Collard and Aiello said:

The basic facts are not in dispute. A. afarensis has a combination of traits that is not seen among living primates. In some respects, A. afarensis is quite human-like (for instance in the foot structure, nonopposable big toe, and pelvis shape). In others, it is quite ape-like (relatively long and curved fingers, relatively long arms, and funnel-shaped chest).

My goodness. An IDiot twisting the scientific literature to suit his own purposes? Say it ain't so!

One day, for shits and giggles, I'm going to take a field trip to the Discovery Institute with a sack full of science journals and ask them for their peer-reviewed contributions to science. I'll ask for their original fieldwork, their dramatic finds, and Nobel Prize-winning research. They'll try to hand me Luskin's lunacy and Egnor's ignorance, because it's all they've got. And that's their only contribution: in being such ignorant fuckwits, they allow actual scientists to shine in the rebuttal.

I'm discovering that you can indeed learn a lot from a dummy, because the smart people have such fun taking them apart.

(George points us to Afarensis' follow-up, which is an excellent chaser.)

AC Grayling's Not to be Trifled With

First, the setup: AC Grayling, writing brilliantly in New Humanist, took Steve Fuller to the woodshed over his obnoxious little book Dissent over Descent. You know someone's not impressed with your efforts to give ID a little boost when they entitle their review of your book "Origin of the specious." Fuller, of course, responded by whining incessantly. Grayling, seeing he had not fully absorbed the lessons of the woodshed, took him out back for a second round, this time employing a prototype Smack-o-Matic 4000 that I desperately want to lay my hands on. Beautiful mayhem ensues.

I want to highlight one paragraph that captures the essence of what science is and ID isn't. If Intelligent Design were a person, what follows would qualify as a debilitating towel-snap to the nads:

I am, says Fuller, ignorant (sheerly so; this is the glaring deficiency in my case) of "ID's argument structure", which is - argument to the best explanation! Oh pul-eese! I ignored this bit in my review out of a kind of residual collegiality, for even among the toxicities that flow when members of the professoriate fall out, embarrassment on others" behalf is a restraint. But he asks for it. Argument to the best explanation! Look: there is a great deal we do not know about this world of ours, but what is beautiful about science is that its practitioners do not panic and say "cripes! we don't understand this, so we must grab something quick - attribute it to the intelligent designing activity of Fred (or Zeus or the Tooth Fairy or any arbitrary supernatural agency given ad hoc powers suitable to the task) because we can't at present think of a better explanation." They do not make a hasty grab for a lousy "best explanation" because they have serious thoughts about the kind of thing that can count as such. Instead of quick ad hoc fixes, they live with the open-ended nature of scientific enquiry, hypothesising and testing, trying to work things out rationally and conservatively on the basis of what is so far well-attested and secure. What looks like having a chance of being both an "explanation" and the "best" in a specific case turns on there being a well-disciplined idea of "best" for that specific case. But an hypothesis has no hope of becoming the best explanation (until a better comes along) unless it survives testing, is specific, and is consistent and conservative with respect to much else that is secure. This is a far cry from the gestural "best explanation" move that ID theorists attempt, which - and note this carefully - does not restrict itself to individual puzzles only, but applies to Life, the Universe and Everything. It has to, at risk of incoherence; and yet by doing so, it collapses into incoherence.

Oh, snap!

I think I'm going to have this paragraph printed on little cards. Why waste my breath with IDiots when I can simply hand them the card, watch them read it, and then grin as they splutter?

John Derbyshire Rides Again

Science and science education have a few friends on the right. Not every conservative is a demented fuckwit pandering to religious frothers, or a willfully deluded ostrich burying their head in the sand of Intelligent Design. Some, in fact, actually respect science, and don't like to see religious dogma masquerading as "scientific theory" mucking it all up.

One of those stalwarts is John Derbyshire. You might recall him from the Expelled debacle - he's the one who nearly gave me heart-failure, and brought tears to my eyes with an impassioned defense of science.

I nearly missed it, but he rose to the defense of science again when LA Gov. Bobby Jindal was about to sign that noxious "academic freedom" bill into law - and he's just turned Bobby over his knee for a sound spanking for actually putting pen to IDiot bill:

The creationists have pulled off their little stunt once again, and Bobby Jindal has been their patsy. I know there is a pro-Jindal factor among my colleagues here on The Corner, and I'm not stepping on toes for the fun of it. I must say, though, I can't see voting into national office a guy who is duped as easily as this into acting against his voters' interests.

Boy, is Bobby's butt red. And how does the bill itself fare?

Whether or not the law as signed is unconstitutional per se, I do not know. I do know, though — as the creationist Discovery Institute that helped promote the Act also surely knows — that the Act will encourage Louisiana local school boards to unconstitutional behavior. That's what it's meant to do.

Some local school board will take the Act as a permit to bring religious instruction into their science classes. That will irk some parents. Those parents will sue. There will be a noisy and expensive federal lawsuit, possibly followed by further noisy and expensive appeals. The school board will inevitably lose. The property owners of that school district will take the financial hit.

Not too good.

And now that he's brought up DIsco, let's see if they get turned over a knee:

Where will the Discovery Institute be when these legal expenses come due? Just where they were in the Dover case — nowhere! What, you were thinking that those bold warriors for truth at the Discovery Institute will help to fund the defense in these no-hope lawsuits? Ha ha ha ha ha!

