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Expelled-the movie
Posted by: D ()
Date: May 02, 2008 08:48PM

Ben Stein's Expelled has opened in about 1000 theatres across America
. Have any seen it?

What is Expelled? Here's a short, 2-minute trailer (click on
this link to Expelled's web site, then click on the link for the new
Super Trailer: http://expelledthemovie.com/playground.php


Here's what Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis had to say about
the movie:


"I urge everyone not to miss Expelled. I found it riveting,
eye-opening, even astonishing. Ben Stein does a masterful job of
exposing the ruthlessness of evolutionists who will go after anyone
who challenges or merely questions Darwinian orthodoxy. I was on the
edge of my seat—entertained yet instructed."

Very Worthwhile Watch Link Below:

Here's a link to a short video made by Premise Video, the producers of
Expelled, on YouTube.com. If you have 7 minutes, I encourage you to
take a look at it, and then GO SEE THE MOVIE!!!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iV8sN1UngFY

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: Radiophile ()
Date: May 02, 2008 09:17PM

This has been discussed at great length already in the off topic forum.

But you would not know that because you are at best a schill for the marketing company for the movie or at worse, you actually believe in things no one even bothers to explain to you.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: D ()
Date: May 02, 2008 10:47PM

I believe in intelligent design and the freedom to investigate it. I think many are victims of group think. It's unfortunate that our children are taught to perpetuate this group think. I am not a shill but a believer in what seems the truth to me. Other parts of the country are more tollerent to diversity in this subject. I'm sorry I didn't see that this was discussed in another section.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: TheMeeper ()
Date: May 02, 2008 10:53PM

D Wrote:
>> I believe in intelligent design and the freedom to investigate it.


Well, Scientologists believe that an alien named Xenu brought billions of his people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs.

They too, believe in the freedom to investigate it.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: D ()
Date: May 02, 2008 11:07PM

Surly you can see the diffrence in the quality of the argument? For a substantial book questioning Darwinism I woulld refer you to Piars of Evolution

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: TheMeeper ()
Date: May 02, 2008 11:39PM

D Wrote:
>> Surly you can see the diffrence in the quality of the argument?


Not really.

On one hand you have aliens populating the planet, detonating nuclear weapons.

And on the other hand, you have people that were created from dust, that spoke to an evil serpent who convinced them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.


What qualitative difference are you speaking about?

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: Ben Stein's Money ()
Date: May 03, 2008 01:42AM

Is the "Tree of Knowledge" a secret code name for the International Baccalaureate program? Are the "dust people" the children RDed into SLHS from Fox Mill?

I am having trouble following this...

...and no one appears to be acting "surly" here--Shirley you meant to say "surely"!

TheMeeper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> D Wrote:
> >> Surly you can see the diffrence in the quality
> of the argument?
>
>
> Not really.
>
> On one hand you have aliens populating the planet,
> detonating nuclear weapons.
>
> And on the other hand, you have people that were
> created from dust, that spoke to an evil serpent
> who convinced them to eat from the Tree of
> Knowledge.
>
>
> What qualitative difference are you speaking
> about?

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: FUNdamental ()
Date: May 03, 2008 09:55AM

This guy said it best.

Rarely has a movie subtitle so capably assessed a movie’s content as does "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." There is not a shred of intelligence on display in this just released "documentary" purporting to be a careful examination of the fight over teaching creationism and evolution in America.

The movie seeks to explain why, as a matter of freedom of speech, intelligent design should be taught in America’s science classrooms and presented in America’s publicly funded science museums. But what is really on display in this film is a toxic mishmash of persecution fantasies, disconnected and inappropriate references to fallen communist regimes and their leaders and a very repugnant form of Holocaust denial from the monotone big mouth Ben Stein.


You may know Stein from his days a speech writer for Richard Nixon, the host of the comedy show, "Win Ben Stein’s Money," his appearances offering economic advice on many television programs or the commentaries he offers on Sundays on the "CBS Morning Show." What you may not know but most certainly cannot fail to realize by the time this film ends is that Stein has no understanding of science and is a proponent of a singularly despicable explanation of the cause of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Stein is so far gone in his hatred of evolution that when asking the flamboyant British atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins if he believes in any god he perseverates so long that it raises the suspicion that Mr. Stein is displaying the sort of repetitive behavior seen when zoo animals are kept caged up in small places for too long. Making this narrow, crimped mess of a movie may not have been good for his mental health.

