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Documentary Film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” Screening and Debate at Imperial College, London

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A debate which took place last month at the Imperial College of London concerning the documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (following a screening of the film) is available for your perusal here.

Film Screening and Debate Details:

“Unbelievable?”, a  Premier Christian Radio program (hosted by Justin Brierly), screened the film at Imperial College London, February, 2010.

Participants:

Against the film: Atheist Prof Susan Blackmore (Psychology, Plymouth) & Theistic evolutionist Prof Keith Fox (Biology, Southampton). For the film: Prof Steve Fuller (Sociology, Warwick) & Dr. Alastair Noble (Former Inspector of Schools). Panellists on both sides of the ID debate give their reactions to the film’s claims that scientists are not free to question Darwinian evolution and the link the film makes between Nazi Eugenics and evolutionary theory. Followed by Q&A from the audience.

Comments
The thing about these debates is that they are really sadly only pseudo debates. The ID side is correct and the opposition is just plain flat out wrong- and the confusion of the other side is really just their attempt to misrepresent reality and the subject matter. The best thing IDists can do when debating those against ID- is to stick to the truth and facts and not get caught up in platonic arguments DESIGNED to go nowhere like "who designed the designer" or "what if everything was designed"- or "ID is creationism" etc because these discussions only divert the truth and reality of the discussion away from substance and towards metaphysical standstills which have nothing to do with science or the real controversy and debate at hand. Then after stating the facts at the on set and sticking to the truth the strategy should be to point out how the opposition is diverting the debate away from the fundamental questions of the origin of complex specified information - and away from the sensible skepticism of Neo Darwinism- and onto pointless political talking points. I think when you cannot get passed a politically motivated propaganda campaign then you need to just call it out for what it is and attack the veracity of it's inquires and statements. That is, not attack the person but the nature of their messages and talking points. Because ID is not a science stopper at all- it is not creationism at all- it IS scientifically fruitful- it is rational- it is not religion- it has nothing to do with metaphysical speculation regarding who may have somehow designed an inferred designer that we do not know the specific nature thereof- and the fact that everything may be designed is superfluous because "so what" it is still useful to differentiate between what things are designed by what kind of processes- and when material ones fail to be adequate enough as is the case with the origin of the first life and the information code in DNA- then it is useful to infer an intelligent agent played a role in it's origin- according to the logistics of abduction and naturalistic reasoning. It is no wonder Dawkins wont debate Meyer- and incidentally says the reason why is because Meyer is a creationist (of course) and that he does not debate creationists. But it makes sense for a money loving, booking writing pseudo intellectual like him - because who in their right mind wants to bring a knife to a gun fight anyways?Frost122585
March 25, 2010
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I second that. I listened not only to the debate, but to the program afterward, and I have to tell you, I wish there was a program like that here in the US. On to the debate. Susan Blackmore is simply confused. She apparently did not do her homework prior to this debate (panel) and it showed. Not only did she show little knowledge of ID's claims, she clearly demonstrated that she went in not wanting to like the film in the first place. Although I will give her this much, she seemed a little less dogmatic than the likes of PZ Meyers and Richard Dawkins. I thought that both Steve Fuller and Alastair Noble did a tremendous service in demonstrating that the film is not so much about the truth claims of ID against the truth claims of ToE, rather, the impenetrable separation between the two ideas, which has been forced on the ("non-") debate by those of the majority view. They stressed this point quite well, and the other side really did not have an answer, and ended somewhat agreeing. Another observation - People in the audience seemed to know more about ID than the panelists for the other side. Now we need to get Richard Dawkins to debate Stephen Meyer.CannuckianYankee
March 25, 2010
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Premier Christian Radio and Justin Brierly are superb.GilDodgen
March 25, 2010
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