Oh, the sweet haplessness of the Expelled PR machine!I just found this email, reported on Thoughts in A Haystack. It reads:
This Friday, April 18th, is FREEDOM FRIDAY!
You will no longer have to live in fear of the Darwinian Thought Police and their power to ruin your career! They are about to be ‘publicly exposed’ by the new documentary movie, “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed”!
“EXPELLED,” starring Ben Stein, is opening in 1,000 theaters nationwide. Smart students and their parents can’t wait to see it! They have all heard the Darwinists’ side in the debate over origins. Now they will determine if the Darwinists have acted properly by censoring the scientific data and evidence from students, teachers and parents that opposes Darwinian evolution and points to the reality of God!
"FREEDOM FRIDAY?" Seriously, how far removed from the "reality-based community" do you have to be to miss the irony in the expression "Freedom Friday", for its uncanny resemblance with another idiotic slogan, "Freedom Fries", which kinda backfired on its creators once it was evident that the French were right, and they were wrong?
The Darwinian Thought Police? Is that the modern day equivalent of the Copernican/Galilean Thought Police?
The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's opposition to this view resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting the advocacy of heliocentrism as potentially factual, because that theory had no decisive proof and was contrary to the literal meaning of Scripture.
Sounds familiar? There is a certain continuity throughout history in the views and the tactics of religious ignoramuses and proponents of sacred, anti-intellectual fantasies, isn't there?
But the tactics have now been flipped by proponents of Intelligent Design, as they try to make their pathetically weak case that they are the ones being persecuted by the godless scientific establishment. To this end, they parade the self-avowed atheist scientists Richard Dawkind and PZ Myers on screen, whom they deceived into participating, then they intersperse images of Nazi salutes and Stalinist purges with their disingenuously edited statements, all the while while omitting to represent the views of people like Ken Miller, Francis S Collins and Francis Ayala, just to mention three very well known religious scientists who fully support evolution.
These delusional ID supporters claim that "Darwinist" "ignoranticist elitists" [sic] are trying to censor "the scientific data and evidence [...] that opposes Darwinian evolution and points to the reality of God", in spite of the fact that their hick-flick offers factually incorrect data in support of the alleged censorship and no evidence pointing to the reality of God. They do this while sweeping under religion's rug real evidence of the suppression of dissenting views and of silencing anything which conflicts with the fantastic drivel that fills sacred texts (much more drivel-ly when taken literally than allegorically) .
Also, a short review, sweet and to the point, from the "ignorant elitists" at the NY Times, and an article that highlights some of the dishonest tactics employed in this hick-flick.
Every day gives us new reasons for bewilderment.
2 comments:
Don't have time to comment. I'm off to see the hick flick.
Ah, Jeff, my reader!
I hope you endure the experience. You do not write or think like a hick, so I guess you think the label of open-minded justifies seeing the movie for yourself and rewarding the makers with $10 of your hard-earned money, in spite of all the evidence in the blogosphere that points to a hit-job.
By the way, hack-flick would work just as well.
Regards, my worthy adversary.
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