Ebert reviews ‘Expelled’

And how! Observe:

The more you know about evolution, or simple logic, the more you are likely to be appalled by the film. No one with an ability for critical thinking could watch more than three minutes without becoming aware of its tactics. It isn’t even subtle.

Mmm, that’s good Ebert [source].

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Hank

Hank was born of bird-watching bushwalking music-loving parents from whom he gained his love of nature, the universe & bicycles. Today he's a musician, non-profit aid worker, beagle keeper and fair & balanced internet commentator - but that just means he has a chip on each shoulder.

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    Punchy and fair-handed article by Ebert. Good cartoon at the bottom, as well.

    I wonder how much more informed we'd be in America if the average person spent 2% as much time making a concerted effort to understand evolution as they did following professional sports or hanging out at bars. Truly, an hour or two per week, for one month, will make you much smarter than almost every Intelligent Design advocate who has ever claimed that "Darwin said we are descended from monkeys" or "Darwin claims that evolution is a totally random process."

  2. Avatar of Hank
    Hank

    An hour or two per week seems just fine. How about going to the library after temple? Or straight home – I've found watching docos on Google video/vimeo/veoh/youtube etc to be a great rainy day/slow tv-day/bored weekend activity.

    Of course, it would take a lot longer for reality to sink into Stein's, Ham's & Comfort's selectively porous minds, if at all. I'm talking geological timescales here.

  3. Avatar of grumpypilgrim
    grumpypilgrim

    Further to Erich's comment, indeed, Darwin isn't the person who deduced that evolution is a random process. That discovery was made by Gregor Mendel, a contemporary of Darwin who was, surprisingly, a Roman Catholic monk who happened to be trained in statistics. Mendel discovered in his empirical experiments with pea plants that inherited traits passed from generation to generation exactly as the statistical equations for random processes would predict, proving that inheritance was, in fact, a random process. Ironically, Mendel published his findings in 1866, and even mailed a copy of his paper to Darwin, but no one, including Darwin, apparently read his paper or realized its importance to Darwin's work. Mendel's paper was not rediscovered until 1900, long after Mendel had died. Had someone noticed his work while he was still alive, we might wonder if the Catholic Church itself would have nipped the 'intelligent design' nonsense in the bud long ago. Of course, the Church eventually did embrace Darwinian evolution, but not until the later part of the 20th century — far too late (unfortunately) to prevent the creationism crackpots from gaining a foothold.

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