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bless you all for visiting. (even the non believers, because jesus loves you all)

What we have here is a vast miscommunication by the scientific community, and atheists who have gone as far to remove god from the classroom. it is no wonder that there is a big problem with education in america.

the following is about a movie that aims to correct and educate not only christians, but everyone in america and the world that evolution and darwin is only a bad theory.

Ben Stein’s New movie coming to theaters on April 18th

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/home.php

Right away, let me just say that this is the Best Documentary of 2008…if it will get played. The basic premise of the movie is that Intelligent Design should be allowed equal footing as a teachable theory within academia. This movie is not an apology for Creation; pains are taken to distinguish Creation from Intelligent Design. This is also not a movie that bashes Evolutional Theory, although many rational arguments are brought up as to the validity of Evolutionary thought as well as the long-term consequences of an Evolutionary Worldview.

But enough about the film — the real highlight of the evening occurred after the showing, during the Q&A. Mathis led this discussion, and the second question was asked by a surprise member of the audience: Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion,” and arguably the biggest name in the movie other than Mr. Ben Stein himself. As this screening was by invitation only, Dawkins appearance was quite a surprise to both the audience and Mathis.

Dawkins asked a simple question: Why was one of his colleagues interviewed in the movie denied a chance to come see this movie and protest it and in fact was escorted out by security prior to admittance to the theatre? The irony apparently escaped Mr. Dawkins that he himself was a gatecrasher to the movie and was uninvited; nevertheless, he wanted to know why his colleague was turned away even though he himself was admitted as were his colleague’s family.

I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.

So ultimately Dawkins’ first complaint was irrelevant. His second complaint was that any statement he made in the film was in fact under the assumption that he was being interviewed by Ben Stein (and by Mark Mathis) for a film that was to take an even-handed look at the Intelligent Design/Evolution controversy. Unfortunately, the entire audience, minus Dawkins’ posse, agreed that that the film’s main point was that Intelligent Design should be taught in conjunction with Evolution.

The Q&A then proceeded pretty uneventfully, with several of the questions addressed to Dawkins himself. Mathis and Dawkins also clearly had spoken on numerous occasions and appeared to continue an argument that they had started previously. The evening however was cut short by theatre management and an imminent showing of another movie in the same room.

Ben Stein’s “Expelled” is one of the more evenhanded, clever, and well-produced documentaries currently on the market. While the Evolution/Intelligent Design debate can spark much emotion, anyone walking away from this film will be convinced that the merits of Intelligent Design should be on the same level playing field as Evolutionary Theory. This film is about the freedom of speech, the freedom of ideas and ability to express those ideas…not about whether God created the heavens and the earth.

-Stuart Blessman

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/chronicle.php?article=11

Ben Stein’s new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, exposes the ruthlessness of many Darwinists and atheists in the academic persecution of those who disagree with them. Even now, these same people — along with the media — are trying to silence the message of Stein’s film. Please do not let it happen.

REFERENCES:

I. Ben Stein is EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. 2008. Premise Media Corporation. http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

II. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Dir. Nathan Frankowski. Perf. Ben Stein. Rocky Mountain Pictures, 2008.

III. Ham, Ken. “Christianity: Child Abuse? a Virus?” Answers Update–USA Mar. 2006. 20 Apr. 2008. http://www.answersingenesis.org/us/newsletters/0306lead.asp

IV. Stanek, Jill. “Expelled From ‘Expelled’” WorldNetDaily. 10 Apr. 2008. WorldNetDaily.Com Inc. 20 Apr. 2008 http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=61134

I appreciate the variety of faiths in this world, because I don’t want to believe anything just because I’ve been told to.

That includes the theory of evolution, which has been taught as fact in schools for many years, with no other theory to challenge it.

This is the trailer to Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, featuring Ben Stein.

Visit the site here:

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

Do you believe in evolution? Have you ever heard of the theory of Intelligent Design (ID)? Is it difficult for you to believe that we developed through random chance and simply are just “lucky mud”? WIll you take a stance to support academic freedom?

EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed hit theaters earlier this month.

In this highly controversial, history-changing film, host Ben Stein goes on a quest to expose the suppression by science’s anti-theist elite and unveil new scientific facts that may suggest evidence of intelligent design in the universe.

For decades now, Neo-Darwinism has maintained a stranglehold within public education, suppressing all other theories on the origins of life - especially those that hint of a “designer”. Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins states, “Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion.”

NASHVILLE, TN–Entering its third weekend, Ben Stein’s “Expelled: No Intelligence Designed” has entered the Top 15 on the all-time list for documentary films -– a distinction that some say is a solid box office achievement, others say is a small feat.

