Help Talk Origins bid for "Expelled"?

The assets of Premise Media, including rights to "Expelled," are going up for auction.  The Talk Origins Foundation plans to bid for the film, which includes production materials.  Their stated plan seems to be just to determine what interesting information might be in the production materials or raw footage and make that known, not, as I've suggested, make an "MST3K"-style version, or a version that points out and corrects the errors.

UPDATE (June 28, 2011): The winning bid for "Expelled" was $201,000.  My guess is that the film would only be worth that much to somebody who plans to promote it as-is without any significant re-editing, and thinks they can extract at least that much value out of it--perhaps via charitable deduction by giving it to a creationist organization.  There was a bidding war at the end between two bidders that drove the price up this morning from $43,000 (last night's high bid) to $201,000, which caused the bid to be extended 10 minutes beyond it's scheduled end time in one or two minute extension increments.  It was at $122,000 at the original auction end time, so that last $79,000 increase occurred in the last 10 minutes.

Expelled up for auction

Premise Media Holdings LP is in bankruptcy, and its assets are going up for auction online between June 23 and 28.  Those assets include the film "Expelled."  Perhaps a few of us should get together and buy it, and reissue it in a "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" format?

UPDATE:  As Damian Howard and Bob Vogel pointed out on Facebook, this adds financial bankruptcy to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the film.

Roger Ebert reviews Expelled

In what may be the most entertaining review of "Expelled" yet, Roger Ebert gives Ben Stein what for in the Chicago Sun Times:

This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.

And there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it "From Darwin to Hitler." He finds a Creationist who informs him, "Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism." He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary forced sterilization in our country has been promoted mostly by racists, who curiously found many times more blacks than whites suitable for such treatment.

Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one "result" of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. "As a Jew," he says, "I wanted to see for myself." We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. "It's difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place," he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.

Guillermo Gonzalez' new school

Guillermo Gonzalez, one of the proclaimed victims of oppression and infringement of his academic freedom in the film "Expelled," has taken a job at Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. The school has been under censure by the American Association of University Professors since 1963 for its failure to respect academic freedom. A report by the AAUP Investigative Committee concluded "the absence of due process [in the dismissal of professors at Grove City] raises...doubts regarding the academic security of any persons who may hold appointment at Grove City College under existing administrative practice. These doubts are of an order of magnitude which obliges us to report them to the academic profession at large."

More at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

"Expelled" producers win round one on "Imagine" lawsuit

In a decision issued today, the judge in the case of Yoko Ono against Premise Media ruled against Ono's motion for an injunction against the film, on the grounds that Premise Media and its attorneys at the Stanford Fair Use Project were likely to prevail on a fair use defense. So "Expelled" will be able to be released in Canada with its excerpting of "Imagine" intact.

This is an outcome I suggested would occur, and hoped for, despite the dishonesty of the defendants in this case. It remains to be seen if Ono will continue with the lawsuit and potentially set a useful precedent for copyright law.

(Via Pharyngula.)

Ken Miller op-ed on "Expelled"

Brown University biology professor, textbook author, and Catholic Ken Miller has written an op-ed about "Expelled."

Scott Bloch gets raided by the FBI

Bush's head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Department of Justice, Scott Bloch, has had his offices and home raided by the FBI. The FBI raided his offices in D.C. yesterday, seizing computers and shutting off email. Bloch himself was interviewed. It's not clear exactly what prompted the raid, but Bloch has long been under fire for refusing to investigate claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. There are also allegations that he has retaliated against employees and obstructed investigations.

Bloch also has a tie to the Sternberg case, the crown jewel of "Expelled," in that one of his like-minded appointees, James McVay, a man with no previous experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal sector work, took on the Sternberg case and wrote a preliminary report on it despite having no jurisdiction. His preliminary report managed to draw conclusions in contradiction to the actual evidence.

UPDATE: The New York Times also covers the story.

UPDATE (October 27, 2008): Scott Bloch has been fired.

UPDATE (March 30, 2011): Scott Bloch has been sentenced to a month in jail for destroying evidence on his computer.

Michael Behe: Expelled from Expelled

Intelligent design advocate Michael Behe was interviewed for the film "Expelled," and even included in one of the trailer previews, but does not appear in the final film, even though he has been one of the most prominent ID advocates. Why not?

There are several likely explanations:

1. He is a counter-example to the claim that intelligent design advocates are being persecuted by academia. He is an intelligent design advocate who is also a professor at Lehigh University. (Point due to Tegamai Bopsulai.)

