The PZ Myers ‘Expelled’ affair

Prof. PZ Myers asked via web site to see this movie, Expelled, and was welcomed by e-mail. When he showed up, he was refused admittance. His guests were let in.

• If the producer, one Mark Mathis, wanted to show that he would not tolerate differences of opinion, he succeeded.
• If he wanted to keep out viewers who would see the mistakes in the film, he failed. If he wanted to keep out well-known atheists, he failed.
• And if he wanted to show that he was too ignorant to recognize the famous Professor Richard Dawkins, who was in the film, he succeeded admirably.

The details:

Professor Myers was on the mailing list for this movie. He got a notice that screenings were coming up. So he registered on a web site his intention to see a screening of the film Expelled and to bring guests. He received back a confirmation message saying that he was welcome and that he did not need tickets, just come and bring identification. He arrived and lined up with his guests. A guard (security guard or off-duty policeman) came over, asked if he was PZ Myers, and told him that the producer of the movie wanted to keep him out of the movie.

He was also told that he had to leave because he didn’t have a ticket. But nobody had tickets because they weren’t required or issued! He went and told his friends that he had to leave. I would guess that they wanted to set up a meeting place and time after the movie. The guard then told Prof. Myers that he had to leave the whole theatre, right away, or he would be arrested. (I think that any such charge would get thrown out of court.) But Prof. Myers left quietly.

It seems that he was asked to leave simply because the producer recognized his name and didn’t like him. The very funny and ironic thing was that the guest of Prof. Myers was Richard Dawkins. Prof. Dawkins is a much better known figure, author of more books, and so on. Witnesses say that when Prof. Dawkins was called on to ask a question and stood up, the blood drained out of the producer’s face.

And finally, Prof. Dawkins and Prof. Myers were both interviewed for this film. The producer lied to them and told them it was a film called “Crossroads,” which would take a balanced look at the debate between religion and science. The movie that came out is called “Expelled” and states that people who want to teach intelligent design are persecuted. We know that the producers lied because they registered a web domain for “Expelled the movie” before they interviewed the professors, but never registerd “Crossroads.”

We also know that when you look into it, people who try to teach intelligent design tend to do less research and publish fewer papers. That’s because you can’t really research “Evolution has flaws and it’s too complex to understand how this happened, therefore God did it!” The movie also tries to equate evolution with Nazis and concentration camps.

In a word, this little event has shown the producer of Expelled, Mark Mathis, to be a vindictive, hypocritical, unfair, and incompetent jerk. Whereas, far from being angry, PZ was laughing at the stupidity of the producer and organizers.