Monday, April 28, 2008

Expelled Gets Expunged

The Blue Collar Scientist blog has an excellent post that collects recent movie critic reviews of the creationist propaganda piece, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed":

I just did a quick google search on reviews of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and have come up with the following gems for your entertainment. And I have to say, my respect for movie reviews has gone up a lot in this process - not that I disrespected them before, but I did not have a lot of (ahem) faith that movie reviewers would be able to engage with the scientific issues as well as they have. In my searchings, I didn’t find any positive reviews that weren’t associated with religious or right-wing political publications - and then only two of those.


His collection of reviews is rather comprehensive, so go check it out. I'll quote just a few here:

The Star Tribune gives it one-half out of four stars:

According to “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” the source of all evil in the modern world is Darwinism, a philosophy that, the film posits, is responsible for everything from atheism to abortion, euthanasia to the Holocaust.

The New York Times leads with:

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

Mixing physical apples and metaphysical oranges at every turn “Expelled” is an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike. In its fudging, eliding and refusal to define terms, the movie proves that the only expulsion here is of reason itself.

From Time:

It’s in the film’s final third that it runs entirely off the rails as Stein argues that there is a clear line from Darwinism to euthanasia, abortion, eugenics and–wait for it–Nazism. Theories of natural selection, it’s claimed, were a necessary if not sufficient condition for Hitler’s killing machine to get started. The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human. We’ve always been a lustily fratricidal species, one that needed no Charles Darwin to goad us into millenniums of self-slaughter.

From the Colorado Springs Independent:

Nazis? It’s all about Nazis?

In a parallel universe even crazier than our own, Ben Stein, former Nixon speechwriter turned ironic symbol of the anti-hip, may be making a documentary about how the Nazis used the “controversial” theory of gravity to make bombs fall to earth — so, of course, the theory of gravity must be wrong. But we are here, and in this universe Ben Stein is actually telling us that because the Nazis thought it would be a good idea to breed people like animals, the theory of evolution must be wrong.

It’s nuttiness right from the opening moments of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Images of Nazi atrocities and the terrors of life behind the Berlin Wall are smugly deployed in an attempt to editorialize away basic scientific fact.

Expelled isn’t about “intelligent design,” about an alternative scientific theory, or even about academic freedom. It’s about Stein believing he has proven that acceptance of evolution leads to atheism (and also, we’re told, to such horrors as birth control). Hence, evolution cannot be allowed to be true. Even if it is.


Ouch. I was particularly tickled at the Colorado Springs Independent in where they pointed out that the Nazis also used the theory of gravity to drop bombs on people.

Anyway, if you want to find out why the "Hitler=Evolution" link is intellectually bankrupt, then you should definitely read my post, "Even the ADL [Anti Defamation League] Agrees its Bullshit," over at Goosing the Antithesis. It will give you an excellent logical argument to refute the ridiculous creationist claim that Hitler's genocidal campaign was in any way evolutionary, and instead show precisely how Hitler's final solution was thoroughly anti-competitive and anti-evolutionary.

6 comments:

Ojalanpoika said...

Stein is under heavy attack for exaggerating the influence of evolutionism behind Nazism and Stalinism (super evolution of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Russia). But the monstrous Haeckelian type of vulgar evolutionism drove not only the 'Politics-is-applied-biology' Nazi takeover in continental Europe, but also the nationalistic collision at the World War I. It was Charles Darwin himself, who praised and raised the monstrous Haeckel in the spotlight as the greatest authority in the field of human evolution, even in the preface to his Descent of man in 1871.

Darwin did not apply his revolutionary theory to the human beings until his Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871. This was after the ambitious Haeckel had firmly stepped
in the print, and the old Darwin paid hommage in his introduction:
"The conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other species… is not in any degree new… maintained by several eminent naturalists and philosophers… and especially by Häckel. This last naturalist, besides his great work
'Generelle Morphologie' (1866), has recently (1868, with a second edit. in 1870), published his 'Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte,' in which he fully discusses the genealogy of man. If this work had appeared before my essay
had been written, I should probably never have completed it. Almost all the conclusions at which I have arrived I find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge on many points is much fuller than mine."

