March 2008 Archives

Watching the whole Expelled debacle as it has unfolded, with screwups ranging from the expulsion of PZ and the pre-expulsion of Genie Scott who was also in the film (hear her story about 3/4 through this podcast also linked by Tim Sandefur below), to the multiple mutually inconsistent stories manufactured by Mark Mathis and his Swift Boat Veterans for Truth public relations firm, I am beginning to believe that they are following a conscious strategy: the “Pity Us Because We’re So Incompetent” strategy.

The most recent move in that cunning campaign was to “accidentally” send the email list for their scheduled Tempe, AZ, preview to Scienceblogger John Lynch. Because the promoters of Expelled used cc: rather than bcc:, John was privileged to learn that such luminaries as “boughtbythecross,” “homeschoolma,” and “covenant-dad” are among the target audience for Expelled.

C’mon, folks. Can you really believe that grown-up people who cross streets on their own and who (presumably) don’t require full-time home care can really screw up so royally so often? I really think they are angling for the pity vote.

By the way, in the podcast linked above Genie announced that NCSE will be releasing a series of new videos on www.expelledexposed.com on April 15. Link to it early and often.

Our flunked ‘rebel’ at the appropriately named movie ‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’ has made some claims which he believes are relevant to understanding the science and fact of evolution. Since our flunked ‘rebel has obviously missed many of the relevant science and education classes during his many ‘days off’ , we would not want his friends to be similarly affected. Even though exposing the flaws in our juvenile ‘rebel’ is as easy as taking Ben Stein’s money, the results can serve as a fair warning to other ‘rebels’ ready to imitate our flunked ‘rebel’.

Using his questions and assertions, we can explore the disastrous effects of Intelligent Design (ID) on scientific education as we observe him mindlessly and purposefully parroting the ID argument from personal ignorance and incredulity (perhaps less rebelling and more studying would have helped):

Our Flunked Rebel Wrote:

Each of these discoveries has, in one way or another, led a growing number of scientists to reconsider the simple view espoused by Darwin that life is a random, purposeless, chance occurrence. The universe, and life itself – is turning out to be far more complex and mysterious – than Darwin could possibly have imagined.

Two phrases, and yet each phrase is flawed in a variety of ways.

Last week, SUNY Stony Brook neurosurgeon and anti-evolution mouthpiece Michael Egnor decided to keep driving on with his “you don’t need to understand Darwinian evolution to understand antibiotic resistance” crusade. His post is - predictably enough - a mass of loosely connected logical fallacies. One of the most egregious of these is his attempt to assume one of the points that he wanted to argue:

First, two definitions:

Natural selection is selection in nature, presumably arising without intelligent agency. An example of natural selection would be the differential reproduction of organisms in nature, without the evident guidance of an intelligent agent.

Artificial selection is selection caused by intelligent agency. An example of artificial selection would be the intentional breeding of bacteria by a scientist in a research lab.

The distinction between natural selection and artificial selection is at least matter of definition, and perhaps there are empirical differences as well.

His definition of natural selection is poor - if I saw it on a quiz in an introductory course, I’d have a hard time justifying giving him even half credit - but it’s not nearly as troublesome as his definition of artificial selection. If you think back to some of the previous discussion about Egnor’s line of argument, you’ll remember that many of us don’t think that placing bacteria in an environment that contains an antibiotic and allowing them to freely reproduce is actually artificial selection. Egnor’s attempting to beg the question by simply making his conclusion part of the definition that he expects us to accept without further argument. And that’s where my dog comes in.

Read more at The Questionable Authority, where comments may be left:

Henry Neufeld reminds us in a trackback to an early ‘Untold Sequel’ that featured Nancey Murphy, how Dr Richard Colling was treated at Olivet Nazarene University for writing a book titled ‘Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with the Creator”.

Dr Colling’s story was featured in Inside Higher Ed

Do you think Expelled will discuss the story of Nancey Murphy as told at the Washington Post?

Let’s look in more detail at Expelled Exposed

Nancey Murphy, a religious scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., said she faced a campaign to get her fired because she expressed the view that intelligent design was not only poor theology, but “so stupid, I don’t want to give them my time.”