We get a long running start toward irresponsibility early in the film in the form of case studies of persons supposedly fired from their jobs for subscribing to a belief in intelligent design. The movie implies that this is just the tip of a McCarthyesque cleansing of the faculty ranks by jack-booted Darwinians. In fact, in the few cases presented in the movie, the removal of faculty members seems more closely tied to their either wandering away from the subjects they were hired to teach or getting into subject areas outside their area of expertise. At most universities that I am familiar with, a belief in intelligent design would make you the object of gossip but hardly the target of dismissal.

What the heck is Intelligent Design anyway?
What is especially startling and monumentally deceptive is that the movie never bothers to tell us what Intelligent Design actually is. We hear cries of persecution but we don’t know why.

What is it that devotees of intelligent design believe that gets their colleagues in such a rage? Do they just want to invoke god as the starting point of the universe? Do they see god's hand in the design of every creature? Are they asking us to see the gods of every faith and tradition — those posited in Catholicism, Hinduism, Mormonism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Rastafarianism, etc. — in our DNA? Do they believe that competitive accounts of creation based on the Bible need to be in every American classroom? Do they see empirical proof of god in every molecule, plant, animal, rock, vegetable and fungus? "Expelled" never really tells us.

One suspects that sympathy for those portrayed in the movie as hapless pariahs might be reduced if the movie spent more time describing what it is this tiny handful of Ben Stein-proclaimed martyrs actually believe.

The definition of what science is and what should be taught as science in a world in which Asia and Europe are itching to clean our economic clocks by seeing us throw away our considerable lead in synthetic biology, genomics, agriculture and the biomedical, oceanographic, geological and energy sciences escapes Stein and his producers. This despite the fact they have ample time to regale us with all the documentary stylings involving old movies, public health messages and TV film clips that Michael Moore has already made stale. The failure to say what science is constitutes a huge failing in this cinematic cant.




Pitting science against religion
Science, by the very definition of the term, wants to invoke god or divine intervention as little as possible in seeking explanations for natural phenomena. Is that because, as "Expelled" suggests, scientists hate religion? No. Rather it is because the whole point of science is to press to see how far natural causes and mechanisms can go in explaining what is going on around us. There is not much room in science, although there is in history, religion, philosophy or sociology class, for jumping up and down and invoking god as the explanation of anything and everything. Could such an explanation be true? Sure. Is it science? Hardly. Does the movie get us anywhere close to understanding the difference? Not a bit.

Worse, those who embrace intelligent design — either the view that evidence of a designer’s hand can be found in living things or that the creationism of the Bible is a valid account of how we came to exist — have to behave as if these accounts are subject to empirical disproof. But, think about it, Ben. Is that any way to save religion? Isn’t the price of making faith into science and subject to empirical falsification heresy?

If you believe in god one hopes you are not going to give up that belief because of a geological discovery of a new type of rock or the identification of new oddball microorganism! Faith is faith. Those who would save faith by arguing that it is ultimately to be treated as a branch of science are recommending saving the patient by killing him. That is exactly what "Expelled" wants you to do. And that is why mainstream religion should ignore this film.



The movie’s faux tale of an evolutionist led Inquisition is followed by Stein interviewing a short parade of self-avowed atheists who also are fervent Darwinians as they mock intelligent design in particular and religion in general. They also look frumpy. As an antidote we get deep, sincere ruminations mainly from some monumentally pompous thinker no one has ever heard of who is nevertheless stylishly attired and living in a gorgeous apartment in Paris. He assures what is hopefully an increasingly irritated audience that god and science can live together in peace. They can but for no reasons ever articulated by this fellow or in this film.

Then, and most culpably in terms of the downright immorality of the movie and everyone associated with it, we are presented with what will happen if we keep teaching Darwinism in our schools. The logical consequence of Darwinism is Nazi eugenics: the state directed murder of the handicapped, mentally ill, political dissidents and racial "inferiors"!

No, I am not making this up. The core of the movie consists of a sequence in which Stein visits the former German psychiatric hospital at Hadamar where the mass sterilization and murder techniques were first perfected that were later to be used in the concentration camps. Then Ben heads to Dachau, the first concentration camp, where 35,000 people died. These excursions are followed by a visit to Down House, Charles Darwin’s country home outside of London where Ben looks warily at the memorabilia of Darwin’s scientific work that led him to posit the theory of evolution. Stein finishes this sequence by bravely visiting a statue of Darwin where he stares the long deceased now marbleized evil-doer down while making it clear who is directly to blame for Hitler, the sterilization of tens of thousands of German children, the death of 6 million Jews and the deaths of countless other millions of victims of Nazism and those who died fighting the Nazi regime.

This frighteningly immoral narrative is capped off with a lot of shots of the Berlin Wall, old stock footage of East German police kicking around those trying to escape through the wall to the West and some solemn blather by Ben, who calls upon each one of us to rise up in defense of freedom and knock down a few walls in order to get creationism back into the curriculum at Iowa State, Baylor, and other dens of American secular iniquity.

