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…
Duped from Ethics Gradient.
They’ve started advertising the DVD version of that infernal, mendacious, highly offensive, wilfully ignorant and misleading waste of megabytes known as Expelled. Bay of Fundie has scratched the surface of their advertising and revealed some new information.
Now, given that this is the DVD release of Expelled, it makes me wonder what kind of special features they’ll include. Of course no one can know for sure, but I have something of a wish list:
– a complete timeline of all the steps taken & communication entered into to secure the participation of such people as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, including a full explanation for the stark deviation from the premise of the original film: it was originally presented to Myers & Dawkins as a documentary named “Crossroads”, detailing the intersection of religion & science, which it clearly did not turn out to be, either by name or nature
– full, uncut, unedited interviews with the above-named
– a full explanation from the film’s producers of PZ Myer’s own expulsion from a screening of Expelled by security staff before he’d entered the theatre, despite the fact that he’d registered to attend under his own name and hadn’t attempted any kind of subterfuge, as was alleged early on by the producers (as well as an explanation of how Richard Dawkins, arguably more recognisable than PZ Myers, was allowed to enter unmolested)
– behind-the-scenes segments showing such things as exactly who comprised the audience in …
...but I love science anyway. Just so you know, I'm not going to start every post with "Why I am ... ". It's an homage to famous 19th Century heretic Robert Green Ingersoll and his famous manifesto, "Why I Am An Agnostic". This style of title has also been used by, among others, Bertrand…
For three decades I've puzzled about the idea held by Christian Fundamentalists that the Bible must be proven absolutely and literally true in every way, or else Christianity is false. The latter clause being accepted as silly, therefore most science of the 19th and 20th century is patently on the…
I started thinking about the the “reductionist attitude” in presenting science when I read Erich’s Post To deal with “arrogant” scientists we need to move beyond reductionism and break the “Galilean Spell” (from May 7, 2008). Curricula seem to begin with biology, work through chemistry, and finally introduce physics. If English were taught categorically as science is now, students would go through phases in this order:
The alphabet of science is made up of basic natural “laws” as discovered by Newton, Maxwell, Mendeleev, Heisenberg, and so on. Sentences and paragraphs are like molecules and chemical syntheses. And finally you have enough structure to begin to see how biology works from cells (essays) through organisms (stories) and populations (novels).
One could be taught holistic science, building to the grand ideas from the simple ones. By constructing the ideas instead of breaking them down, the interrelationship and the interactions of the parts can be seen, as well as the nature and function of the parts themselves. A whole is never the sum of the parts; it is the sum of the interactions between the parts set on a foundation of the parts themselves. This becomes obvious when building, but is obscured when deconstructing.
No wonder Americans doubt the “theory of evolution”. Schools try to teach this advanced and universal concept without any foundation. By the …