Associate producer Mark Mathis is among those who are pleased. The film had grossed nearly $5.8 million through Wednesday (April 30), which places it at No. 14 on the all-time list, just behind the 2005 raunchy comedy documentary “The Aristocrats” ($6.3 million). Whether Expelled can finish in the Top 10 all-time –- the No. 10 movie is “Hoop Dreams” at $7.8 million –- will be determined in the next couple weekends.

“It’s done exceptionally well when you look at it as a documentary film,” Mathis told Baptist Press. “… We’re pretty pleased. Different people have different expectations. Ask anybody who puts out a project like this, ‘Do you think you could have done better?’ most people are going to say, ‘Yeah, I think we could have done better.’ You just have these high hopes for it.”

Just like any other documentary, the challenge all along has been to get people to the theater to learn about a subject -– the cultural battle between evolution and Intelligent Design –- that some would call boring. Mathis said he and the other producers knew it would be a tall order and sought to make it part-entertainment -– with Stein’s humor shining through — to draw people to the theater. The response from moviegoers, Mathis said, has been “over the top.”

“We did exit polling on the first weekend and the exit polling done in six states with 1,100 people showed that 97 percent of the people who were polled said they liked the film,” he said.

The 90-minute movie (PG, thematic elements, very brief language) explores the ongoing academic, legal and cultural battle between supporters of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design, which is the theory that certain features of the universe are best explained by an intelligent cause, and not by an undirected process such as natural selection. Stein interviews supporters of Intelligent Design who say they have been “expelled” — fired, shunned or ridiculed (or all three) — from institutions for their beliefs.

Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and the Ethics & Religious Commission’s Richard Land gave the film high marks.

Although fans of liberal documentarian Michael Moore have been quick to note his films raked in far more at the box office than Expelled –- three of his films rank in the Top 5 all time, all making at least $21 million -– Mathis thinks such comparisons are unfair.

“Michael Moore comes out with a film and Michael Moore gets large amounts of time on morning shows –- NBC, ABC, CBS, cable networks. He gets tens of millions of dollars of free publicity because Big Media see the world in general the way he does. Same thing with Al Gore’s film,” Mathis said. “… Expelled doesn’t get that, and not only does it not get that, but it gets the opposite -– a massive panning.”

Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times called Expelled “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time” and a “conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.” Mark Olsen, writing for the Los Angeles Times, said that Expelled, “as a work of nonfiction filmmaking,” is “a sham.”

According to RottenTomatoes.com, a website that compiles movie reviews from various newspapers and websites, only 9 percent of critics gave Expelled a good review. By comparison, 93 percent of critics gave a good review to “Sicko,” Moore’s 2007 liberal film about America’s health care system.

Conservative documentaries are a rarity, while Moore is a “known commodity,” Mathis said. A better comparison for Expelled may be with Moore’s first documentary, “Roger and Me,” which was released in 1989 and made $6.7 million, good for No. 12 on the all-time list.

Mathis also noted “Expelled” targeted conservative religious people who, when compared to the rest of the population, rarely go to movies.

“[Moore] has the tables set for him in a way that it’s not set for anybody else who comes at this stuff from a conservative side,” Mathis said. “Documentary film has been traditionally a liberal arena.”

Mathis also rejects critics who say Expelled is as biased in the conservative direction as Moore’s films are in the liberal direction.

“I would say there is a very significant difference,” he said. “There is not anything in the film that you can point to and say, ‘This is dishonest. This is manipulation.’ You can disagree and say, ‘I think that drawing a connection between Darwinian ideas and Nazi ideas is not justified.’ … People can disagree. But it’s not like some other documentaries. … We didn’t just go out there and interview these people and say, ‘They say they were mistreated and that’s it.’ We were on campuses all over the place, interviewing different people and talking to different people…. Without exception, on every single campus it was acknowledged that the level of hostility toward Intelligent Design is palpable, that everybody knows about it.”

Coral Ridge Ministries talks about how academic freedoms are being taken away in the United States by the Darwinists. Well qualified scientists and professors are being fired from their jobs and/or being blacklisted from getting another job because of their skepticism and opinions about Darwinism.