Why Darwinism doesn't equal Nazism
This is the core of what is ethically rotten about this movie. Darwinism did not lead to Nazism in Germany. Nor does Darwinism inherently contain the seeds of Nazism.

There were many nations, such as Brazil, where Darwinism led to no political ideology. There were some such as Britain which embraced Darwinism but saw a considerable number of their population killed trying to eliminate Nazism. There were other nations, such as the Soviet Union, where Darwinism was seen as so dangerous and subversive to state sponsored dreams of social engineering that those who espoused it were killed or exiled and a complete biological fairy tale, Lysenkoism, put into classrooms and agricultural policy ultimately leading to the deaths of millions from starvation.

And there were some nations where Darwinism was greeted with glee because it seemed so compatible with the prevailing ideology of the day. In particular the United States at the turn of the 20th century where robber-baron capitalists like the Carnegies, Mellons, Sumners, Stanfords and yes, even Jack London, could not stop rattling on about how the "survival of the fittest" justified crushing unions, exploiting immigrant labor or being left unregulated to amass huge fortunes while administering monopolies.

Ben Stein apparently understands none of this. He flags Darwin but does not bother to go and stare at the busts of Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, Thomas Malthus so much beloved by American proponents of survival of the fittest.

Worse yet, while frowning at Darwin’s statute in a manly fashion, Stein makes no mention of the key factors driving Nazi ideology — racism, homophobia and hatred of the mentally ill and disabled.

To lay blame for the Holocaust upon Charles Darwin is to engage in a form of Holocaust denial that should forever make Ben Stein the subject of scorn not because of his nudnik concern that evolution somehow undermines morality but because in this contemptible movie he is willing to subvert the key reason why the Holocaust took place — racism — to serve his own ideological end. Expelled indeed.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: D ()
Date: May 03, 2008 10:23AM

TheMeeper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> D Wrote:
> >> Surly you can see the difference in the quality
> of the argument?
>
>
> Not really.
>
> On one hand you have aliens populating the planet,
> detonating nuclear weapons.
>
> And on the other hand, you have people that were
> created from dust, that spoke to an evil serpent
> who convinced them to eat from the Tree of
> Knowledge.
>
>
> What qualitative difference are you speaking
> about?


Well one reason that comes to mind is interdependence. You can't have bees without flowers and visa versa. Birds migrate amazing distances, find food then fly back. If you look at anything in nature and study it you will see interdependence. This suggests to me and some others intelligent design as a logical possability.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: TheMeeper ()
Date: May 03, 2008 10:36AM

D Wrote:
>>This suggests to me and some others intelligent design as a logical possability.


Using a factual premise like bird migration to arrive at a moral conclusion like ID is not using logic in any form or fashion.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: Numbers ()
Date: May 03, 2008 10:43AM

D Wrote:

> Well one reason that comes to mind is
> interdependence. You can't have bees without
> flowers and visa versa. Birds migrate amazing
> distances, find food then fly back. If you look at
> anything in nature and study it you will see
> interdependence. This suggests to me and some
> others intelligent design as a logical
> possability.

ANYTHING is possible, but ID supporters we should just accept that all this is so far beyond our comprehension, that we shouldn't even bother trying to figure it all out. Hell, we'd still be back in the stone age if we didn't have folks trying to figure out the mysteries of the cosmos.

Intelligent design is just another term for "right wing christianity" which is the next most scary thing to Islam.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: D ()
Date: May 03, 2008 10:58AM

I think that's all some are asking. We don't want to be burned at the stake for looking at intelligent design as a possible explanation.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: WashingToneLocian ()
Date: May 03, 2008 11:17AM

D Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I believe in intelligent design and the freedom to
> investigate it. I think many are victims of group
> think. It's unfortunate that our children are
> taught to perpetuate this group think.

You mean like believing in God when pretty much everything we know points to the idea that God, as described in the Bible, doesn't exist?

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: WashingToneLocian ()
Date: May 03, 2008 11:22AM

D Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Surly you can see the diffrence in the quality of
> the argument? For a substantial book questioning
> Darwinism I woulld refer you to Piars of Evolution


I suggest you read The Origin of Species as well. Maybe if you actually bothered to understand Evolution you might learn to appreciate it.

My biggest problem with the ID crowd is when you hear things like peanut butter not having life or bananas being created to be like a Twinkie or cows turning into whales with a total disregard for facts, it is hard to give ID any credence whatsoever.