Murphy, who believes in evolution, said she had to fight to keep her job after one of the founding members of the intelligent design movement, legal theorist Phillip Johnson, called a trustee at the seminary and tried to get her fired.

“His tactic has always been to fight dirty when anyone attacks his ideas,” she said. “For a long time afterward, I would tell reporters I don’t want to comment, and I don’t want you to say I don’t want to comment. I’m tired of being careful.”

Johnson denied he had tried to get Murphy fired. He said that he had spoken with a former trustee of the seminary who was himself upset with Murphy but that he was not responsible for any action taken against her. “It’s the Darwinists who hold the power in academia and who threaten the professional status and livelihoods of anyone who disagrees,” Johnson said. “They feel to teach anything but their orthodoxy is an act of professional treason.”

What could have been Murphy’s ‘crime’? She published a scathing review of Johnson’s “Darwin on Trial” titled Phillip Johnson on Trial: A Critique of His Critique of Darwin in Perspectives on Science & Christian Faith, 1993, vol 45, no 1 pp 26-36.

Nancey Murphy Wrote:

Phillip Johnson’s recent book, Darwin on Trial, claims to show that the reasoning presented in favor of evolutionary biology is defective. Such a book, being one of so many, would excite little attention were it not for the fact that the author is an expert in legal reasoning, and has contributed his particular skills to the debate. However, the canons of scientific argument are quite different from those of the courtroom, and it can be shown that Johnson’s critique of Darwinian thought falls far short of the mark in that it does not fully appreciate the special requirements of scientific argumentation.

This week’s episode of The Skeptic’s Guide to The Universe (the best podcast on the planet) features a fun interview with Eugenie Scott about Expelled, and also the delightful news that our own PZ Myers now has an asteroid named after him.

The actor Ben Stein has switched from TV comedy, where his talents really lie, to political apologias, where his talents simply die, says John Patterson

Not a very good start but things get better, or worse

Comic actor and game show host Ben Stein isn’t at all happy, according to the trailers for his spurious-looking new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which he berates in overheated, lachrymose and rhetorically manipulative ways the American academic establishment’s reluctance to recognise intelligent design, the pseudoscientific, inbred second-cousin of biblical creationism, for which Expelled offers straightforward propaganda. Stein isn’t making a political crossover here, just a formal one - from TV comedy, where his talents really lie, to political apologias, where his talents simply die. His deeply rightwing political opinions haven’t shifted one iota since he was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon. (If you can believe it, Stein was once suspected of being Deep Throat.)

Make it viral.

Today we sat in on a conference call with the Expelled frauds. PZ has his story up, and others will probably follow. However, some people, including the producers of Expelled, have already taken to accuse us of crashing their call, much like the lies about PZ crashing the Expelled screening.

This is false. We got an explicit invitation yesterday from Expelled‘s media relations firm to participate, note to whom the invitation is addressed.

Subject: INVITE: Live teleconference with BEN STEIN of Expelled
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:45:24 -0400
From: Schlicht, Stacy (LAN-RCN) <[removed]@rogersandcowan.com>
To: [Enable javascript to see this email address.]

JOIN BEN STEIN TOMORROW, Friday, March 28 at 1:00 pm. PST for an exclusive, invitation-only LIVE press teleconference!

Some crew members got multiple invitations, including the one above and one at the personal site. PZ, however, was not one of them, despite the amount of (bad) press he has been able to generate for the frauds. I guess they purposely excluded his personal email from the list. However, they apparently forgot that PZ is a crew member, when they sent us our invitation. It’s incompetence all the way down.

The full invitation, minus the press quotes, is below the fold.

Julia Sweeney watched all the trailers for “Expelled” and was not impressed

Last night Michael and I watched all the trailers for “Expelled,” the anti-evolution, intelligent design movie that Ben Stein made, or appears to have made, that’s opening in movie theaters on April 18^th. I am just speechless.

