Hooray! Richard Dawkins has posted his review of the cdesign proponentsist movie Expelled and the events of its Thursday night’s screening that he attended.
“In the course of this film, Mathis tricked a number of scientists, including PZ Myers and me, into taking prominent parts in the film, and both of us are handsomely thanked in the closing credits.
“Seemingly oblivious to the irony, Mathis instructed some uniformed goon to evict Myers while he was standing in line with his family to enter the theatre, and threaten him with arrest if he didn’t immediately leave the premises. Did it not occur to Mathis — what would occur any normally polite and reasonable person — that Myers, having played a leading role in the film, might have been welcomed as an honoured guest to watch it? Or, more cynically, did he not know that PZ is one of the country’s most popular bloggers, with a notoriously caustic wit, perfectly placed to set the whole internet roaring with delighted and mocking laughter? I long ago realised that Mathis was deceitful. I didn’t know he was a bungling incompetent.
Not just incompetent at public relations, incompetent in his chosen profession of film-making, for the film itself, as I discovered when I saw it on Friday (and this genuinely surprised me) is dull, artless, amateurish, too long, poorly constructed and utterly devoid of any style, wit or subtlety. It bears all the hallmarks of a film-maker who knows nothing about the craft of making films…. I’ll come to that in a moment.” [Read more]
Tuesday, 25 March 2008 at 22:14
RE: 43. Comment #148713 by clearthinker on March 23, 2008
Dr Dawkins,
Could you please tell us what Mark Mathis has to do with Jesus? How do you know his motivation for lying was ‘for Jesus’? Is this not just another cheap shot in a rather silly ‘culture’ war?
I do believe the whole Intelligent Design ‘wedge strategy’ was developed by the Discovery Institute which developed it specifically to get a Creationist’s foot in the door of science classrooms across the US. And the Discovery Institute is indeed engaged in lying for Jesus. You can look into both the D.I. and the “wedge strategy” to confirm that.
You might also look at the US Court Case, Kitzmiller v Dover, to see a very thorough discussion in the ruling by Judge John E Jones III on the matter in its entirety. Jones wrote an excellent decision detailing an extensive court case where Intelligent Design promoters presented as much scientific supporting evidence as money could buy. Despite that, despite calling in expert witnesses like the infamous Dr. Michael Behe, and despite the fact Judge Jones was a Bush appointee from good Christian stock, ID promoters were unable to make their case that Intelligent Design was being ‘expelled’ from any science classroom in a public school in the USA.
Rather, what Judge Jones ruled was that Intelligent Design was Creationism with a science facade. Jones didn’t just rule that Intelligent Design failed the scientific test. Jones specifically ruled the defendants, in this case the Dover School Board which had been infiltrated by ID promoters, was trying to deceive the court. Jones ruled they were lying that Intelligent Design was not Creationism in disguise. In fact, the ID defendants were caught lying red handed by a typo in the textbook they wanted used in the Dover schools, “Of Pandas and People”, which was previously a book promoting Creationism as a scientific theory. The defendants testified that ‘Of Pandas and People’ was not previously about Creationism, but a typo in the book actually reads, “cdesign proponentsists”. Jones noted that error in his ruling along with the fact the book matched almost word for word the book about Creationism except the term, ID, was substituted for Creationism.
The idea behind the Discovery Institute’s ‘wedge strategy’ was to couch the Biblical version of Creation in scientific terms and have it accepted as science rather than religion. To do that they took the scientific hypothesis that some components of living organisms are irreducibly complex and therefore did not evolve and claimed this hypothesis, if true, supported a competing theory to evolution, that of Intelligent Design.
But like all invalid hypotheses go, irreducible complexity failed the test. To this point, no lies were yet told. But what do you do when you cannot fit the evidence to your existing Biblical beliefs? For some people, they simply ignore reality. But for others, well aware the scientific community was not convinced that irreducible complexity was a supportable hypothesis, they simply took their arguments to non-scientists. If you can’t convince informed people, you can still try to convince uninformed people.
And that is where the lie for Jesus comes in. You cannot say that scientists were not convinced because the evidence was not convincing. You have to make up a lie that scientists were not convinced because they exclude religious beliefs from science.