Helping to defend creationist school boards in federal courts is not the Discovery Institute's game. Their game is to (a) make money from those spurious "textbooks" they put out, and (b) keep creationism in the news so that they don't run out of lecture gigs and wealthy funders. So far as those legal bills are concerned, Discovery Institute policy is: Let the dumb rubes fund their own stupid lawsuits.

And here I thought we were good at spanking DIsco. Damn!

Once more, Derbyshire earns himself a free round of drinks at the cantina. He and I don't agree on a myriad of subjects, but on this we are in perfect accord: these anti-science con artists need to be run out of town. And we do not need to be voting creationist dupes into office.

Now, where are the rest of the conservatives like him?

The Washington Post Attempts to Make Up for Kathleen Parker

A few days after letting Kathleen Parker drool homophobic bullshit all over their editorial page, the Washington Post attempts to redeem the place with an exposé of what Academic Freedom Bills are really all about:

What's insidious about these measures is that at first blush they appear so harmless. Isn't everyone in favor of academic freedom? What's so wrong about allowing all sides of an issue to be heard? Why should teachers be punished for speaking their minds? Those arguments might have standing if there were any doubt about the reality of evolution, but, as an official with the National Academy of Sciences told the Wall Street Journal, "There's no controversy." Consider, also, that there really is no such thing as academic freedom in elementary and secondary education. A teacher can't deviate from the accepted curriculum to present alternative lesson plans or to offer his or her own notions. The Florida teachers association opposed the bills, though ostensibly they are meant to benefit educators. Clearly, the strategy is to devise an end run around legal decisions -- going all the way to the Supreme Court -- that restrict the teaching of creationism in public classrooms.

All right. For such clear-eyed reporting on the sneaky neo-Creationist efforts to smuggle their pious non-science back into science class, thee shall have a cookie. And you're allowed to sleep on the couch. But I'm warning you, Washington Post: one more right-wing fucktard editorial, and it's right back to the doghouse without supper for you.

We Were Wrong About Expelled

It's soooo not about the evils of evolution:

Lots of people have reviewed Expelled. To some the movie has served to confirm their persecution complexes; to others the movie has demonstrated the utter dishonesty of the anti-evolution movement. But here comes Thomas Robb, national director of the KKK (and a Baptist minister), with a thoroughly unique take on the movie: it was made to encourage race mixing. No, I'm not making that up. He begins by pointing out that Ben Stein is a Jew and that he has "set a trap":

Is the person who puts out the cheese, carrot etc a friend or are these things being set out to entice and to trap a victim. So Ben Stein has set a trap in the form of a movie to catch Christians and destroy their resistance to race-mixing.

Wow, Mark Mathis et al were really clever buggers. They so had us fooled! Good thing we have Thomas Robb, the original Sharp Tack, to reveal the true aim of Expelled! [/sarcasm]

You've gotta go read the whole post over at Dispatches. It's hysterical.

Not only were we wrong about Expelled being about icky Darwinism and stuff, we've been wrong about ID all this time, too. Wow. Here we thought it was a tarted-up version of creationism, and Expelled was out there to topple Big Science and stuff, but it's really something else entirely:

Now it seems that it may be politics. According to the attorney representing the producers of Expelled in the Yoko Ono suit seeking to remove John Lennon's song "Imagine" from the film:

[Anthony T. Falzone] said an adverse ruling by [U.S. District Judge Sidney] Stein would mean "you have muzzled the speech of my clients" because they would have to replace the song with other images, losing the chance to make the issue important enough that it could even influence the U.S. presidential campaign.

"If you issue that injunction, you trample on these free speech rights and you put a muzzle on them and you do it in a way that stops them from speaking on this political issue leading
up to the election," Falzone said.

It's science! No, wait, it's religion! No, wait, it's about academic freedom! No, wait, it's a political issue! No, wait, it's... what'll it be next? Here's a thought: let's morph it into mime!

I think my favorite part of Falzone's snivelling was the idea that losing 25 seconds of a pilfered song would mean the difference between Expelled dying a quiet death and Expelled becoming the vehicle propelling ID front and center in the presidential campaign. Who'da thunk John Lennon had such power?

In the meantime, the injunction goes on, and PZ's out of luck:

Apparently, a New York judge has upheld the injunction against the movie, so there will be no new showings, and DVD rights are in limbo.

The movie is dead anyway, so it doesn't seem to be a significant decision. It's not as if theater distributors are lined up clamoring for more copies of this stinker. Although, to be honest, I would like the rights cleared up, because the only way I'm ever going to see it is if I can rent the DVD from my local store.

Does anyone else get the sense that this movie's only got life left in it because there's still a few drops of entertainment at its expense left to be squeezed?

Catching Up with Expelled

It's been a long time since Expelled hit the theaters and failed spectacularly to deal a death-blow to evolution. It didn't give unstoppable momentum to various Academic Freedom bills. It didn't topple Michael Moore's documentary throne. Rather than further its agenda, it managed to make itself a laughing-stock amongst all but the most deluded of the IDiot crowd.

It's faded faster than a bad dye job in the Arizona sun.

But, happily, there's still a chance to have some fun at its expense.

The New Jersey Jewish News has a good question:

Stein joins an odd political/religious coalition in taking the measure of the 21st century and deciding that our biggest problem is that we have too much science and too little religion. As American children fall further behind in the classroom, and the United States relinquishes its reputation for technological innovation, perhaps only an economist like Stein can explain how it is in our country’s benefit to mock the fundamental biology upon which our understanding of the natural world relies.