I quote from my conference posters and articles defended and published in the field of bioethics and history of biology (and underline them a bit):
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Asian_Bioethics.pdf
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Haeckelianlegacy_ABC5.pdf

Race biological reason was not only rhetoric, it was scientific. There is evidence, that In Ukraine and Baltic countries, the people wellcomed the German troops as redeemers. These illusions evaporated soon, when the SS (Schutzstaffel) and civilian administration followed the field-army. Hitler did not even try to separate the Russian people from the Soviet government. The Eastern Europeans Slavic people were born "slaves", indeed. For Hitler, they were "Untermenschen" (Bullock 1958 pp- 423-5). The ethymology for the Greek "barbaros" was in their uncomprehensible tongue, the word was onomatopoetic.
BUT marriage laws were once erected not only in the Nazi Germany but also in the multicultural states of America upon the speculation that the mulatto was a relatively sterile and shortlived
hybrid. The absence of blood transfusion between "white" and "colored races" was self evident (Hailer 1963, p. 52).

The first law on sterilization in US had been established in 1907 in Indiana, and 23 similar laws had been passed in 15 States and sterilization was practiced in 124 institutions in 1921 (Mattila 1996; Hietala 1985 p. 133; these were the times of IQ-tests under Gould's scrutiny in his Mismeasure of Man 1981). By 1931 thirty states had passed sterization laws in the US (Reilly 1991, p. 87).

So the American laws were pioneering endeavours. In Europe Denmark passed the first sterilization legislation in Europe (1929). Denmark was followed by Switzerland, Germany that had felt to the hands of Hitler and Gobineu, and other Nordic countries: Norway (1934), Sweden (1935), Finland (1935), and Iceland (1938) (Haller 1963, pp 21-57; 135-9; Proctor 1988, p. 97; Reilly 1991, p. 109). Seldom is it mentioned in the popular Finnish media, that the first outright race biological institution in the world was not established in Germany but in 1921 in Uppsala, Sweden (Hietala 1985, pp. 109). (I am not aware of the ethymology of the 'Up' of the ancient city from Plinius' Ultima Thule, however.) In 1907 the Society for Racial Hygiene in Germany had changed its name to the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, and in 1910 Swedish Society for Eugenics (Sällskap för Rashygien) had become its first foreign affiliate (Proctor 1988, p. 17).

Hitler's formulation of the differences between the human races was affected by the brilliant sky-blue eyed Ernst Haeckel (Gasman 1971, p. xxii), praised and raised by Darwin. At the top of the unilinear progression
were usually the "Nordics", a tall race of blue-eyed blonds. Haeckel's position on the Jewish question was assimilation, not yet an open elimination. But was it different only in degree, rather than kind?

In 1917 the immigration of "defective" groups was forbidden even in the United States by a law. In 1921 the European immigration was diminished to 3% based on the 1910 census.
Eventually, in the strategical year of 1924 the finest hour of eugenics had come and the fatal law was passed by Congress. It diminished immigration to 2% of the foreign-born from each country
based on the 1890 census in order to preserve the "nordic" balance in population, and was hold through World War II until 1965 (Hietala 1985, p. 132).

Richard Lewontin writes:“The leading American idealogue of the innate mental inferiority of the working class was, however, H.H. Goddard, a pioneer of the mental testing movement, the discoverer of the Kallikak family,
and the administrant of IQ-tests to immigrants that found 83 % of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the the Russians to be feebleminded.” (1977, p. 13.) Finnish emmigrants put the cross on the box reserved for the "yellow" group (Kemiläinen 1993, p. 1930), until 1965.

Germany was the most scientifically and culturally advanced nation of the world upon opening the riddles at the close of the nineteenth century, and in 1933 the German people had not lived normal life for twenty years. And so Adolf Hitler did not need his revolution. He did not have to break the laws in Haeckel's country, in principle, but to constitute them.
Today, developmental biologists are anticipating legislation of laws that would define the do’s and dont’s. The legislation should not distract individual researchers from their personal awareness of responsibility. A permissive law merely defines the ethical minimum. The lesson is that a law is no substitute for morals and that dissidents should not be intimidated.

