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Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Nathan Frankowski, 2008)

Really, I can't believe it took the Right this long to come up with something like this. Probably because they don't have anyone as charismatic as the Left, but here we are. Ben Stein stars in a "documentary" about Creationism and "debunking" evolution. I await the sequel, which will finally dispel the myths of gravity, but until then, you can see the trailer on the official site:

Official Site w/ trailer and Ben Stein in shorts

Watching the trailer, it's clear they've done the same thing that TBN regularly does in their anti-Darwinist specials: find the craziest, most fringe God-hating evolutionists and present them as representing the intellectual Left. (EDIT: actually, according to Wikipedia, it looks like these individuals were quote-mined and taken out of context, and also told they were being interviewed for a film called Crossroads-- God I love hypocrisy) I look forward to the Right justifying this film and still decrying Michael Moore, since it looks to me like we'll be seeing a lot of the same tactics, only serving the other side now.

There was a time when I thought Ben Stein was a pretty cool, Stephen Toblowsky-esque character actor but his involvement in this time of crap makes him dead to me.

The title is kinda ironic. Science? What's that?

Antoine Doinel wrote:There was a time when I thought Ben Stein was a pretty cool, Stephen Toblowsky-esque character actor but his involvement in this time of crap makes him dead to me.

what about the fact that he was a speech writer for Nixon?

miless wrote:

Antoine Doinel wrote:There was a time when I thought Ben Stein was a pretty cool, Stephen Toblowsky-esque character actor but his involvement in this time of crap makes him dead to me.

what about the fact that he was a speech writer for Nixon?

Really? I had no idea. Ugh. What a creep.

That's speechwriter and apologist for Nixon.

Although you have to give Stein points for risking his credibility like this.

What credibility?

Does anyone remember the op-ed he wrote a couple years ago decrying the fact that the Oscars don't honor the best-attended films of the year and thus they're invalid? I mean, he was arguing in favor of giving Harry Potter and Michael Bay films non-technical Oscars. Aren't there more constructive ways to write off the Left than to argue that?

domino harvey wrote:Does anyone remember the op-ed he wrote a couple years ago decrying the fact that the Oscars don't honor the best-attended films of the year and thus they're invalid? I mean, he was arguing in favor of giving Harry Potter and Michael Bay films non-technical Oscars. Aren't there more constructive ways to write off the Left than to argue that?

I can't find where he argues that particular notion, but he did write this silly diatribe after last year's ceremony.

Jeff wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Does anyone remember the op-ed he wrote a couple years ago decrying the fact that the Oscars don't honor the best-attended films of the year and thus they're invalid? I mean, he was arguing in favor of giving Harry Potter and Michael Bay films non-technical Oscars. Aren't there more constructive ways to write off the Left than to argue that?

I can't find where he argues that particular notion, but he did write this silly diatribe after last year's ceremony.

You know what I did? My local community paper reprinted Stein's column and then ran their own that said the above, I accidentally mixed the two in my head-- although in my defense, what Stein did say is equally ridiculous.

As a Christian I think this must almost be more horrifying for me than for people who don't believe, because shit like this makes us look really bad. Not that I agree with any of it, I'm part of the Episcopalian Church which is at liberal as it comes.

I wrote:Although you have to give Stein points for risking his credibility like this.

For the record, I know I should have added a rimshot. In real life I probably would have done the sound effect.

Antoine Doinel wrote:There was a time when I thought Ben Stein was a pretty cool, Stephen Toblowsky-esque character actor but his involvement in this time of crap makes him dead to me.

I remember that era, too. He seemed to keep this stuff in better perspective, not letting it affect his regular commercial and film work, at least that I could see. He'd write the occasional Penthouse column about how Tricia Nixon was really swell (no, I am not making that up), but I always treated it like someone having a hobby I didn't particularly find interesting. Of late, he's gotten far more vocal and far more shrill.

His adamant refusal to acknowledge Nixon's Anti-Semitism has made him something of a joke, insofar as he wasn't already seen as one. He also accused Bob Woodward of making Deep Throat up, then when Felt was revealed, he denounced him and blamed the two of them for the Khmer Rouge.

domino harvey wrote:I look forward to the Right justifying this film and still decrying Michael Moore, since it looks to me like we'll be seeing a lot of the same tactics, only serving the other side now.

It's not exactly as though the right has ever had better tactics than Moore to begin with. I would say he was simply an inevitable response to the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

Sure he is.

Call me when Moore mocks greivously injured children and calls people braver than him cowards on the air.

I look forward to the rave review from Michael Medved.

Nerve infiltrates a screening at the CPAC conference in Washington.

Yet another reason why we need privatized schooling. This doesn't have to be a public issue at all. The wackos could send their wacko kids to wacko school. And everyone else could learn both macro- and micro-evolution with the processes of scientific method.

I post fairly regularly at the Richard Dawkins Forum, so I have seen my fair share of Creationism, Intelligent Design (ID) vs. Evolution, Natural Selection shit-flinging contests. I accept the Natural Selection theory as valid. It's a masterpiece of human deduction. Where the Creationists and ID people go wrong is in dealing with the physicalities of life. They ought to focus on the mind, as such and leave biology be. The Catholic Church would do well to finally open up about the use of magic mushrooms in the Near East in early Judaic times and at the time of Christ. The only card to play now is to say that there is more to "mind" than what we experience in our basic state of consciousness. Studies of dimethyltriptamine (DMT) are also now begining which may yield uncannily weird findings in the coming decades. But until then, the Christers are fighting on the wrong front, IMHO. I say these words as an atheist, of course. You can get rid of God, but not the ultra-complex weirdness of the universe and human mind.

Hey Person, can you elaborate a little more on the magic mushrooms in the Near East? That's the first I've ever heard of anything and my curiosity is piqued.

time to read:

Richard Dawkins crashes a screening.

PZ Myers' account (here and here) is pretty funny, if only for the fact that he got singled out while Richard Dawkins got through just fine, especially as they were there together, their seats were reserved, and everybody's IDs were checked on the way in.

domino harvey wrote:Really, I can't believe it took the Right this long to come up with something like this. Probably because they don't have anyone as charismatic as the Left, but here we are.

Only person who could vaguely be considered of the Right who is at all charismatic is Alex Jones, of Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly, and Loose Change fame.