Yeah, Ben. How will IDiocy benefit America? Or was this really your nefarious plan all along?

How to Ruin American Enterprise

12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.

Everybody read that 2002 Forbes article as sarcasm, but in light of what he's done lately, methinks it may have been more of a roadmap.

So how are his efforts to "elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism...to an equal status with technology in the public mind" going? Ouch:

TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
Domestic:
$6,906,488

Not too good for a movie that proclaimed it would make $15-20 million in the opening weekend.
But how's the theatre count? There's still a chance... isn't there?

Not in 402 theatres and falling, there's not. Especially not when Yoko Ono has opened a can of whupass and ensured you can't sneak it onto anymore screens, either.

A federal judge in Manhattan has told the makers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed that they cannot distribute the film any further, until a copyright infringement complaint is heard in court later this month.

"Cannot distribute the film any further..." I suppose that means a swift DVD release is right out, then.

Ken Miller, one of the evolutionary biologists Expelled refused to include in their propaganda because he's also a Christian, doesn't have anything nice to say about it:

"Expelled" is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word "expelled" may have a different and more tragic connotation for our country than Stein intended.

Canadian Christianity ridicules it:

Matters are further confused by the fact that the film never acknowledges that some ID theorists actually believe in evolution, albeit perhaps only to a point.

Instead, the film allows the viewer to think that ID and evolution are natural enemies – an idea deepened by the film’s efforts to link Darwinism with the Holocaust.

The problem is, evolutionary theory – which is both older and newer than Darwin, by the way – is either true or it isn’t, and it doesn’t matter much whether people have abused the theory, any more than it matters whether people have abused, say, the teachings of Jesus. Within the film, Dawkins links the Bible to genocide just as surely as Stein links evolution to genocide, so what good does that tactic really do?

Reasons to Believe has even debunked its central premise:

In Reasons To Believe's interaction with professional scientists, scientific institutions, universities, and publishers of scientific journals we have encountered no significant evidence of censorship, blackballing, or disrespect. As we have persisted in publicly presenting our testable creation model in the context of the scientific method, we have witnessed an increasing openness on the part of unbelieving scientists to offer their honest and respectful critique.

Our main concern about EXPELLED is that it paints a distorted picture. It certainly doesn't match our experience. Sadly, it may do more to alienate than to engage the scientific community, and that can only harm our mission.

How fucking pathetic is it when even people peddling Biblical inerrancy and creationism don't want to be seen in Expelled's company?

All of this jabbing Expelled in the eye with their own log of stupid has been delightful, but things are slowing down to a trickle. That's why I hope Ono's suit is settled quickly, so that we can enjoy a reprise of the fuckery when the Expelled DVD is released. I'll bet you a million dollars to a donut hole their bonus features include something stolen, blatantly copied, or breathtakingly dishonest.

What, no takers?

Rampant Right-Wing Stupidity: America's #1 Export

What do global warming deniers and IDiot liars have in common? Three guesses before I send you over to Canadian Cynic, where PSA has your answer.

Give up?

Here you go:

Controversy! Evidently the scientific community's doubts about global warming aren't as clear cut as the lying fuckwits at the Heartland Institute might like us all to believe. The Heartland Institute published a list of 500, count 'em 500 scientists that they claim were united in disavowing the concept of global warming. Pretty impressive... until the scientists named start to find out and demand their names be removed from the list.

What does that remind me of? Oh, yes, I remember:

You remember that list of scientists who signed a Discovery Institute declaration against Evolution, the Universe and everything? Well, funny thing, and I know this will shock you, but... they lied about the signatories...

That's right, my darlings. The Heartland Institute seems to enjoy taking its tactics right from Disco's playbook, and now, just like the IDiots, the Chicago-based fuckwits are exporting the fuckery:

Of course a group as shoddy and unethical as the Heartland Institute won't have just one fucking atrocity on the go at a time. Lawd no. They have petrodollars to spend. And petrodollars will buy a lot of bovine feces and a lot of envelopes to mail it out in. The Vancouver Sun reports that our good pals down at the Heartland Institute are trying to inflict their retarded agenda on Canadian kids.

An American think tank has sent out more than 11,000 brochures and DVDs to Canadian schools urging them to teach their students that
scientists are exaggerating how human activity is the driving force behind global warming.The Chicago-based group, the Heartland Institute, said its goal is to ensure that students are provided with a "balanced" education about "an important and controversial issue," but critics, including a leading climate scientist, described it as a campaign of misinformation.

Stop, I've heard this one before. Any minute now, they'll spout the words "Teach the Controversy!" Next you know, they'll be behind a slew of Academic Freedom bills designed to ensure the anti-global warming nitwits get to spread their disinformation in schools. They could be more pernicious, considering global warming denial doesn't track back to religion as easily. Why couldn't the Constitution have required a separation between stupid and State?

Seems we've had anti-science buggers swarming out of their fetid lairs lately. Could they have been emboldened by Bush's determined efforts to stupify the world?

A senior United Nations official has accused President George Bush of "doing damage to Africa" by cutting funding for condoms, a move which may jeopardise the successful fight against HIV/Aids in Uganda.

Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms and an emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries which has succeeded in reducing its infection rate.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by [US policies]," Mr Lewis said yesterday. "To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa."