Ben Stein once did a Groundling show, an improv show, that I was a part of. I found him to be spectacularly ill-informed and narcissistic and weirdly devoted to his schtick and worst of all, hacky. He didn’t listen to his fellow performers and played everything outward to his friends in the audience who laughed (fake, forced) at every single thing he did. When he became known as a “thinker” – when his public persona became the “smart guy” I was astounded. So this type of film does not come as any surprise.

Seems they found a perfect character for ‘Expelled’

Biola University’s ‘Christian Apologetics’ program announced a showing of Ben Stein’s movie ‘Expelled’ for $10. However, when Troy Britain showed up, he discovered that the event was a ‘backstage’ event only.

It gets “better” though. After listening to Stein practically foam at the mouth (he almost seemed like he had a pulse for a minute there) about the horrible injustices supposedly documented in his film and a bunch of stuff about God, this despite the fact that one of the clips from the film was one of the Discovery Institute muckety-mucks prattling on about how they want to talk about science and that it’s the “people with no argument” who keep bringing up the “red-herring” of religion, the night was topped off with Stein receiving the Orwellianly titled “Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth” for 2008. All of this to no less than three standing ovations from the crowd.

While the DI is working hard to differentiate ID from its religious foundations, Ben Stein and other ‘Expelled’ people seem to be quite clear that this is all about God.

Thank God, I say, for their honesty even though they are quite misguided about evolutionary theory and Intelligent Design and are doing science and religion a disfavor.

The Florida legislature is considering an “Academic Freedom Act” originating from Disco. For some background see my earlier post.

The bill has passed its first committee vote with amendments. The amended bill starts as follows:

The Committee on Education Pre-K - 12 (Wise) recommended the following amendment:

2

3

4 Senate Amendment (with title amendment)

5 Delete everything after the enacting clause

6 and insert:

7 Section 1. (1) This section may be cited as the “Evolution

8 Academic Freedom Act.”

9 (2) As used in this section, the term “scientific

10 information” means germane current facts, data, and peer-reviewed

11 research specific to the topic of chemical and biological

12 evolution as prescribed in Florida’s Science Standards.

13 (3) The Legislature finds that current law does not

14 expressly protect the right of teachers to objectively present

15 scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific

16 views regarding chemical and biological evolution.

As Disco is not on trial at the moment, they claim the following “Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated)”: Discovery Institute claims peer reviewed support.

And as regular readers know, they quote mine much of the rest of the scientific literature to read it as they wish.

The entire Florida bill is reproduced below the fold. I have a simple question for readers: how pleased (or not) is Disco with the revised bill, and why?

Law professor Jana R. McCreary recently published a just plain awful article in the Southwestern University Law Review, arguing that the teaching of evolution in public schools violates the Constitution. She proceeds via an intellectual shell-game by which she defines “religion” so broadly that she can contend that science is a religion and therefore that the government is barred from endorsing it. (“This Is The Trap The Courts Built,” 37 Sw. U. L. Rev. 1 (2008)). You can read her article here.

Our ally Peter Irons, a professor at UC San Diego, has a brief response to the article in the same issue. It’s simultaneously polite and utterly devastating. (“Darwin, Dogma, and Definitions,” 37 Sw. U.L. Rev. 69 (2008)). You can read it here.

Prof. McCreary was then given the opportunity to publish this remarkably lame rejoinder. (“Focusing Too Much on The Forest Might Hide The Evolving Trees,” 73 Sw. U. L. Rev. 83 (2008)).

One point I think worth emphasizing is that in her rejoinder, McCreary contends that “presenting all theories” of the origins of life—that is, religious as well as scientific ideas about the origins of life—would “provide neutrality.” 73 Sw. U. L. Rev. at 92. Of course, she acknowledges that in her view, teachers would be required to “present all known theories, highlighting none.” Id. In other words, teachers must present students with both rigorously tested, scientifically validated, evidence-based theories—as well as the crudest and most arbitrary mumbo-jumbo concocted by witch doctors. There are, of course, an infinite number of arbitrary “theories” of the origins of life, the universe, and everything, including the theory that the entire universe was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure. These stories being utterly arbitrary and allegedly exempt from the demands of evidence, it is improper to describe them as theories at all. They are not theories, but arbitrary declarations. And the teacher, of course, being required to “highlight none” of them, students would be presented with sense and nonsense on an equal footing, and told to make up their own minds (while not being judgmental, of course).