But that is not true. If the evidence supported the Biblical version of Creation, then the evidence supports the Biblical version. There is no valid evidence science dismisses simply because someone wrote something about it in a religious text beforehand.
Intelligent Design fails on scientific merits. So rather than debate ID on scientific merits, the Discovery Institute has been trying to change the debate to “fairness in the classroom”. And this film is just more of that same lie. The lie being told here is that free speech is being hindered, that the scientific community is afraid of evidence which refutes evolution theory, that the scientific community cares more about a pet theory than about the evidence.
That lie feeds into the public stereotype that science is steeped in tradition and dogma. The opposite is true. Science is all about the evidence. Sometimes new paradigms require sufficient evidence to convince some scientists. But in the end, the evidence is what prevails. Dogma simply cannot win in science if the evidence says otherwise.
To claim evolution theory is dogma and legitimate evidence is being ignored is a lie and in this case, maybe Ben Stein is lying for his Biblical God and not for Jesus, (I wouldn’t know), but the majority of the ID promoters are indeed lying about the scientific community for Jesus. There is no reason to think Mathis is lying for anything else.
Tuesday, 25 March 2008 at 22:16
Sorry, meant to post that on Dawkin’s page. Got mixed up while hyperlinking.
Tuesday, 25 March 2008 at 23:55
That’s OK; it’s a great piece of commentary.
Kristine (no last name), one of the people who saw the movie on Thursday night and sat through the question period reports that when one woman asked, “How can we pray for you?” the producer, Mark Mathis, got all excited and started talking about grassroots movements. So his own motivation includes religion.
Then there’s the detailed review of Expelled by Josh Timonen, which includes this:
Intelligent Design means Created by God
Let me draw attention to this: This film in no way attempts to distinguish God from Intelligent Design. They have apparently abandoned that tactic, and are now only targeting their religious base with this Big Science Conspiracy Theory. They move effortlessly from phrases about “an Intelligent Designer” to “God” or “a creator”.
Monday, 22 September 2008 at 05:09
Thanks a lot! You are on the right way!
Harald
Monday, 22 September 2008 at 07:04
I would like to rehabilitate posthume the german Prof.Dr.phil.Franz Stephan Griese!
His Book:
“The great Error of Christianity – proved by a Priest”
Editor: General Ludendorff Verlag GmbH, Muinich 19
Scientific pamphlet for all faculties of University
Prof.Dr.Franz Stephan Griese, University Buenos Aires, Arbgentina
http://www.monografias.com/trabajos25/desilusion-de-un-sacerdote/desilusion-de-un-sacerdote.shtml
His Book: “Desilusion of a Priest” 1932
He was born in Straelen/Germany 1889/12/26
Punished by the Pope’s Pius XI. Inquisition Tribunal 1938
without hearing his facts 14 year after leaving the church by himself in 1924!
Wednesday, 24 September 2008 at 11:42
Thanks! I will look it up. The latest outrage that is even worse is that the current pope drafted a letter in the 1960s that is still RC church policy, excommunicating any catholic who tells what they know about church personnel committing rape or other forms of sexual abuse on children or others.
That’s the church for you!
Saturday, 27 September 2008 at 04:43
Historical Letter of Prof.Dr.phil.Franz Stephan Griese to the Pope Pius XI. !
Mendoza, Arg, 15th of January 1933
Franz Griese presents compliments
to the Pope Pius XI.
Greetings
You allow me, Your Holiness my recently issued work in this way to transmit what I found to be useful and necessary, because I have written this book in the causes and reasons to point at that interest me, the former priest of the Catholic Church given that rock off my priestness and I turn apostate that religion.
Let Your Holiness not overlook the fact that my book is not only the teaching of the Church, especially the sacraments hitting rebutted, but also the unique person of Christ, whose prophecy of his early return it as inaccurate accused, even before the eyes of all the audience.
Therefore I wanted Your Holiness, as a defender of the faith by Excellentiam, watch whether the evidence refutes this book somehow so that neither the foundation of the church nor of the flock of believers suffer any harm.
I am ready, everything I have written before any arbitrary theologians of the Holy Chair to publicly defend when and where Your Holiness likes.
From this letter, which the next edition of my work is attached, I will through the newspapers the world get acquaint with.
Live well
Poste restante: Mendoza, Argentina Franz Griese