I am suspicious over the burial of the Kampf (Struggle). The idea of competition is innate in the modern society. It is the the opposite view in a 180 degree angle to the Judaeo-Christian ideal of agapee, that I personally cheriss. The latter sees free giving, altruism, benevolence and self sacrificing love as the beginning, motivation, and sustainer of the reality.

pauli.ojala@gmail.com
Biochemist, drop-out (Master of Sciing)
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-ID.htm

Wes Davis said...

Yeah. wesdavisblog.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

http://thomashawk.com/hello/209/1017/1024/Johnny%20Cash%20Finger.jpg

And PZ, you self-deluded insignificant NUTCASE...

the ORIGINAL *KING OF TERROR* VIDEO.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGsOqPDkIZY


the *MODEL* of mental health:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zBEbfiaZTfc

"Look at the ANGLE OF THE KEY....see that, see that...."

what an idiot this Randi is.....a REAL CRITICAL THINKER....


Visit:

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/3283/P0/

to see how we stopped James Randi's fraudulent MILLION DOLLAR PARANORMAL challenge.....

watch carefully the consequences of Randi's *idea*.....

For over 40 years James Randi Zwigert (is this even a REAL NAME?) has had total control over who and how the testing was conducted, yet despite all this he has terminated the challenge.

The ONLY REASON why the challenge was stopped is because he lost and refused to pay.

Apparently, Randi likes to break the rules when it serves him:


"14. This prize will continue to be offered until it is awarded. Upon the death of James Randi, the administration of the prize will pass into other hands, and it is intended that it continue in force. "

Great force.....it's over......

where is my MILLION DOLLARS, you LITTLE *NO-NAME* FRAUD


PS: Almost Forgot: Love the IRONY of the *BULLSHIT* sign over Randi's ugly head....

breakerslion said...

Listen carefully 'cause I'm not going to do this again.

Darwin wrote his first notes leading up to the Origin of the Species" while on a ship (H.M.S. Beagle).

Darwin is related to King Henry I.

Henry I is also the name of a play by William Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare Might have been Frances Bacon

Kevin Bacon played Ensign Pulver, a man on a ship during WWII.

WWII was started when Hitler invaded Poland.

Therfore, Darwin = Hitler. Six degrees of separation, man! Oh yeah, and domestic pigs were one of the first animals created by Unnatural Selection, and we get bacon from pigs and Jews don't eat it. You see? YOU SEE? You see how it all fits together????

Eugenics predates Darwin, you ID blockheads! What's in a name? Shakespeare again! Aha! Now it all makes sense!

Anonymous said...

Why are you people reading this blog when you are opposed to the whole point of it? And then typing up replies that have nothing to do with the original posting.

Anonymous said...

FINAL DRAFT FOR WORLD-WIDE CIRCULATION:

now with EMBEDDED VIDEOS!

please FWD all appreciations to randi@randi.org and
richard.dawkins@oum.ox.ac.uk and myersp@morris.umn.edu



SEE HOW WE CAUSED THE PRESIDENT OF AMERICAN ATHEISTS, ELLEN JOHNSON,
TO QUIT HER JOB AND STOPPED RANDI'S MILLION DOLLAR PARANORMAL
CHALLENGE:

for randi & dawkins and all the so-called "critical thinkers"

the ORIGINAL *KING OF TERROR* VIDEO.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGsOqPDkIZY

the *MODEL* of mental health:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zBEbfiaZTfc

"Look at the ANGLE OF THE KEY....see that, see that...."

what an idiot this Randi is.....a REAL CRITICAL THINKER....

Visit:

http://nostradamus-usa.netfirms.com

to see how we stopped the MILLION DOLLAR PARANORMAL challenge.....
watch carefully the consequences of Randi's *idea*.....

For over 40 years James Randi Zwigert (is this even a REAL NAME?) has
had total control over who and how the testing was conducted, yet
despite all this he has terminated the challenge.

The ONLY REASON why the challenge was stopped is because he lost and
refused to pay.
Apparently, Randi likes to break the rules when it serves him:

"14. This prize will continue to be offered until it is awarded. Upon
the death of James Randi, the administration of the prize will pass
into other hands, and it is intended that it continue in force. "

Great force.....it's over......

where is my MILLION DOLLARS, you LITTLE *NO-NAME* FRAUD
PS: Almost Forgot: Love the IRONY of the *BULLSHIT* sign over Randi's
ugly head....