And his continuing committment to keeping us warm, toasty, and completely ignorant of science:

White House officials have undermined their own government scientists' research into climate change to play down the impact of global warming, an investigation by The Observer can reveal.

[snip]

Emails and internal government documents obtained by The Observer show that officials have sought to edit or remove research warning that the problem is serious. They have enlisted the help of conservative lobby groups funded by the oil industry to attack US government scientists if they produce work seen as accepting too readily that pollution is an issue.

America's Right-Wing Fuckwits: making the world safe for neocon stupidity since 2001.

*Rational Americans would like to apologize to Canada, Great Britain, Spain and Uganda, along with every other country in the world that has suffered from the influx of inanity. Please be assured we're trying very hard to remedy this situation, and will hopefully have good news to report this November.

Fight ALL CAPS With ALL CAPS: Brilliant!

I nearly got myself in trouble at work laughing my ass off. I was spelunking the comment thread on Carpetbagger's "Conservative Ben Stein insists, ‘Science leads you to killing people’" post, enjoying the number of politically active people who are also wise to Intelligent Design's antics. Right in the middle of it, I encounter this:

43. On May 1st, 2008 at 8:28 pm, Ashok said:

Ben Stein NEVER said “Science” is leading people to kill. either the author is dumb or he is a liar and deceiver with the intent to deceive all the sheep here that follow him deceived and stating that it is science that Ben Stein is attacking.

NO HE IS NOT ATTACKING SCIENCE.

BEN STEIN IS ATTEMPTING TO SHOW YOU IDIOTS THAT SCIENCE HAS BEEN HICKJACKED BY THE LIKES OF RICHARD DAWKINS AND THE OTHER STAUNCH EVOLUTIONISTS.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND???? SHALL I SPELL IT OUT AGAIN..

BEN STEIN OR THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN FOLKS ARE NOT AGAINST SCIENCE. THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN ARGUMENTS ARE SCIENTIFIC.

I have read many people write “why dont the proponents of intelligent design prove their arguements?” Well Duh… they have … and the proofs are out there.

Look familiar? Yepper. The old IDiot "I'm full of shit, so I have to USE ALL CAPS and MULTIPLE PUNCTUATION MARKS!!!! to prove HOW SERIOUS I AM" method. The only thing we were missing was the variety of fonts, and the pretty colors. No doubt we'd have had them if such things could be inserted in comments.

As PZ noted when the Expelled lackwits sent him an email:

Font size changes, random underlining, random color changes — it is so typical of creationist email. If I didn't know that these gomers had millions of dollars at their disposal, I'd consider this to be yet another rant from a lone fruitcake living in his mother's basement.

Notice too the palpable hysteria and desperation.

There must be some kind of creationist style manual out there, packaged at a bargain price along with the Wedge Document.

But the most beautiful thing came later, when a commenter turned creationist tactics against the cretin and posted this gorgeous smackdown:

49. On May 1st, 2008 at 11:51 pm, Nemodog said:

As stated by an Ashok,

“BEN STEIN OR THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN FOLKS ARE NOT AGAINST SCIENCE. THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN ARGUMENTS ARE SCIENTIFIC.”

O.K. folks, here is how the scientific method really works. It’s not a democracy. You don’t get a vote until you’ve had a basic (call it a BS) amount of scientific education from accredited (call it college for the U.S.) sources.

You get that? YOU DON’T GET A SAY AT ALL.

Now, once you’ve gotten your basic educational unit, and you have an idea (let’s call it a THESIS) you propose it, test it, and then try to convince those who have the same basic education that you’re not a
crack-pot.

We’ll call this PEER REVIEW. It’s brutal. NO ONE GETS A VOTE EXCEPT YOUR PEERS. THATS IT!

If the idea holds, you take it to the next level. You ‘challenge’ the next higher unit of learning (like people who have MS or PhDs) with your idea. They look at it, and you and your peers DON’T GET ANY VOTE AT ALL. If they think it’s stupid, the idea is completely and absolutely DESTROYED.

At this point, you have a few choices.

You can go back to school, studying under the next level, until you achieve an education in the next peer group. Then you get to vote with them.

You can rethink your idea and retest/experiment until you’re convinced that you’re right, and start at square one again.

You can slink off and tell everyone how ‘right’ you are, even though you are a crack-pot.

The issue with Intelligent Design is that it can’t be tested, and hasn’t even passed the first stage. Rather than accept that evolution has survived the peer review process for a long long time, the proponents have slunk off, and the scientific community thinks that they are basically crack-pots.

Now, personally, I suspect that you, Ashok, are in the crowd of people who don’t get a vote. I may be wrong, but I haven’t run across too many classically educated scientists who think these ideas stand even
the most basic examination.

So shush.

Nemodog fights ALL CAPS WITH ALL CAPS!!! Brilliant! And a most excellent explanation of how science works. Concise, snarky, and so pointed you could poke an IDiot's eye out with it.

John Derbyshire Gives Blogger Heart Failure

I hear your two questions: "Who the fuck is John Derbyshire?" and "Which blogger?"

This blogger. Me. And this is John Derbyshire. Everybody say "Hi, John!" Yes, I'm asking you to say hello to a conservative columnist. A cheery hello, at that. Even though he's a homophobic racist hypocrite (as he admits himself), we can extend a cautious hand of welcome. After all, for a conservative, he is, as he says, "a mild and tolerant" racist homophobe, which is damned near miraculous for a National Review Online columnist.