McCreary attempts to avoid the fact that teachers would then be spending an infinite amount of time teaching about the Great Green Arkleseizure and its infinite number of arbitrary cousins, by saying that in her view, teachers would not be required to give students “an in-depth look at each belief system,” but only “a brief glimpse into the concept; after all, time would not permit further discussion of the many theories beyond presenting them as competing explanations regarding how life began. And this would achieve the courts’ goals: neutrality.” Id.

So in other words, the cost of presenting students an enormous pile of nonsense would be to ensure that the presentation itself would be so superficial as to leave students as ignorant as they were to begin with. This, in McCreary’s view, is education.

(I also have a very brief response to McCreary in the footnotes of my new article in the Chapman Law Review.)

Over at Christianity Today Stephen H. Webb reviews Michael Behe’s new book The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism.

Biology certainly has a lot to say about the role of luck in the evolution of life, but the question of how much luck evolution needs and how much luck nature provides to get the ball of life rolling has been as much a matter of philosophical and mathematical speculation as empirical observation. Only in the past few decades has the state of genetic research reached the point where an informed judgment about the probabilities presupposed by Darwinism can be made. Michael Behe’s latest book, The Edge of Evolution, should establish the precedent for future debates. Darwinists will appeal Behe’s verdict, no doubt, but for readers with an open mind, it will be hard to overturn.

Last paragraph:

Evolution is such a sensitive topic for the scientific community that Behe will be dismissed as a fringe thinker, but he does not think the edge of evolution is Darwin’s undoing. Behe is a reformer, not a revolutionary. He wants to divide the Darwinian cake into small pieces so that he can be picky about what he accepts. Whether he has gotten to the bottom of Darwinism, he has shown that it lacks explanatory depth. Behe holds out the possibility that the progress of science, more than the claims of theologians, will undermine the dogmas of Darwin.

First comment:

Because evolutionists and anti-evolutionists have so many problems talking past each other, is it too much to ask for a review that facilitates dialogue instead of unhelpful stereotypes?

That is a very good comment. I hope some commenters here can help readers there to see a little more science. And don’t let the trolls get you.

Continue reading Taking Behe at his word at Christianity Today where comments can be left.

On UcD, DaveScot ‘argues’

DaveScot Wrote:

Well, there is no longer any doubt. Richard Dawkins registered for the screening as “Clinton” Dawkins. How many of you knew Dawkins’ first name was Clinton? Registering for the event using a first name which he never uses for anything else is about as red-handed as you can get. Dawkins was fully aware he was sneaking into a private screening to which he wasn’t invited and attempted to hide his presence by using his legal first name in the registration.

Anyone who continues to think that Myers and Dawkins are not guilty of chicanery in this matter is in denial.

Again, the argument from ignorance ‘who knew Dawkins’ first name was Clinton’ is to be expected from the ID creationists at UcD. However, there is a flaw in the ‘logic’ that suggests that Dawkins used the first name Clinton to ‘deceive’ and hide his presence.

In the Economist, an article explores how scientists are trying to explain religion. In a project titled “explaining religion” that involves scholars from 14 universities, researchers from many different disciplines are attempting to unravel the biological explanation for religion. The project receives funding from the “New and Emerging Science and Technology” programme of the European Union. The same programme also organizes the Tackling complexity in Science project and I noticed the absence of any ID relevant proposals.

Hat Tip: antievolution.org

While Disco’s Robert Crowther is crowing “Ben Stein’s New Film Expelled No. 1 in Blogosphere”, he should ponder the fly in the ointment: not all buzz is Good buzz. In particular, he should consider what “buzz” has done for the video game based on LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series, “Left Behind: Eternal Forces.” While the video game garnered lots of attention on the Net, a lot of it was bad - quite like the attention “Expelled” earned this week in regard to the Expulsion of PZ.

Did “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” get a boost from negative attention? Quite the contrary - it Tanked. It Fizzled. It Bombed. The game’s makers are now forced to simply give it away, free.