2. He has become something of a heretic in intelligent design circles as a result of his latest book, The Edge of Evolution, in which he affirms common ancestry, he calls using the Bible as a science textbook "silly," he doesn't think intelligent design is necessary to explain lower taxonomic levels of life such as species, genera, families, and orders, and he doesn't see the need for continued miraculous interventions into the process of evolution by God. (Points due to Larry Arnhart.)

3. His latest book conflicts with the idea of The Fall when he argues that malaria was intentionally designed to kill people. (Where's Ben Stein on this one? Point due to RBH.)

It appears that ID's big tent has become too small to allow Michael Behe to remain inside.

Via:

Larry Arnhart at Darwinian Conservatism
Brian Switek at Laelaps
John Lynch at Stranger Fruit

Ben Stein thinks science leads to killing people

In an interview in Christianity Today:

I believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.

In an interview on the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul Crouch, Jr. (video is available if you follow the link):

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Note that he offers no qualifiers. He doesn't say science must be complemented with ethics. He doesn't say that science (like any knowledge of truths about the universe) may have negative as well as positive consequences. He simply says that science leads to mass murder.

If Stein really believes this, then he must be a genuine opponent of the practice of science, and his promotion of "Expelled" can be seen as an aspect of that anti-scientific attitude, despite the fact that he certainly takes personal advantage of many of the positive contributions of science. If he doesn't genuinely believe it, then he's not only engaging in a defamatory slur against scientists, he's also dishonest.

Either way, he's demonstrated that he is a despicable character.

And some people claim not to understand why scientists are angered by this film and its creators.

Others on this subject:
John Lynch at Stranger Fruit
Larry Moran at The Sandwalk
P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula
Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars

History and future of the Discovery Institute

Ross Anderson, journalist and former Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, gives an interesting history of the founding of the organization. He describes how DI got into the intelligent design business, which has proved to be its major source of funding.

About two years ago, the Discovery Institute founded the Biologic Institute to perform scientific research. At long last, they finally have a website up, and its cast of characters contains many names recognizable from the film "Expelled." Still no scientific theory of intelligent design, however.

National Review on "Expelled"

John Derbyshire of National Review has written about "Expelled." A couple of key paragraphs:

I think this willful act of deception has corrupted creationism irredeemably. The old Biblical creationists were, in my opinion, wrong-headed, but they were mostly honest people. The “intelligent design” crowd lean more in the other direction. Hence the dishonesty and sheer nastiness, even down to plain bad manners, that you keep encountering in ID circles. It’s by no means all of them, but it’s enough to corrupt and poison the creationist enterprise, which might otherwise have added something worthwhile to our national life, if only by way of entertainment value.
...
And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an alternative theory of the origin of species: Yet no such alternative theory has ever been presented, nor is one presented in the movie, nor even hinted at. There is only a gaggle of fools and fraudsters, gaping and pointing like Apaches on seeing their first locomotive: “Look! It moves! There must be a ghost inside making it move!”

Quite right. There is no scientific theory of intelligent design.

UPDATE (May 1, 2008): Commenter tom points out a subsequent Derbyshire post about Ben Stein's remarkable statement on the Trinity Broadcasting Network that while "Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place ... science leads you to killing people."

Ben Stein is a shameful, despicable human being.

More on Mike Edmondson and the Expelled viral video

Simon Owens at Bloggasm interviewed Michael Edmondson, creator of the "Beware the Believers" viral video that was widely acclaimed by critics of the film "Expelled" for its humor and polish. Apparently the segment was originally intended to be in "Expelled," but the producers decided to turn it into a viral video instead, since it didn't fit with the character of the film. (Insert your choice of snarky comment about how it didn't fit here.)

Mathematical misunderstanding by Marks and O'Leary

Jeff Shallit has a post at his Recursivity blog about some "comical misunderstandings" by intelligent design advocates Denyse O'Leary and Robert Marks. In O'Leary's case, the misunderstanding is expected, but Marks is an engineering professor at Baylor University who should know better.

David Berlinski, King of Poseurs

Jeff Shallit talks about Discovery Institute Fellow David Berlinski, notable as one of the few advocates of intelligent design who is not an evangelical Christian. He's also not a scientist or a mathematician; he has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. Although that's a top school for philosophy in the U.S., Berlinski hasn't been working as a professional philosopher, either.

Of course, he was touted as an expert in "Expelled."

