Ebert update (3 of 3): Creationism Q&A

Another Ebert commentary, this time, the seriously funny Creationism: Your questions answered. (I guess it's just seriously, uh, serious if you really believe men walked the earth with dinosaurs.)

Expelled (once and for all)

In this third (and, let's hope, last) post in this series, I'm including links to four articles in eSkeptic debunking claims made in Ben Stein's new film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

• Expelled Exposed, Part 1: Ben Stein’s Blunder (by Michael Shermer)
  
• Expelled Exposed, Part 2: The Richard Sternberg Affair (by Ed Brayton)
• RichardDawkins.net: Open Letter from Richard Dawkins
• video parody: Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed
  

Anticipating success with their feature film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Producers Mark Mathis, Logan Craft and Walt Ruloff have already leaked a teaser trailer for the film’s sequel. Their “teach the controversy” slogan seemed to work well in getting the general public to believe that Intelligent Design is a viable alternative scientific theory to Evolution, so the team has moved on to promoting other theories that they feel are being suppressed by the scientific community. Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed tells of how Sex Theory has thrived unchallenged in the ivory towers of academia, as the explanation for how new babies are created. Proponents of Stork Theory claim that “Big Sex” has been suppressing their claim that babies are delivered by storks. Furthermore, Stork Theory proponents warn of the serious moral dangers posed by teaching children that sex has a function. They point out that evil dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao all believed in Sex Theory, and they may have even had sex themselves.

There is also a late-breaking new development in the controversy, a new theory called Avian Transportation Theory.

Unlike the original Stork Theory, the modern, sophisticated “Avian Transportation Theory” (ATT) merely points out that there are gaps in the orthodox Sex Theory, and that current sonogram imaging is unreliable. Moreover ATT does not specify that babies are necessarily brought by storks but by “large birds unspecified” (although many individual ATT theorists PRIVATELY believe it is a stork).

WATCH the spoof

Here's a quick link to the YouTube version:

Note: Btw, I really do enjoy Ben Stein's Everybody's Business column in the the Sunday New York Times Business section.

Expelled for Real

Christine Comer was the Director of Science for the Texas Education Agency for nine years, until she was forced to resign for failing to remain neutral on creationism.
Watch the video.

A random (the first three, at the time I happen to be looking) sampling of responses on youTube is fascinating:

• if there is no such thing as intelligent design then explain a redwood tree or how a whale starts out as a simple protein molecule. evolution sucks and so do evolutionists. [So all of biology (along with chemistry, physics, geology, astonomy) can be replaced with "The Flying Spaghetti Monster did it."]
  
• Thanks state coerced schooling. Thanks to your one size fits all we got yet another power struggle on our hands! [Not sure if this comment is supportive or critical; but my understanding is that in the U.S. curricula are determined by thousands of individual school boards; very decentralized, compared with other countries?]
  
• intelligent design is not the same thing as creationism - you don't have to be religious to consider ID. [Of course it's not! Creationism requires your god; ID is satisfied by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.] Richard Dawkins belives in intelligent design [I strongly expect this will come as quite a surprise to Mr. Dawkins!]
  

PZ Meyers expelled from Expelled!

PZ Meyers, author the popular Pharyngula blog on ScienceBlogs, relates how he was expelled from a screening of the creationist propaganda movie Expelled back in March. It's an amusing story!

A recent post on Pharyngula discusses how David Bolinsky, creator of the Inner Life of the Cell video, accuses Expelled of theft.

In another of the ScienceBlogs, Afarensis, the post Expelled Bungles it Again discusses how, in "masterpiece of framing strategy" the film, in its effort to link Darwinism to Nazis and the Holocaust, includes an interview with an anti-Semite. "Unfortunately, the guy [Maciej Giertych] is a creationist and signer of the [Discovery Institute's] 'Dissent from Darwin' list." For more on this, check out another of the ScienceBlogs, Stranger Fruit, by John M. Lynch, and his post Expelled: Now with added anti-Semitism.

For a comprehensive listing of links to reviews and news coverage, see the Resources link on

The Biology that dare not speak its name

Evolution, the unifying principle of modern biology, can now be mentioned in Florida public schools! According to the AP story

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Florida's public school science standards for the first time will use the word ''evolution,'' although the biological concept already was being taught under code words such as ''change over time.''

The new standards, part of a set of overall science changes adopted by the State Board of Education Tuesday on a 4-3 vote, require schools to spend more class time on evolution and teach it in more detail.
. . .
Opponents of evolution denied they had a religious motive, arguing that there are flaws in the scientific theory of evolution and that students should be allowed to explore them.

As a compromise, the standards refer to evolution as a scientific theory, explaining that a theory is a well-supported and accepted explanation of nature, not simply a claim.
. . .
John Sullivan, executive director of the Florida Baptist Convention, objected to calling evolution the only fundamental concept underlying biology. He wrote in an e-mail to Education Commissioner Eric Smith that Baptists firmly believe there's evidence of a ''Creator-initiated origin of life'' but did not object to teaching evolution. He argued, though, its scientific weaknesses should be taught as well as its strengths.

Among the standard tactics used by evolution opponents is to ensure evolution is labeled as (only a) "theory" -- which they recognize in common usage to mean, your guess is as good as mine. It's encouraging that the Florida standards "compromise" explains that evolution is a theory in the scientific sense -- which is to say, it is an explanation of nature that is well supported by known facts, and makes testable predictions. That this is a social, not a scientific, issue is quite apparent from the fact that evolution opponents spend no time lobbying against the germ theory of disease, quantum theory, or relativity theory to ensure that their scientific weaknesses be taught and that the competing claim that, simply, "God does it" be presented. After all, we know that the acceleration of gravity on earth is 9.8 m/s² (32.2 ft/s²), but beyond that, any explanation is "just a theory" and, if one allows supernatural explanations, it is just as plausible that God makes apples fall.