He immigrated illegally from Great Britian before he became legal and started hating on all the brown immigrants, so that likely explains why he's the kind of conservative who can give me heart failure for being rational, reasonable, and uplifiting.

I found him on The Panda's Thumb. He's one of the rare few conservatives who's been quoted as saying non-outrageous things about evolution. I still hesitated before clicking that "Continue reading A Blood Libel on Our Civilization at the National Review" link. I mean, it's the fucking National Review. It's fuckwit central. But I like to think I have courage, and at times even an open mind, although that's been hard to keep open after the abuse it's taken from the neocons. So I steeled myself and clicked.

His article has a promising start. Right under the title, it asks, "Can I expell Expelled?"

Absolutely, John. You most certainly can. By all means. I'd be delighted to hold the door open while you boot them in the arse, even.

Things then became a bit rocky, but I soldiered on:

What on earth has happened to Ben Stein? He and I go back a long way. No, I’ve never met the guy. Back in the 1970s, though, when The American Spectator was in its broadsheet format, I would always turn first to Ben Stein’s diary, which appeared in every issue. He was funny and clever and worldly in a way I liked a lot. The very few times I’ve caught him on-screen, he seems to have had a nice line in deadpan self-deprecation, also something I like. Though I’ve never met him, I know people who know him, and they all speak well of him. Larry Kudlow, whose opinion is worth a dozen average opinions on any topic, thinks the world of Ben.

Oh, deary, deary me. He loves Ben. No good can come of this.

So what’s going on here with this stupid Expelled movie? No, I haven’t seen the dang thing. I’ve been reading about it steadily for weeks now though, both pro (including the pieces by David Klinghoffer and Dave Berg on National Review Online) and con, and I can’t believe it would yield up many surprises on an actual viewing. It’s pretty plain that the thing is creationist porn, propaganda for ignorance and obscurantism. How could a guy like this do a thing like that?

Easy, my dear John. Ben Stein is an opportunistic assclown. He's snookered you into thinking he has a frontal lobe. I am so sorry you had to find out the truth this way.

Heh. You said porn. Hur hur hur.

So far, not so bad. Gingerly, I continued picking my way through the piece, convinced that at any moment, I'd get my legs blown off by a sudden claymore landmine of neocon fucktardedness. There were moments where I'd stop, breathless, convinced I'd just tripped a wire:

The first thing that came to mind was Saudi money. Half of the evils and absurdities in our society seem to have a Saudi prince behind them somewhere, and the Wahhabists are, like all fundamentalist Muslims, committed creationists.

Awshit. Just when it was all going so swimmingly, here we go with the Islamofascists are responsible for everything bad!!1!1!!! spiel. What a fucking disappointment... holy fuck, what's this?

This doesn’t hold water, though. For one thing, Stein is Jewish. For another, he is rich, and doesn’t need the money. And for another, the stills and clips I have seen are from a low-budget production. Saudi financing would surely at least have come up with some decent computer graphics.

Ye gods. Logic! Tortured, twisted logic, true, but considering we're dealing with a conservative mind writing in the National Review, that's pretty damned impressive. Most of them just leave it at "Islamofascists didit, blow them all to bits, the end." The man questioned his assumptions. He tried applying reason.

This is where the heart attack happened. Clutching my chest, I continued to read:

It is at any rate clear that [the producers of Expelled] engaged in much deception with the subjects they interviewed for the movie, many of whom are complaining loudly. This, together with much, much else about the movie, can be read about on the Expelled Exposed website put up by the National Center for Science Education, which I urge all interested readers to explore.

Total. Heart. Failure. He, John Derbyshire, a conservative writer for the National Review, just referred his readers, nay, urged them, to visit ExpelledExposed.com, not to debunk or sneer but to learn.

I'd say "be still, my heart," but you've stopped, so that's redundant at this point.

My own theory is that the creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are. What they are, as is amply documented, is a pressure group for religious teaching in public schools.

My heart stopped already, right? Can it stop again? He even freely admits that these fuckers are trying to pass religion off as science!

One of my favorite comments came from “Pixy Misa” (Andrew Mazels) who correctly called Ben Stein's accusing Darwin of responsibility for the Holocaust “a blood libel on science.”

I would actually go further than that, to something like “a blood libel on Western Civilization.”

Wow-e-wow. Just... wow. I know I'm dead, now. Conservatives in our country just don't say things like this. I must have ended up going down the wrong leg of the Trousers of Time this morning. Total alternate universe. Has to be.

Western civilization has many glories. There are the legacies of the ancients, in literature and thought. There are the late-medieval cathedrals, those huge miracles of stone, statuary, and spiritual devotion. There is painting, music, the orderly cityscapes of Renaissance Italy, the peaceful, self-governed townships of old New England and the Frontier, the steel marvels of the early industrial revolution, our parliaments and courts of law, our great universities with their spirit of restless inquiry.

And there is science, perhaps the greatest of all our achievements, because nowhere else on earth did it appear. China, India, the Muslim world, all had fine cities and systems of law, architecture and painting,
poetry and prose, religion and philosophy. None of them ever accomplished what began in northwest Europe in the later 17th century, though: a scientific revolution. Thoughtful men and women came together in learned societies to compare notes on their observations of the natural world, to test their ideas in experiments, and in reasoned argument against the ideas of others, and to publish their results in learned journals. A body of common knowledge gradually accumulated. Patterns were observed, laws discerned and stated.

