First straw flies past: The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is playing the “religion” card, of course:
… the statement noted, more than 11,000 Christian leaders in the United States have signed a letter affirming that evolution does not conflict with religious faith. The United Church of Christ recently sent out a pastoral letter expressing a similar position. Evolution “is based on a diverse and robust body of physical evidence, from fossilized bones to radiometric measurements of the ages of the Earth’s rocks,” the statement says. But the movie, by conveying misinformation about science and researchers, seeks to force religious viewpoints into science class …
AAAS’s PR people think that today’s serious Christians are stupid. That we haven’t seen the film, don’t know that the key issue it raises is intellectual integrity, and don’t even know that their tame clergy are, for the most part, the phantoms of a discredited liberalism – haunting churches awaiting rapture into condos.
Second straw: If AAAS is the large event, here’s a small one: A reader wrote me last night wanting to know what I thought of the fact that Expelled had flopped at the box office.
Much surprised, I wrote back, pointing out,
Expelled is # 5 in all recorded political documentaries, grossing Domestic Total as of May 18, 2008: $7,486,000 (Estimate)
Here’s the list of the documentaries, including those released this year, of which Expelled is doing by far the best.
I asked in what sense my correspondent (who was delighted by the prospect, I suspect) thought that the film had flopped. He wrote back to say that (1) it hadn’t done well in his neck of the woods and (2) that it wasn’t doing as well as Michael Moore’s documentaries.
Moore, of course, practically defined the art, so it’s not surprising that his films would lead. Still, if we look at the list of all documentaries tracked by Box Office Mojo, Moore’s Roger and Me did not make as much in 19 years as Expelled made in a couple of weeks. But, in fairness to Moore, he was starting from behind back in 1989 because the genre was new. So we can’t really count that.
1 | Fahrenheit 9/11 | Lions | $119,194,771 | 2,011 | $23,920,637 | 868 | 6/23/04 |
2 | Sicko | LGF | $24,540,079 | 1,117 | $68,969 | 1 | 6/22/07 |
3 | An Inconvenient Truth | ParC | $24,146,161 | 587 | $281,330 | 4 | 5/24/06 |
4 | Bowling for Columbine | UA | $21,576,018 | 248 | $209,148 | 8 | 10/11/02 |
5 | Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed | RM | $7,486,000 | 1,052 | $2,970,848 | 1,052 | 4/18/08 |
6 | Roger and Me | WB | $6,706,368 | 265 | $80,253 | 4 | 12/22/89 |
The more recent films that grossed better are between about one and six years old, and Expelled‘s run has been measured only in weeks. So this is failure?
Still, don’t be surprised to hear your local Bible school’s biology drone announcing to the Daily Yawnicle that Expelled is “doing a lot of harm in the Christian community, causing students to doubt science and to question their faith” – just about the worst things he can imagine, I suppose.
Third straw before I stopped noticing: ID basher Larry Arnhart pretends to read some sinister significance into the fact that Michael Behe isn’t in the Expelled film.
I wonder if ID bashers are hoping that readers will not realize that Behe WASN’T expelled. He still has his lab and his job as a biochemistry prof at Lehigh (that’s not the ID bashers’ fault, you may be sure).
Behe’s first book, Darwin’s Black Box, came out in 1996 (Free Press). At that time, it was still safe for the Darwin mob to portray a scientist who knows that Darwinism is a crock – and is actually willing to admit it – as a tenured crank who could be attacked, then ignored. Later, when the bad news grew in volume, they knew better. They had to start Expelling even high profile doubters. Hence the film.
So now what? Well, with Edge of Evolution, Behe has written another powerful book, but it is only one of many available. So it is safest for the Lehigh Darwinbots to either buy him out or wait him out until retirement, rather than give him reason to appear in Expelled.
Case in point: When Baylor decided to roughhouse Bob Marks while Expelled was being shot, Baylor ended up as one of the film’s locations.
Today, even people who say that they hate the ID guys are starting to publish seriously on Darwin’s Blank Crocks. So expanding the Expelled strategy might not be a smart move. Anyway, stay tuned.
There, Larry, is that so hard to understand?
Since we are here anyway, here’s an truly reliable and unbiased account of evolution from the Simpsons.
Just up at the Overwhelming Evidence blog
Physicist: Darwin’s theory of evolution supported in part from “calculated fear” A remarkable admission in light of all the bilge currently fronted by tax-supported science organizations, assuring us that the Expelled film is wrong, wrong, wrong and that no such thing is going on.
Expelled scientist Crocker featured in video just up online
Iowa State University
cops “Outrage Award” for denying tenure to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez
Brit pop science rag all wet about Biologic Institute
Vatican astronomer: Yes, space aliens might exist
Error-prone science textbooks: Who’s to blame? Not me, says, the little red editor ….