Maine school board: teach creationism or drop evolution

Matthew Linkletter, the Director of the Athens School Board, in Maine, has called for the local school administrative district to drop evolution from its high school science curricula.  Why?  Because it’s an “unprovable theory and shouldn’t be taught as fact”.  Ah, that tired old argument again.
Linkletter believes that neither evolution nor creationism belong in a [...]

American public turning against science?

An Op-Ed in the Boston Globe by Ken Miller expresses that concern:
AMERICAN science is in trouble, and if you wonder why, just go to the movies. Popular culture is gradually turning against science, and Ben Stein’s new movie, “Expelled,” is helping to push it along.
I believe that American culture has a deep vein of anti-intellectualism, [...]

Injunction against Premise Media

As I’m sure everyone has seen already, a federal judge in New York issued an injunction against Premise Media, instructing them not to “distribute” Expelled any further.  Apparently they can continue to show the film in cinemas, but they cannot send out new prints or distribute DVDs.  Ed Brayton and Wes Elsberry have details.
People were [...]

Must read: Josh Rosenau on Ben Stein

Last night on Countdown I was pleased to see Ben Stein come in second in Worst Person in the World.  (First place would have been better, but no one has a chance when Coultergeist is in the running…she made Rush Limbaugh look sane.)  What earned Stein the nomination was a comment  he made in a [...]

Critical thinking and creationism

In his review of Expelled, Mike Biedler writes:
You’d think that Expelled’s deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, both in terms of movie production and presentation of the scientific evidence, would make me angry. Not so much… So what is making me angry? Honestly, it’s the fact that one year ago I would have fallen for Stein’s [...]

Derbyshire on Expelled

I’m no fan of conservative columnist John Derbyshire, but he’s worth reading on the issue of intelligent design.  Writing in the National Review, Derbyshire comments on the rank dishonesty of the creationist movie Expelled and intelligent design creationism as a whole.  He writes
I think this willful act of deception has corrupted creationism irredeemably. The old [...]

Expelled - flop or success?

In its first weekend, the creationist propaganda film Expelled either was either hugely successful or a terrible flop, depending on how you look at things. As an “almost giddy” Chris Mooney pointed out, Expelled is the eighth-highest grossing political documentary in the US. It also had the second-highest opening weekend, bringing in $3,153,000. [...]

Do I detect a pattern?

As you may have heard, the latest controversy surrounding Expelled comes from the fact that they used a 25-second clip of John Lennon’s Imagine without permission. Apparently they use it over images of communism and Nazism, illustrating what you would have with “no religion”. In so doing, Mathis and crew have attracted the [...]

More Expelled antics

Abbie reports on the latest developments related to Expelled
But I kept getting emails from people “I know Ive seen that other stuff before!” “Students who plagairize dont just use one source– I bet EXPELLED people used something other than ‘Inner Life’ too.” But I ignored those people. I was like “HAHAHAHAHA! DI Fellows are stupid [...]

Questions for Ben Stein

Ken Perrott was recently approached by Stacy Schlicht of Rogers & Cowan (who are handling publicity for Expelled) and offered a chance to interview Ben Stein. That offer then turned into a teleconference and journalists were invited to submit five questions. After Perrott submitted his questions the teleconference was postponed to April 18, [...]