Glories! Yes! "Spirit of restless inquiry," even so! Science, "greatest of all our achievements," absolutely! I'll even forgive you that little sneer at other countries for not having a scientific revolution, because by your narrow definition of a scientific revolution, you're right. They didn't have one. But you understand the glory and importance of science, John, and that...

...brings to us a feeling for what the scientific endeavor is like, and how painfully its triumphs are won, with what sweat and tears. Our scientific theories are the crowning adornments of our civilization, towering monuments of intellectual effort, built from untold millions of hours of observation, measurement, classification, discussion, and deliberation. This is quite apart from their wonderful utility — from the light, heat, and mobility they give us, the drugs and the gadgets and the media. (A “thank you” wouldn’t go amiss.) Simply as intellectual constructs, our well-established scientific theories are awe-inspiring.

This, my darlings, is where I began to cry. Because John Derbyshire, a conservative, stated precisely how I feel about science. He expressed perfectly my own sense of wonder, my awe and appreciation, my love. His passion and mine recognize each other joyously. This is what draws us together over the divide. This is what makes those differences in ideology solvable. A conservative gets it. He understands, and respects, science. This is hope, people. This is fertile middle ground, this is. He can't be the only conservative in this country who feels this way.

And how does he feel about Ben, now?

And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone.

Ouch. And Intelligent Design?

The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism. (A thing that cannot be said of Darwin. See Chapter X of Voyage of the Beagle.)

And yes: When our greatest achievements are blamed for our greatest moral failures, that is a blood libel against Western civilization itself.

Very ouch.

All that's needed now is for more true conservatives like John Derbyshire to get so disgusted with the neocons and theocons that they wrest back conservatism from the assmonkeys destroying it. It can be done. That middle ground that I was pining for a bit ago, it can be created again. We'll all be freely mingling in it, visiting from our respective ends of the political spectrum, cheerfully ribbing each other over what we consider each other's silly ideologies, but able to debate rather than degrade, talk rather than shout.

That's what this article has shown me. It's still possible. The divide is not yet an impassable chasm. There are some people on both sides busily building bridges and caulking the cracks. They're making it possible for us to reach each other.

And when we get there, won't we ever have a delightful time bashing the IDiots? Once I get my heart started again, anyway.

Expelled: Extreme Failure Edition

Yes, it's been a while since I did an Expelled post. Got bored, didn't I? They weren't doing anything new and exciting, aside from failing spectacularly. But now, there's some fresh opportunity for fun at their expense.

Premise Media, the assclowns behind Expelled: the Flop, sent PZ Myers and other poor unfortunates on their mailing list an email that has to be seen to be believed:

BUT BEN STEIN NEEDS YOUR HELP…

Secular critics, atheist groups, and now the beloved Yoko Ono are black balling EXPELLED and trying to get it out of theaters.

Seriously. Go read the whole thing. PZ had the patience to present it in all its inane glory, complete with bizarre font changes and pathetic whining. I'm just going to sit back and laugh myself sick at the fact their piss-poor propaganda is flopping so badly they have to send out desperate pleas for rescue. "Ono! It's Ono, suing us for totally stealing John Lennon's stuff! The evilutionists and mean, nasty atheists are all against us! And we're totally lying about everything, but we think you're stupid enough to believe us anyway!"

Numbnuts.

All of their claims can be thoroughly debunked, but one in particular is too easy:

#5 in per screen box office ($3,000 per screen)
#9 overall, despite being on only half the screens of its competitors

Um. No.

TOTALS TO DATE

1. Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! .... $147.9 million
2. 21 .. $ 75.8 million
3. Nim's Island ....... $39.0 million
4. The Forbidden Kingdom ............. $ 38.3 million
5. Prom Night ......... $ 38.1 million
6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall ......... $ 35.1 million
7. Baby Mama .......... $ 18.3 million
8. Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay ........ $ 14.6 million
9. 88 Minutes ......... $ 12.6 million
10. Deception .......... $ 2.2 million

Looks like Expelled got itself expelled from the Top Ten over the weekend. Where are they? Oh. 13th. Well, you know, 5, 9, 13, what's the difference?

I know what you're thinking. These blindingly stupid, morally depraved, terminally truth-challenged ass bandits deserve to be slapped across the face with a fish.

Funny you should mention it...

So Much for $15,000,000

Heartening news:

The first Box Office numbers are in. Expelled opened in 8th place with $1.2M in revenues in 1,052 theatres resulting in a $1,141 per theatre revenue. You do the math. At an average of 5 showings this makes $220 per showing or 30-40 people. Expelled ranks 4th in the list of “new releases”

While the weekend has just started the movie will have to do some hard work to match the expectations of the PR people:

“He said they would consider the opening weekend successful if the movie sold 2 million tickets (earning $12-15 million).”

Something tells me the weekend ain't long enough for them to make up the difference, there. So much for the death of evolution.

Epsilon Clue gives us a good rundown of where things stand. Considering Expelled has taken their argument out of the science arena and made it into a popularity contest, the news doesn't seem good. Honestly, folks, when Catwoman gets higher ratings, you know you're in trouble.

And with that, I'm done for now. I'm already sick of this movie. I'm already fed up with the lonely few fuckwits who've come out with empty guns a-blazing. I'm going to go prop my feet up, catch up on Daily Show and Colbert Report, and just ignore the ignorant for a while.

