Dennis Wagner posted the following at ARN (go here). I post it at UD with his permission. He offers useful advice on how to get EXPELLED (www.expelledthemovie.com) into the local theaters this April. Get Expelled Now!!! The Expelled Challenge By Dennis Wagner ARN Executive Director Several of you have inquired if Expelled will be showing at your local theater when it is released in April. The answer is only YOU can know for sure. The producers don’t have a lot of say about which theaters pick up their movie. Theaters chains and local theater managers schedule their movies based on perceived demand and interest in their community. So if you want to see this powerful documentary in your favorite theater, Read More ›

It has come to my attention that people are already blaming the recent tornado outbreak on global warming. Senator John Kerry is among those persons. Sen. Kerry Blames Tornados on Global Warming Former Democratic presidential nominee blames ‘intense storms’ that have killed more than 50 on climate change. By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute 2/6/2008 5:07:05 PM Politicians using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a tried-and-true strategy. Paint the idea green and a natural catastrophe became political fodder for former Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.). Kerry appeared on MSNBC on February 6 to discuss storms that have killed at least 50 people throughout the Southeastern United States. So, of course, Kerry used the platform to Read More ›

In this Denyse O’Leary UD thread I included a quote from David Berlinski’s infamous The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski video interview.

I thought UD readers might enjoy some of his other comments on various science and Dawinism topics.

On science as a self-critical enterprise:

The idea that science is a uniquely self-critical institution is of course preposterous. Scientists are no more self-critical than anyone else. They hate to be criticized… Look, these people are only human, they hate criticism — me too. The idea that scientists are absolutely eager to be beaten up is one of the myths put out by scientists, and it works splendidly so they can avoid criticism.

We’re asking for standards of behavior that would be wonderful to expect but that no serious man does expect. A hundred years of fraudulent drawings suggesting embryological affinities that don’t exist — that’s just what I would expect if biologists were struggling to maintain a position of power in a secular democratic society. Let’s be reasonable… the popular myth of science as a uniquely self-critical institution, and scientists as men who would rather be consumed at the stake rather than fudge their data, is okay for a PBS special, but that’s not the real world; that’s not what’s taking place…

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This sort of behavior from Dawkins cannot withstand the light of day. “Sheldrake Exposes Dawkins as Fundamentalist Pseudoskeptic” In a commentary on his website, biologist Rupert Sheldrake recounts his experience in — almost — appearing in The Enemies of Reason, a British documentary written by well-known biologist and public advocate for atheism Richard Dawkins. He describes how he was recruited to appear in the documentary with promises that there would be an opportunity for scientific discussion. But when he tried to engage in such a discussion, both Dawkins and they director made it clear that they were not interested in discussing evidence. The TV programme was intended to debunk, not give a fair view of the scientific evidence: “Richard seemed Read More ›

One of my favorite sources for “just so” stories in organic evolution is metamorphosis. Consider: when a caterpillar matures and forms a chrysalis, the caterpillar’s body almost completely dissolves into a yellow mush which then serves as a source for raw materials to reform into a butterfly. I wonder how that scenario came about through mutation and selection. How would destroying almost the entire body and reforming into something that, by morphology alone would be a very different species, come about by Darwinian gradualism? Where’s the selection value in a partially decomposed body? Surely the process could not have evolved in one fell swoop. What series of gradual transitions make sense in light of chance & necessity?

This is something I’d pay to see. John Davison received his PhD in biology before Myers was born. Ironically he received it from the same university Myers teaches at today. Unless one counts the decades more experience Davison has as a professor of biology (University of Vermont) then they appear to be evenly matched. We’ll understand if Myers is intimidated by Davison’s greater experience and chickens out. Davison makes the challenge here at the bottom of the page. I would love to confront him anywhere, with or without his equally deranged cronies – Dawkins and Hitchens. It would be a rout! I can’t even goad them into recognizing my existence. Myers is a cowardly victim, a “prescribed” vendor of hate, Read More ›

Recently, I posted an interview with Expelled producer Mark Mathis at The Design of Life blog, in which we discussed the claim that the film misrepresented the Darwinists: DESIGN OF LIFE: You interviewed 150 scientists for your film. I wonder if that’s a record. I gather an effort has been made to discredit the film on the grounds that the anti-ID folk were misrepresented, basically that you tricked them into taking part. MATHIS: It’s not surprising. When you’re used to a situation where everything that is talked about in books and films fits your dogmatic view – and that’s what they’ve had – and then a film comes along that applies some actual skepticism, naturally they’re unhappy. They had the Read More ›

Well, whether it is or not, that’s where it is going, in April, when the Expelled film opens.

DESIGN OF LIFE: You interviewed 150 scientists for your film. I wonder if that’s a record. I gather an effort has been made to discredit the film on the grounds that the anti-ID folk were misrepresented, basically that you tricked them into taking part.

