‘Expelled’ telling more lies

The latest trick? Rather than boot people like P.Z. Myers, aka Pharyngula, when they show up for screenings of the science-free mock-umentary of non-existent discrimination against creationsts and IDers, the people behind “Expelled” are resorting to a new lie.

This one? “Expelled” PR people claim that screenings of the movie have been canceled, when, instead, they’ve just changed the start times, to try to screen out dirty, sneaky, science-literate evolutionists who are trying to infiltrate the screenings.

It’s enough to make Pharyngula give “Expelled” spokesman Ben Stein a smackdown:



Oh, here is something ludicrously funny: If Stein hadn’t accepted the narrator gig Dennis Miller was reportedly the next option. And, I’ll believe it when I see it that “Expelled” will open on 1,000 screens two weeks from today.
The reason for the canceled screenings lies is that Stein, producer Mark Mathis and others don’t want the science-literate to see the lies inside the theater, on screen. As LiveScience points out, the lies include the fact that the discriminated/hassled people were actually not given tenure, if university professors (and no wonder), had expired contracts as contract faculty, had engaged in improper publishing ethics to sneak non-peer reviewed reports about intelligent design into academic journals and more.

The movie also repeats the old canard that evolution is responsible for Nazism. Not true, as many Nazi officials were clueless about it, and many of those (who pretended to be?) not clueless rejected Darwinism.

As for claims ID (or creationism-lite) should be taught in public schools, Benjamin Radford has the perfect answer:

There's a place for creationism/intelligent design theory in schools. It's in religion and social studies classes, not science courses. If Ben Stein and other creationists are truly concerned about giving fairness and equal time to competing theories, they should be demanding that students be taught that mankind came from a tree, as the Maasai tribe of East Africa believe; that according to Hindus, the gods Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma created the world and humans; and that the Incans believed that mankind first arose on two small islands on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. There is just as much evidence for these creation stories (and many others) as for the one told in Genesis.

One refrain is "teach the controversy," but among scientists there is no controversy about whether evolution is true. Evidence of evolution is all around us; for example, flu vaccines need to be reformulated each year because the flu viruses are constantly evolving and adapting to older vaccines.

The only “controversy” is how people who claim to have such steadfast religious beliefs can be such out-and-out liars.

Actually, even that’s not a controversy. Some of the biggest whoppers in the history of mankind have been told in the name of religion.