We'll let Rowan Atkinson have the last word:



Yes, Expelled.

God Outraged Over Expelled!!

Earthquake in Illinois heralds divine wrath over release of Intelligent Design propumentary!

WEST SALEM, Illinois (AP) - An earthquake struck the U.S. state of Illinois early Friday, and it appeared to rival the strongest temblor ever recorded in the country's Midwest region.

[snip]

The quake, measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale, hit just before 4:37 a.m. (1037 GMT) and was centered 6 miles (10 kilometers) from West Salem, Illinois.

The jolts were felt in a region that included parts of the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Its Web site said earthquakes seldom occur in the area, and that the largest recorded earthquake in the region - also a magnitude 5.4 - caused damage in southern Illinois in 1968.

Coincidence? I think not! Not on the very morning Expelled hit theaters! No, it's God's way of saying, "Oh, my Me, what do these IDiots think they're doing? In My name? You are so smited!"


George at Decrepit Old Fool reports, "Well I’ll be damned. It cracked my basement wall... It’s an old cinder-block wall and wasn’t in great shape to begin with, so while it can support a large load it can’t handle compression waves. Gives me a preview of what will happen if a big quake ever occurs."


Yes: this is God's preview of what will happen if another atrocity like Expelled is ever allowed to hit theaters.


How does this atheist know it's divine wrath and not the natural result of normal seismic activity along the New Madrid Seismic zone? God spoke to me!

"Dana," He said, brushing aside the minor quibble over my not believing He exists, "look at the reviews and tell Me I'm supposed to be happy about this. A lousy star and a half from TV Guide? An F from E! A D from BeliefNet? And - this is really insulting here - AND an F from the Ayn Rand Institute! Ayn Rand! What an insult!

"So I sent a little earthquake. You know, just a hint that maybe I'm not really happy here. Don't look at Me like that - I didn't hurt anyone, just a few bricks, I'm a lot different from the old days, you had to be firmer back then or they'd worship golden calves on you at the drop of a hat. But just look at the timing here. I sent them the earthquake at four in the morning - plenty of time to call off this travesty. If that wasn't a sign, I don't know what is. But did they listen? No! Do they ever listen? Of course not. Why do I bother? Forget them. They'll be facing a worse wrath than Mine soon anyway - they'll rue the day they crossed Yoko Ono. I'm for golf. Laters!"

Straight from God's mouth to your ears, my darlings!

So let the Expelled crew claim unilateral victory - as they will, since they're habitual liars. Let the DIsco dancers try to tapdance around Darwinism and try to declare it dead while it's dancing a lively jig with its evolutionary offspring. We have irreducible proof that God doesn't like them one little bit!

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:

Expelled: a Boon to Humanity

Nonono, my darlings, there's no need to worry: I haven't seen the film and been converted. That's about as likely as me developing a deep and abiding love for my uterus. Considering I'd be first in line for a home hysterectomy kit, you can suss out the odds. They're roughly the same as a meteor landing in Times Square and dancing The Masochism Tango.

Not even going to see the film unless Mark Mathis brings me a free copy. That's right, Mathis: you want to convert my ass, you do it on your own dime, you slimy shit. You can send Mr. Dumbski down with the video - he's the boil on the butt of my city, so he wouldn't have a long drive. Let's see how your film stands up to a scientifically literate layperson, eh?

I think we all know how that's going to go.

But Expelled isn't unmitigated evil. It's an opportunity. And it's been a boon to many sectors of society.

Movie reviewers have gotten their first real challenge in years: how do you review a film that won't let potential critics screen it? Reading through the list of reviews on Expelled Exposed, I get the sense this is the first real fun they've had in years. No other movie has forced them to become spies. Not many movies present so many opportunities for mockery. Aside from actually having to suffer through the film, they seem to be enjoying themselves immensely.

Expelled has also led to a Cambrian Explosion of art. Let's just have a quick survey, shall we?

In drawing and photoshop, we have the classic "IDiot..." from Decrepit Old Fool. We have the excellent Yoko Ono as Kali, Stomping on Ben Stein from Secher Nbiw. Quidam's What? It's Not a Copy, Ours is brown! Midwifetoad's No Intelligents Allowed. And so much more!

In video, a plentitude of mockumentaries have sprung into being. RichardDawkins.net airs Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed. You can find FSM Expelled on YouTube.

Comics: Ben Stein's Career Goes Down the Toilet. Win Ben Stein's Intelligence.

Song: Bensteinian Rhapsody.

So. Much. More. This has been a mere smattering of the bounty, my darlings. A taste only.

And it doesn't end there.

Expelled's benefits to science could prove incalculable. The movie has tied Intelligent Design to religion with steel hawsers. Try denying it's all about God now. It's exposed the fact that ID is scientifically empty to a far wider audience than the Dover trial and any number of evolution sites have. It's proven that ID has to fall back on lies, fallicies, theft, politics and pleas to the churches to get into science class, because it can't get there on its own merits.

Many people who wouldn't have given two shits about evolution will now likely be curious just because of all the fuss. And there's an abundance of evolution sites to satisfy their curiosity. I'm sure an explosion of books, movies and lectures will follow. There's a hook, now: in exposing the antics of the Expelled crew and the Discovery Institute, there's a wonderful opportunity to slip real science in with the gory details. They wanted us to "teach the controversy?" Great! By all means, let us teach the controversy. It's amazing how much science you can learn when you're discovering why everything those assclowns say about evolution is wrong. Keeps it interesting, too.