We got the following story via a dedicated reader in Kentucky, who says its from the newsletter of the ACLU of Kentucky.

When the Discovery Institute and other professional intelligent design apologists talk about wanting to just “teach the controversy”—which everyone knows is in direct opposition to “teach the science”—you should remember this example of a DI-inspired curriculum.

Bloomfield Middle School - Intelligent Design
by William E. Sharp, Staff Attorney

This case also represents a significant pre-litigation victory that is due in large part to the dedication and courage of a committed ACLU of Kentucky member. Specifically, this member contacted us about a particular teacher’s inclusion of Intelligent Design components into a 7^th grade science curriculum at Bloomfield Middle. Upon further investigation, we learned that the teacher not only incorporated Intelligent Design’s critiques of Darwinism, but the teacher also disseminated a chart containing Intelligent Design’s rationale for the earth’s short existence. This chart provided a timeline that included (and dated) Noah’s Ark and the Biblical flood story. This teacher also provided students with a five page “fact sheet” on Intelligent Design’s Model of Origins, its critique of the big bang theory, and its theory that dinosaurs coexisted with humans.

When we presented school officials with our objections to Intelligent Design as a reformulated version of Creationism and the substantial legal authority establishing the illegality of teaching a religious doctrine within a science curriculum. Bloomfield officials decided to remove all Intelligent Design components from the science curriculum.

(emphasis ours)

The cdesign proponentsists at the Discovery Institute spend a lot of hot air trying to convince the courts that they have noting to do with those creationdesign proponentsists from the 80s—just like the “scientific” creationists from the 80s claimed to have nothing to do with the “biblical” creationists from the 60s.

However, their grassroots supporters never seem to get the memo.

A new website titled Expelled Exposed was mentioned at the Amused Muse’s blog.

Keep checking this space for the National Center for Science Education’s official response to the Ben Stein movie Expelled; for now, we hope you will find this collection of resources helpful

From the ‘Expelled’ website we learn about the following ‘spoiler’ which is written in ‘white characters on a white background’.

*SPOILER!! Proceed and highlight text below only if you want to know more about the film’s specific content.

Many scenes are centered around the Berlin Wall, and Ben Stein being Jewish actually visits many death camps and death showers. In fact, Nazi Germany is the thread that ties everything in the movie together. Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

Says it all really… A refreshening honesty about the ignorance involved.

At the NewScientist blog, we find a posting which raises more questions than it answers

After confirming the news that the movie is without much of any scientific content, and makes ill chosen references to Nazis, Amanda Gefter, opinion editor, describes the Q&A that followed.

Clinton Richard Dawkins describes his personal experience of not being ‘expelled’

It’s quite a blistering response to a PR fumble.

Richard Dawkins Wrote:

The blogs are ringing with ridicule. Mark Mathis, duplicitous producer of the much hyped film Expelled, shot himself in the foot so spectacularly that the phrase might have been invented for him. Goals don’t come more own than this. How is it possible that a man who makes his living from partisan propaganda could hand so stunning a propaganda coup to his opponents? Hand it to them on a plate, so ignominiously and so UNNECESSARILY.

I was wrong — it’s not the Harvard multimedia video. It’s an independently generated copy. I grabbed a few images from the DVD I got at my truncated visit to the Expelled screening, and here, for instance, is the segment that shows that striking kinesin motor protein towing a vesicle down a microtubule. This is the version in the Expelled movie:

Now here’s an equivalent frame from the actual Harvard video.

Now I’m embarrassed to have mistaken one for the other, since the Expelled version is of much lower resolution and quality. However, do notice that they both have roughly the same layout and the same elements in view; this is a remarkable, umm, coincidence, since these are highly edited, selected renderings, with many molecules omitted … and curiously, they’ve both left out the same things.

Another curious coincidence: you’ve heard of the concept of plagiarized errors, the idea that the real tell-tale of a copy is when it’s the mistakes that are duplicated, in addition to the accuracies. In this case, I previously criticized the Harvard video for a shortcut. That kinesin molecule is illustrated showing a stately march, step by step, straight down the microtubule. Observations of kinesin show it’s more complex, jittering back and forth and advancing stochastically. That’s a simplification in the Harvard video that is also present in Expelled‘s version.

