With the Expelled movie set to open across the United States in less than 24 hours, the latest uproar is a claim?/revelation? that the film used John Lennon’s Imagine without permission. Also, some stuff from The Killers.
Here’s the Wall Street Journal (but you must pay for most of it). Update: Here it is on Richard Dawkins’s site in full. Hat tip to Ethan below.
Huff Post columnist James Boyce holds forth here. And here’s a wealth of what may be information. (“Have some potato chips with your salt, for goodness sakes …”)
Tomorrow I will be in a blogger’s teleconference with Ben Stein and have written to ask that he address the accusation and the producers’ response that they only used a little bit of the music.
[(2008 04 18 1:43 EST) Update from the “Oh for Pete’s sake” department: The press conference has been cancelled. I phoned the agency, where the person at the desk knows nothing, except that she hasn’t heard that the film won’t open tonight. So for now I suppose it will. Legal action from the Yoko Own-o empire later, perhaps.
Quite honestly, at this point, I think the only important question re Expelled is whether the people it is intended to reach will go see it. That’s all any documentary can ever do. Later, I will write about the curious reviews appearing in legacy media, designed to reassure the materialist faithful that it is lies, all lies. Also, scattered handsful of people will apparently turn out to protest.
If I get time, I would like to write a cultural document about the sort of person who rousts himself out on a Friday night, wearing a tee shirt that demands, “On what day did God make the fossils?” (The day before yesterday, Pootsie, and if you are not buying a ticket, could we stand a little ways away from the booth? ) ]
For now I am wondering whether it was a publicity stunt to force the left blogosphere to write about the film.
You know, the old ad gimmick that if you hear something mentioned often enough, you end up buying it ….
Update April 18, 2008: I just received an e-mail from a correspondent, advising
I saw you discussing this on the article about “Expelled”, so here is what the head administrator over at the official Killers forum has just posted:
“I just spoke to the band’s manager, and adding to the confusion was the fact that they did authorize a project months ago with this request:
Quote:
“The film is a satirical documentary with an estimated running time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, exploring academic freedom in public schools and government institutions with actor, comedian, economist, Ben Stein as the spokesperson.” What they authorized was a documentary about “academic freedom in schools”, not the film that the producers produced.
They contacted the producers of the film to ask that the song be removed but it is too late. Unfortunately it was misrepresented to them when the request came through to use it. Add this band to a long line of people who were misled by the producers of this film.“
Absolutely fascinating! It sounds as though our correspondent does not think that academic freedom applies to those who disagree with her about the evidence from nature for the design of life. Thus the film really “isn’t” about academic freedom in the schools, you see. Academic freedom is freedom to spout the party line at all times and in all places. Remember that, folks.
In any event, if the Expelled team got permission, they got permission, so they are legally in the clear. (Note: Budget line item under expenses: Nuisance lawsuits – $???????)
Also, just up at Access Research Network: A look at Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder’s The Science of God
For the most part Schroeder would get along quite well with the design theorists (and he is in the Expelled film): Here’s why:
Introduction The Science of God – a Jewish physicist considers the design of the universe and life
One thing that struck me about The Science of God: is that Schroeder admits freely and with no sense of angst – back in 1997! – that there is very little evidence for Darwinian evolution as a cause of origin of species. Yet here we are in this 2008-2009 season of ridiculous Darwin hagiography, and on the very eve of the Expelled documentary on the suppression of scientists who favour design as an explanation.
Part One: Is the Darwin cult on the way out?
In fact, Schroeder argues, the real history of life is a guided evolution that occurs as a series of jumps:
“The statement Darwin repeats several times in Origin of Species,”natura non facit saltum” – that nature does not make jumps – is simply false. Transitional forms are totally absent from the fossil record at the basic level of phylum and rare if present at all in class. Only after basic body plans are well established are fossil transitions observed. Darwin would have been much closer to the truth had he written “natura solum facit saltum” – that nature only makes jumps. (page 10)
Indeed, he charges that Darwin knew this perfectly well.
Part Two: Schroeder as recovering multiverse faddist?
While it might be tempting to say that Schroeder “would obviously think this way because he is a devout Jew,” he reveals that, as an MIT alumnus, he was originally on the “adversary’s” team. That is, he had wanted the multiverse to be real, but he found that he couldn’t make it make sense. (p. 25). Instead, “… with each step forward in the unfolding mystery of the cosmos, a subtle yet pervading ingenuity, a contingency kept shining through, a contingency that joins all aspects of existence into a coherent unity. While this coherence does not prove the existence of a Designer, it does call out for interpretation.”
Part Three: Let there be light … and then time stands still
Schroeder addresses the six days of creation in a way that I had never heard before: Instead of concerning himself about whether the days were 24 hours or great ages, he points out that light (as in “Let there be light”), strictly speaking, is free from time. At the speed of light, no time is observed to pass. (page 53ff).
For example, suppose a supernova approaches the earth for 170 000 Earth years. It is finally visible after all that time. But for the light itself, no time has passed. “Light, you see,” Schroeder explains, “is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities.”
Part Four: Self-organization – not random, but according to a preordained program
Addressing the mystery of life’s origin, Schroeder opts for self-organization – but he does not mean by this that after eons of slow cooking, augmented by an occasional accidental stir, life just sort of organized itself. He entirely dismisses the idea that life could have started by chance (pp. 84-85). He argues that self-organization occurred in response to a recipe for life encoded into the nature of the universe.
Part Five: Non-humans with a human form? And what of the divine wisdom?
More controversial is Schroeder’s view that, despite their art works and their habit of burying their dead with grave goods, humans prior to about 6000 years ago were not human and did not have a soul. He argues that they are “Nonhuman creatures with a human morphology [body shape]” (page 140-41). I learned much from his close exegesis of the Hebrew Bible, but at this point, he suddenly lost me
But Schroeder’s central concept is still pretty close to intelligent design – especially his most important concept: The universe is constructed not of matter alone but of wisdom