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: Rod ()
Date: May 03, 2008 12:31PM

When Charles Darwin published Origins of Species 1nn 1859 he admitted that the fossil record was a serious problem for his theory. He attributed their absence to "the imperfection of the geologic record."

He argued that that most organisms were never preserved or if preserved were subsequently destroyed so that "we have no right to expect to find in our geological formations an infinite number of these transitional forms which, on our theory, have connected all the past and present species of the same group into one long branching chain of life. We ought to look for a few links."

The above from chapter 8 of Icons of Evolution by Johathan Wells chapter 8.

There has been an effort to find some of these "missing links." but they are not missing links but missing chains. one of the links have been Archeaopteryx thought by Darwin to be the cross from lizards and birds. In 1982 Harvard neo Darwinist Ernst Mayr called the Archaeopteryx "the almost perfect link between reptiles and birds.

But later in 1985 Kansas Pathologists Larry Martin wrote" Archaeopteryx is not a ancestor of any group of modern birds. Instead it is"the earliest known member of a totally extinct group of birds." And then in 1996 paleontologist Mark Norell, of the Museam of Natural history in New York called Atchaaeopteryx "a very important fossil, but added most paleontologists now believe it is not a direct ancistor of modern birds.

Later in the chapter he mentions as an aside the Pithdown Man a fake in which a ancient human skull was combined with a modern orangutan It was not discovered as a fake until 1953.

My point is there are case after case of missing parts and whole chains to the theory of evolution and a case can b made by those who want to look for intelligent design.-Rod

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: Wrinkle ()
Date: May 03, 2008 01:08PM

Rod Wrote:
> My point is there are case after case of missing
> parts and whole chains to the theory of evolution
> and a case can b made by those who want to look
> for intelligent design.-Rod

Absolutely -- a case can certainly be made by those looking for ID. A case can be made for most anything. On that note, perhaps now is a good time to share the beliefs of my church with everyone and challenge you to prove that the following beliefs are wrong. (I'm paraphrasing from our church website here):

"I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease."

Full details are at http://www.venganza.org/ -- come join the Church of the FSM! Our religion is based on flimsy moral standards, every Friday is a religious holiday, and our heaven has a beer volcano and a stripper factory! ( http://www.venganza.org/images/spreadword/fsm_brochure2.pdf [pdf])
Attachments:
JoinFSM8x11_th.jpg
th_havetouched.jpg

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Re: Expelled-the movie
Posted by: WashingToneLocian ()
Date: May 03, 2008 07:31PM

Rod Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When Charles Darwin published Origins of Species
> 1nn 1859 he admitted that the fossil record was a
> serious problem for his theory. He attributed
> their absence to "the imperfection of the geologic
> record."
>
> He argued that that most organisms were never
> preserved or if preserved were subsequently
> destroyed so that "we have no right to expect to
> find in our geological formations an infinite
> number of these transitional forms which, on our
> theory, have connected all the past and present
> species of the same group into one long branching
> chain of life. We ought to look for a few links."
>
> The above from chapter 8 of Icons of Evolution by
> Johathan Wells chapter 8.
>
> There has been an effort to find some of these
> "missing links." but they are not missing links
> but missing chains. one of the links have been
> Archeaopteryx thought by Darwin to be the cross
> from lizards and birds. In 1982 Harvard neo
> Darwinist Ernst Mayr called the Archaeopteryx "the
> almost perfect link between reptiles and birds.
>
> But later in 1985 Kansas Pathologists Larry Martin
> wrote" Archaeopteryx is not a ancestor of any
> group of modern birds. Instead it is"the earliest
> known member of a totally extinct group of birds."
> And then in 1996 paleontologist Mark Norell, of
> the Museam of Natural history in New York called
> Atchaaeopteryx "a very important fossil, but
> added most paleontologists now believe it is not a
> direct ancistor of modern birds.
>
> Later in the chapter he mentions as an aside the
> Pithdown Man a fake in which a ancient human
> skull was combined with a modern orangutan It was
> not discovered as a fake until 1953.
>
> My point is there are case after case of missing
> parts and whole chains to the theory of evolution
> and a case can b made by those who want to look
> for intelligent design.-Rod

Rod-

99% of all species that have ever been on Earth have gone extinct. Many of those species, such as Neanderthals, are dead-ends. In addition, the process for creating fossils is so complicated that only an infinitesimally small percentage of the fossils that have been on this Earth have survived in the fossil record.

The fact is Darwin nailed this concern early on. Everything we have seen so far supports Darwin's original theory. In addition. the authenticity of Piltdown Man (not Pithdown) was doubted by many leading experts at the time. The fact is it ultimately did not stand up to scientific scrutiny - just like ID won't.

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