It’s clear that what they did was brainlessly copy what they saw in the original. I don’t know whether this is actionable anymore — that they slapped together a look-alike video to cover their butts makes the issue much more complicated.

A hilarious comic featuring PZ.

From CBS13

An associate professor at the University of Minnesota was expelled from a free screening of the movie “Expelled.”

P.Z. Meyers was interviewed in “Expelled,” and even thanked in the movie’s credits. When he tried to watch the film, however, he was kicked out 15 minutes before it started.

Myers is an atheist. The movie argues that schools should teach creationism as an alternative to evolution.

Wow, short and to the point.

Dawkins and PZ discuss the aftermath of the Expelled experience.

A better version can be downloaded here

Casey Luskin exposes some of his unfamiliarity with evolutionary theory when he claims that there are “More Troubles in the Tree of Animal Life”.

And how does Luskin reach this remarkable conclusion well because of our ignorance of science.

Casey Luskin Wrote:

In late 2005, three biologists published a study in Science which concluded, “Despite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships among most [animal] phyla remained unresolved.”

Luskin references an article in Science Daily titled Tree Of Animal Life Has Branches Rearranged, By Evolutionary Biologists to further his claims. So let’s explore Luskin’s misunderstandings and see what science does and does not know, lest one may get the impression that there is some fundamental flaw with the ‘Tree of Life’

Casey Luskin Wrote:

In 2008, the relationships among animals are still controversial. A recent news release at Science Daily highlights a new study, “Tree Of Animal Life Has Branches Rearranged.” The story reports, “The study is the most comprehensive animal phylogenomic research project to date, involving 40 million base pairs of new DNA data taken from 29 animal species.”

Below is an email that I received from NESCent:

Phyloinformatics Summer of Code 2008

Please disseminate this announcement widely to appropriate students at your institution

The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) is participating in 2008 for the second year as a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code. Through this program, Google provides undergraduate, masters, and PhD students with a unique opportunity to obtain hands-on experience writing and extending open-source software under the mentorship of experienced developers from around the world.

Our goal in participating is to train future researchers and developers to not only have awareness and understanding of the value of open-source and collaboratively developed software, but also to gain the programming and remote collaboration skills needed to successfully contribute to such projects. Students will receive a stipend from Google, and may work from their home, or home institution, for the duration of the 3 month program. Students will each have one or more dedicated mentors with expertise in phylogenetic methods and open-source software development.

NESCent is particularly targeting students interested in both evolutionary biology and software development. Project ideas (see URL below) range from visualizing phylogenetic data in R, to development of a Mesquite module, web-services for phylogenetic data providers or geophylogeny mashups, implementing phyloXML support, navigating databases of networks, topology queries for PhyloCode registries, to phylogenetic tree mining in a MapReduce framework, and more.

The project ideas are flexible and many can be adjusted in scope to match the skills of the student. If the program sounds interesting to you but you are unsure whether you have the necessary skills, please email the mentors at the address below. We will work with you to find a project that fits your interests and skills.

Inquiries

Email any questions, including self-proposed project ideas, to [Enable javascript to see this email address.].

To Apply

Apply on-line at the Google Summer of Code website, where you will also find GSoC program rules and eligibility requirements. The 1-week application period for students opens on Monday March 24^th and runs through Monday, March 31^st, 2008.

Hilmar Lapp and Todd Vision US National Evolutionary Synthesis Center

URLS

• 2008 NESCent Phyloinformatics Summer of Code
• Eligibility requirements
• Stipends
• Sign up for quarterly NESCent newsletters: with announcements about upcoming programs at the Center

Allen MacNeill, who teaches introductory biology and evolution at the Cornell University in Ithaca NY, left a comment which I believe deserves more attention

Allen MacNeill Wrote:

As an interesting addition to this debate, Will Provine and I were interviewed by Mark Mathis and his crew last year. Like PZ myers, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott and others, we were lied to about both the title of the film (they said it was “Crossroads”, not “Expelled”, for which a website domain listing was acquired several months before our interview) and the purpose of the film, which they said was to present an even-handed look at both sides of the debate.