Ben Stein does a wonderful job of exposing this anti-knowledge trend and bigotry through his movie/documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed began showing in 1000 theaters nation wide on April 18th.

http://www.ExpelledTheMovie.Com

http://www.expelledthemovie.com
Celebrating intellectual freedom on this most macabre holiday (Charles Darwin died 19 April). I could think of no more appropriate time to see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Evolution is weak

Expelled movie
- watch the super trailer

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/video.php

further research

http://www.nmsr.org/iconanti.htm
http://www.carm.org/evolution.htm
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/top.htm

EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed, is an upcoming feature film in which host Ben Stein, the boring economics teacher in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, goes on a quest to expose the suppression by science’s anti-theist elite, and unveils new scientific facts that may suggest evidence of intelligent design in the universe.

It is accually quite sick how atheistic scientists treat Christian scientists.

I do not own this video or this trailer all rights belong to “Expelled.”

First, I have problems with the way the film harps on the theme of “academic freedom”. On the surface — and given the film’s heavy metaphorical use of the Berlin Wall and the speech made there by Ronald Reagan — this sounds like an attempt to resolve scientific matters through political sloganeering. (Note also the shot that zooms in on the word “Creator” in the American Declaration of Independence.) But the fact is, there are limits to all our freedoms — the freedom of expression is constrained by laws against libel, slander and yelling “fire!” in crowded theatres, for example — and there are scientific standards that all scientists must meet if they want their theories to be taken seriously within a scientific context. It is not at all clear that Intelligent Design theorists have met those standards, and this film doesn’t even try to demonstrate that ID is scientifically valid as a theory; it offers no clue as to what sorts of testable or falsifiable hypotheses ID theorists have proposed, if any.

Now, I don’t mean to disparage or diminish the experiences of those scientists who have found themselves “expelled”, fairly or unfairly, from the scientific establishment. Given the recent ostracizing of Larry Summers and James D. Watson for comments they made about alleged natural differences between genders and races — ostracizing that, in Watson’s case, prompted William Saletan to say that the “liberals” in academia were being wilfully dogmatic just like “creationists” — no one could deny that politics plays a heavy role in academia, even among supposedly rational and objective scientists. And there is certainly a double-standard if some scientists are being slapped down for expressing their belief in a Creator while other scientists, like Richard Dawkins, are allowed to run around promoting their atheism and their hatred of religion.

But the fundamental question remains: Is ID science? Expelled never really bothers to make the case that it is. But if this case can’t be made, then there is no more place for ID in the science classroom than there is for any number of other non-scientific theories. There is, presumably, a reason why astronomy and not astrology is studied in the science classroom. What is it? And why should ID fall into the same category as astronomy and not astrology? Likewise, there is, presumably, a reason why medical techniques and not miraculous healings are studied in the science classroom. What is it? I believe in miracles myself, and I am deeply impressed by the way Catholics, in particular, will often subject claims of miraculous healings to rigorous scientific analysis, considering all possible natural causes before they turn to supernatural ones. But to make that leap — to assert that an as-yet-unexplained phenomenon must have been caused by supernatural forces — is essentially to leap beyond science and thus, in some sense, outside of science.

Second, there is a line in the film that I find very intriguing, when David Berlinski, an agnostic Jewish mathematician and a self-professed “crank” who sort-of falls on the ID side of the argument, says, “We don’t even know what a species is!” That is a fascinating statement, and I wish the film had teased out its implications. Why did scientists invent the term “species” in the first place? What do they mean by it? What don’t they mean by it? What sort of discussions is the term useful for? What are its limits? And how can old-school creationists argue that no new species has ever emerged from an older one if, in fact, we don’t even know what a species is in the first place? It is the creationists, after all, and not the evolutionists who have insisted that there are clear uncrossable boundaries between the various “species”.

As it is, Berlinski’s line points up one of the other problems I have with ID, at least as it has been presented to the public, and that is the way that ID seems to consist more of tearing hypotheses down rather than building them up. It’s all well and good to encourage skepticism, to point at the gaps in existing theories, or to underscore the fact that words don’t always mean what we think they mean. But at some point you need to agree on a common language, and you need to propose a hypothesis that can be tested and applied like any other scientific hypothesis. And if ID theorists are actually doing that, films like Expelled don’t really clue us in.

More thoughts later, if any occur to me.

Leaving the subject matter aside since it’s a long way out of my field of expertise, I enjoyed the movie for a couple of reasons.

First, it (perhaps tongue in cheek) poked a much deserved bit of fun at the attitude that if you’re not a dyed in the wool Darwinist, you are a young-earth, fundamentalist fanatic and a boorish idiot to boot.

Secondly, it did hit perilously close to the target on the dearth (I won’t yet say death) of dissent in the academy. The academy has become too much of an enforcer of a prevailaing version of “truth” and stiffling questions of weakness or alternative in a prevailing school of thought.