"Expelled" reviewed from a filmmaker's perspective

At the Evolved and Rational blog, John Ray gives a review of "Expelled" from a filmmaking perspective:

Cinematically, Expelled gets off to a lovely start. First-time director Nathan Frankowski chooses a nice, rich level of contrast and uses it to create some sparkling opening shots of our nation’s capitol. Those who knew what they were in for when they walked into the theater (presumably, most of the film’s so-far few attendees) were given an artistic visual rough outline of where the film was going. By the time we see Ben Stein taking a deep breath, looking indeed like “the little investigative journalist that could” in his trademark adorable little sneakers, the audience is practically eager to believe whatever he has to say.

Then he starts talking and the effect is ruined.

Poor narration, over- and under-exposed shots, "Lord Privy Seals," and endless footage of Ben Stein walking are a few of the technical complaints.

Ben Stein lies about Sternberg affair

In an interview with Newsweek, Ben Stein falsely stated that:

There are a number of scientists and academics who've been fired, denied tenure, lost tenure or lost grants because they even suggested the possibility of intelligent design. The most egregious is Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian, the editor of a magazine that published a peer-reviewed paper about ID. He lost his job.

Sternberg was never employed by the Smithsonian and never lost his unpaid Research Associate position there. He never worked for any Smithsonian magazine, and resigned from his position as editor of The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington six months before the publication of the Stephen Meyer intelligent design article which he approved with inappropriate review.

The Smithsonian responded to Newsweek:

Sternberg has never been employed by the Smithsonian Institution. Since January 2004, he has been an unpaid research associate in the departments of invertebrate and vertebrate zoology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Sternberg continues to enjoy full access to research facilities at the museum. Moreover, Stein's assertion that Sternberg was removed from a Smithsonian publication is not true. The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington is an independent journal and is not affiliated with the Smithsonian.

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

"Expelled" is not Holocaust denial

I agree with Orac at Respectful Insolence, contra bioethicist Arthur Caplan, that "Expelled"'s argument that Darwinism was a contributing cause of (the main cause of?) the Holocaust doesn't constitute Holocaust denial.

Shermer vs. Lukianoff in L.A. Times

Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society and Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education debated back and forth for five days in the Los Angeles Times on speech codes, faculty bias, and "Expelled." Actually, they were pretty much in agreement on "Expelled." (Where they disagree on other issues, I think Lukianoff generally has the better of the argument, though I side with Shermer on the rights of private institutions.)

I happen to support both of their organizations, and I think it's interesting to point out that FIRE is the major organization defending the freedom of speech of students and faculty in academia, though they've not noticed any issues of persecution of ID advocates worthy of their attention. They actually deal with real cases of suppression, censorship, and indoctrination, not phony cases like those in "Expelled."

"Expelled" promotes young-earth creationist materials

Commenters "paul" and Jay Rogers claimed here that "Expelled" "is not a Christian movie."

Yet Troy Britain points out that the "leadership guide" distributed at the "Expelled" website is filled with statements which closely resemble quotations from young-earth creationist literature published by the Institute for Creation Research, an explicitly Christian organization.

UPDATE (April 25, 2008): If "Expelled" isn't a Christian movie, why does the "Expelled: The Movement" website look like a Christian website--promoting Christian bands, Christian magazines, and Christian books by apologists like Lee Strobel, as well as young-earth creationism-promoting ministries like Coral Ridge Ministries (of the late D. James Kennedy, one of the most dishonest purveyors of bogus young-earth creationist arguments who has lived on this planet)?

Reason magazine review of "Expelled"

Ronald Bailey at Reason magazine has reviewed "Expelled," and is one of the few who has pointed out that:

Yet despite its topic, the film is entirely free of scientific content--no scientific evidence against biological evolution and none for "intelligent design" (ID) theory is given. Which makes sense because biological evolution is amply supported by evidence from the fossil record, molecular biology, and morphology. For example, the younger the rocks in which fossils are found, the more closely they resemble species alive today, and the older the rocks, the less resemblance there is. In addition, molecular biology confirms that the more distantly related the fossil record suggests species lineages are, the more their genes differ.

Instead of evaluating this evidence, Stein spends most of the movie asking various proponents of evolutionary theory, including Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Michael Ruse, and Daniel Dennett, for their religious views. Neither the producers nor Stein understand that offering critiques of a theory with which they disagree is not the same as proving their own theory.

"Expelled" is standard creationist and ID fare, in that regard.