At the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Russel Blackford blogs on Intelligent Design Movie Is Not for Heathens

Talking about Expelled

From all accounts, the movie alleges that the … ahem … bold conjecture of Intelligent Design has been kept out of academia by what is apparently spun as some kind of anti-Christian conspiracy. Individuals who have advocated ID are portrayed as victims of prejudice and injustice. Their academic freedom has been suppressed, or so we’re meant to believe.

Yet also understanding that Intelligent Design fails as a science

Whatever the precise content of Expelled, Intelligent Design itself is not, by any stretch of the imagination, genuine science. At best, it’s the tattered remnant of what may have been genuine science back in the 19^th century. You could dignify it, I suppose, by calling it a philosophical conjecture based on (supposed) inadequacies in evolutionary theory.

Expelled has gone missing in Santa Clara

After all the religious spin put onto the ejection of PZ Myers while allowing Richard Dawkins into last night’s showing of “Expelled”, I decided that I wanted to see for myself just how easy it was to get an invite to the movie.

There seems to be some controversy about tickets - with one side saying that Dr. Myers didn’t have a ticket and was acting the bully, and the other side saying that tickets weren’t required, that a simple sign up was all that was required.

So I went over to the Expelled RSVP site, and signed up. BAM! I got an instant return email saying that I was golden, with a seat reserved for me. I could now attend the Santa Clara event next week Friday merely by checking my ID against a list at the door.

Simple as that, just sign up, just as PZ explained

At the Get Expelled website, Ben Stein is inviting youth, teachers, pastors, youth leaders and organizations to attend one of the many free pre-screenings

Motive Entertainment is proud to present THE EXPELLED TOUR which launches on November 26^th to promote the upcoming release of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Tour locations are being added every day! You and your community are invited to attend FREE of charge! CLICK HERE to RSVP now at a location near you!

Clicking on RSVP takes you to the Expelled RSVP site where anyone can RSVP to attend one of the many screenings, most of them in religious locations ironically.

You too can sign up for the Events or here. You are told that

Please fill out one entry form per attendee. Once confirmed, your name will be on a list at the door of the theater. IDs will be checked.

For security, no bags, cell phones, or recording devices of any kind will be allowed into the theater. Please leave them in your car.

If Expelled expected these showings to be ‘private’, why would they provide a public RSVP site where anyone can signup to attend one of the many showings of the movie?

By Chris Hewitt from Pioneer Press has an article titled Biology prof expelled from screening of ‘Expelled’ in which he describes the events.

Myers was in the Twin Cities this week for the American Atheists Conference 2008 in Minneapolis and, coincidentally, he learned there was to be a free screening of “Expelled” at the Mall of America Thursday night. So he registered to attend with his wife, Mary, along with what Myers called “a whole parade of atheists,” including internationally famous science writer, Richard Dawkins, whose books include “The God Delusion.”

They all got in, but Myers did not.

The NY Times reports in No Admission for Evolutionary Biologist at Creationist Film how PZ Myers was expelled from the viewing of ‘Expelled’

Two evolutionary biologists — P. Z. Myers of the University of Minnesota, Morris, and Richard Dawkins of Oxford — tried to go to the movies at the Mall of America in Minneapolis Thursday evening. Dr. Dawkins got in. Dr. Myers did not.

and Dawkins had his comments

Dr. Dawkins said the hoopla has been “a gift” to those who oppose creationism. “We could not ask for anything better,” he said.

Hearts come in a variety of shapes and forms all the way from single chambered hearts to multi-chambered hearts with 2, 3 and even 4 separate chambers. How could evolution have achieved such a feat one may wonder, and indeed creationists have held up this minor mystery as something evolutionary theory could and would never be able to explain.

As is so often the case with such gap arguments, science has not failed to disappoint our creationist friends.

Science Daily gives us a hint of what science has uncovered in an article called Hearts Or Tails? Genetics Of Multi-chambered Heart Evolution