We're not going to reach everyone. Plenty of folks will be happy to pretend that Expelled is purely the truth, because it feeds their persecution complex and their deep-rooted need to be lied to. But there are far more who will be pushed right over to our side because they've now seen the clothes stripped from the ID emperor. There's no pretending it's science now. They're not going to fall for fallacious arguments about Darwin = Hitler, Darwin = atheism, Darwin = evil. And they're going to understand now just what it is that's trying to sneak into their kids' science classrooms, and I doubt they'll like it one little bit.

This run-up to Expelled's release has helped us hone our responses. We're prepared. We have all the resources, wit and wisdom we'll ever need to help folks understand the difference between science and pseudoscience. So when they come stumbling out of Expelled feeling bludgeoned by the rampant stupidity, we'll be ready.

They've heard the lies. Now they'll be ready for the truth.

And we'll have Expelled to thank. How fucked up is that?


Update: Blue Collar Scientist has a fantastic compendium of reviews.

Expelled Exposes Itself

Ah, yes, my darlings. Today's the day we've all been waiting for: Waterloo. Expelled hits theaters today like a tsunami of bullshit.

Evolutionists are supposed to hide under the bed. Evolutionary biology will end. Etc.

Uh-huh. We're all shaking and stuff.

There was a calm before the storm: aside from a flurry of negative reviews, the only news of note comes via ERV. Much to no one's surprise, Expelled lied to the Killers, too:

Here is what the head administrator over at the official Killers message board just posted:

"I just spoke to the band's manager, and adding to the confusion was the fact that they did authorize a project months ago with this request:

Quote:'The film is a satirical documentary with an estimated running time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, exploring academic freedom in public schools and government institutions with actor, comedian, economist, Ben Stein as the spokesperson.

'What they authorized was a documentary about 'academic freedom in schools', not the film that the producers produced.

They contacted the producers of the film to ask that the song be removed but it is too late. Unfortunately it was misrepresented to them when the request came through to use it. Add this band to a long line of people who were misled by the producers of this film."

She later added:

"The band asked the producers to remove their song from the film when they became aware of the true nature of it. They were told it is too late. That's all there is."

As Doc Halliday might have said, their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

I'm sure as fuck not wasting my time or money on this poorly-made propaganda piece propped up by plagarism. I'd have my choice of theaters, mind: it's on several local screens, but definitely not on reviewers' radar. The Seattle P.I. doesn't even have a review. The Seattle Times does, and tain't pretty:

A hard-core, fundamentalist bit of right-wing propaganda, "Expelled" slyly appropriates its style from liberal and left-wing sources, sending Ben Stein out to do deadpan interviews with a grab-bag of people, while intercutting old movies, new animation and newsreel footage.

Succinct. Manages to capture both the truth of what the movie actually is - i.e., fundamentalist right-wing propaganda - and gets across the fact that the fuckers have to sneak, deceive and steal from others because they don't have the intellectual power to come up with original work. Nice.

The Stranger is even more cruel:

Yes! I love that the Discovery Institute’s precious little pseudoscience has to be peddled directly to pastors, rather than being debated in the open air, as ID proponents constantly insist they’d prefer. When you market a supposedly secular, scientific movie to religious people—purposefully excluding anyone from the independent press—it’s pretty clear that you’re trying to dupe the poor rubes. It’s also sweet that the reviews that the Discovery Institute has been trumpeting so far on their blogs are from places like Christianity Today (you came into the film "very, very skeptical,” did you , Mr. McCracken? I’ll show you skeptical).

After that, no one should be suprised that The Nanny made their list of recommended films, while Expelled did not.

Seattle Weekly didn't pull any punches, either:

[Stein's] thesis: Teaching Darwinian evolution but ignoring intelligent design in America’s public schools and universities is the biggest threat to American freedom today—bigger, presumably, than Al Qaeda, Iraq, and the recession combined. A series of interviews with ID true believers has him playing Michael Moore–dumb—no hard questions for the folks at the Discovery Center, whose infamous leaked 1993 “wedge memo” stated as one of its primary goals the propagation of the idea “that nature and human beings are created by God.” ID’ers protest that they’re simply interested in secular alternatives to Darwinian evolution; their scientific opponents, meanwhile, are potential Communists and Nazis (Stein visits Dachau for an insulting “It happened here” moment). Using the powers of low-grade montage to compare the divide between
evolutionary scientists and ID’s proponents to the Berlin Wall, Stein becomes, with his doc’s insistence that we tear down that wall, Ronald Reagan. Bizarre and hysterical. (Vadim Rizov)

Somehow, I get the sense he didn't mean "hysterical" as in "intentionally humorous."

I want you to take note of something: there's no positive review anywhere in Seattle's main newspapers. Not sure about the minor ones, or the religious ones, but the papers with the broad audiences are sure as shit pretty fucking far from impressed.

I don't know what it is, but I'm just not anticipating a wave of conversions. I feel no need to prepare for a rash of "I believed in evolution, but Expelled showed me how wrong I was!" I am, however, ready with the consoling pat, because I'm sure I'm going to hear plenty of "I want my ten dollars and ninety minutes back!"

We tried to warn them.