MATHIS: … But they’ve become very used to only one side. Apparently they didn’t understand that we were really going to do just what we said we were going to do.  

Part One: Intelligent design hits Hollywood in April. Will Hollywood hit back?

Part Two: Questions? Real journalists ask no questions!

Part Three: Doubts? Real scientists never have doubts!

Since I’m here anyway, and so are you:

Today at the Mindful Hack

Belief in free will keeps us honest

Fearful universities: Why be afraid of the thinking mind?

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The lesson is this: The myth of invincibility is just that — a myth. Also bear in mind that Darwinism’s record isn’t nearly as good as the New England Patriots’ going into Super Bowl XLII.

I’ve been informed that the peanut gallery (Panda’s Thumb) is accusing me of covering something up for deleting my very brief post about the Simmons/Myers debate. I made the posting a few hours before the debate and included a hotlink so people could listen to it live. I’d intended at the time of writing to remove it after the debate was over as the live link would no longer be working. UD author Doctor David A. Cook had a more in depth article that included the same live link. No coverup. Here’s the link to the archived debate. A link to the archive is also in DA Cook’s orginal post. Simmons vs. Myers Debate

Looking at the big picture over the past seven years (when I first started to take the intelligent design controversy seriously), one item stands out: The behaviour of the promoters of Darwinian evolution.

It is exactly what one might predict of people who think they don’t have a good case.

First, they suppress alternative cases, as I wrote earlier, as follows: Read More ›

Two interesting articles in the Southern Baptist Texan about Ben Stein’s EXPELLED:

Baptist Professors Featured in New Film
Written by Jerry Pierce | Managing Editor
Posted Monday, January 28, 2008

DALLAS­ — Two professors with ties to Baptist higher education are featured in an upcoming big-screen documentary that aims to expose the scientific establishment’s scorn toward academics who question Darwinian evolution.

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is scheduled for theaters in April and stars comedic actor and conservative activist Ben Stein as he travels the world interviewing intelligent design (ID) proponents whose careers have been threatened, as well as prominent neo-Darwinists who hold ID in contempt, including Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling book “The God Delusion.”

A rough cut of the film, screened Jan. 10 in Dallas, featured interviews with William Dembski, a research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leading ID proponent whose books include “The Design Inference” and “No Free Lunch,” and Robert Marks, who holds the title of distinguished professor of engineering at Baylor University.

Marks is a co-laborer of Dembski’s whose ID research raised the ire of Baylor’s administration last year.

Dembski’s trials at Baylor from 1999-2005 are not documented in the film­among other things, he drew the wrath of the science, philosophy and religion departments early in his tenure there when it was learned that he was heading up an ID think tank on campus­but Dembski appears several times on screen as an ID apologist.

Dembski told the Southern Baptist TEXAN that those who most need to see the movie are “parents of children in high school or college, as well as those children themselves, who may think that the biological sciences are a dispassionate search for truth about life but many of whose practitioners see biology, especially evolutionary biology, as an ideological weapon to destroy faith in God.” Read More ›

Do our beliefs about free will change our behavior? It seems they do. Here researchers primed some subjects to believe that our behavior is wholly determined by environment and genes, and that free will is a myth. (This is a theme of Dawkins who says that punishing a criminal is like kicking your car when it breaks down) Those subjects acted less ethically than those not primed. Beliefs influence behavior. What would a similar experiment show if the belief challenged was that there is Design behind the universe and life? Do people act the same after reading and believing “The God Delusion”? None of this addresses the actual truth of the belief, just whether believing it changes behavior. Fascinating!

NASA, the NY Times and most intelligent human beings apparently believe that it is possible to communicate across space – i.e., to detect signals that can be distinguished from natural causes and “noise”, which give evidence of other intelligent beings! e.g., Beatles songs vs quasar pulses and lightning pulses. ——————– NASA Says, ‘Hello, Universe. Meet the Beatles.’ By Patrick J. Lyons NY Times February 1, 2008, 4:47 pm . . . NASA will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first space mission — the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite — by using the system of huge antennas that usually listen for inbound signals from space to send one outbound instead: the Beatles’ song “Across the Universe,” which as Read More ›

  Former President Theodore Roosevelt, a man known for his typically frank-spoken style (a trait no doubt imbued from his Dutch Reformed roots) and who knew bad science as readily as he knew bad theology when he saw it, made bare the malignant social cancers of the modern age.  As the nation goes to select a new chief executive we should all look for the candor and insightfulness of the 26th President as shown below . . . __________ “There is superstition in science quite as much as there is superstition in theology, and it is all the more dangerous because those suffering from it are profoundly convinced that they are freeing themselves from all superstition.  No grotesque repulsiveness of medieval superstition, even as it survived into nineteenth-century Spain Read More ›