And unfortunately for whatever we mean by “the pursuit of knowledge”, that stiffling extends to many fields beyond the Darwinist/alternative debate.

– Ishmael

I’m not a biologist, but the definition of ’species’ that I’ve always heard is that if two creatures can produce offspring, then they are of the same species.

Such a definition raises some problems. Imagine that we have a set of ‘populations’ of animals, each population identified by a unique integer. Suppose also that an animal in population N can mate and produce offspring with animals in populations N-1, N, and N+1, but not in other populations. This, or something like it, can happen. How many species are there?

This may be the problem Berlinski is referring to.

Those are some excellent remarks upon the film; thanks for posting them. I’d like to address two points.

First, the claim that there is a lack of dissent in academia, promoted by (mostly) the other commentators here, is a deeply ignorant thing to say. Academic debate is quite vigorous and no-holds-barred, as anyone actually in the academy, or who reads scientific journals or attends scientific conferences, would know.

With respect to the Modern Synthesis (the currently accepted theory of evolution), that debate rages strongly around the edges of the theory, involving small details about how evolution works, exceptions to what would otherwise be thought of as rules, and so forth. When a theory is as old as evolution, you tend to find the really central questions were answered 100 years or more ago, and that is the case here. That may lead to the illusion that there is no dissent in the academy.

Similarly, sensible people don’t say that there is “a dearth of dissent” about best medical practices just because every doctor agrees that a gunshot wound can kill a person. There’s still plenty of dissent over whether surgery, medication, or even nothing, is the best treatment for various diseases and disorders.

I don’t know what “Darwinism” is; I guess it is just an anti-evolutionist’s term for something they don’t like, so I can’t really respond to all the claims made about Darwinism.

Second, quoting from the post:

“Given the recent ostracizing of Larry Summers and James D. Watson for comments they made about alleged natural differences between genders and races — ostracizing that, in Watson’s case, prompted William Saletan to say that the “liberals” in academia were being wilfully dogmatic just like “creationists” — no one could deny that politics plays a heavy role in academia, even among supposedly rational and objective scientists.”

Politics does indeed play a huge role in how science is conducted, who gets funded, and so on, but it is not always obvious how the politics works. In the above case, it sounds as though you are quoting in support of the notion that there are racial differences, or that Summers and Watson should be allowed to express their dissenting opinions even though “liberals” disagree with them. The problem here is that the question of inherent racial differences is not a matter of opinion - either such differences really exist, or they do not.

Watson and Summers have rejected a massive amount of scientific evidence that shows there are no such differences. While I’m quite sure liberals dislike them, their serious problems in the academy come from scientists who respect evidence, regardless of their politics. It is well understood that if you want to dissent from a strongly-supported set of scientific propositions, you need to be actually conducting research to show why those propositions are wrong. Watson and Summers have run afoul of the political machine because neither are doing that, while both have seriously and repeatedly misrepresented the scientific work of their colleagues in support of their ideas. In such a case, yes, the political monster will get you - and I’d say rightly so.

A very fair review given your Christian links (and I mean that as a compliment though I’m not certain it comes across as such). Too many people are giving this the thumbs up simply because of its religious undertones.

People talk about a dearth of scientific dissent but from what I understand, every serious scientist would throw out the theory of evolution tomorrow if evidence turned up that disproved it. Alternatively they’d have to overhaul the theory to ensure this new anomaly was explicable in the context of all other knowledge on the subject.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the makers of Expelled because they have no formal theory to disprove. Every anomaly is easily explained when you invoke a creator rather than look for scientific evidence.

In interviews about this movie, Ben Stein has stated that “science leads to killing”. That alone should be enough to seriously reconsider the usefulness of his movie.

I think your points about Intelligent Design are spot on. I don’t have any doubt that “academic freedom” is just a buzzword to gain sympathy for the movement - which thus far has fail to come up with any compelling scientific evidence for its position.

I’m inclined not to take Berlinksi seriously. After all, Berlinski has pretensions of being well acquainted with evolutionary theory, and yet makes the absurd claim that scientists believe whales evolved from cattle. His remark about species probably has to do with the fact that members of two different species can sometimes produce fertile offspring. Of course, it’s not surprising considering species are not discrete entities, but rather part of a continuum - as one would expect with evolution.

Good pickup on Berlinski’s species line. Like many other of the one-line hits against biology in this film, it was a real distortion of the issue.

The reason we don’t “know” what a species is isn’t that we don’t understand species or speciation at all, as Berlinksi’s statement implies. Nor is it that we cannot define precisely what we are talking about as needed.

It’s that _defining_ speciation, all under one single word, is an extremely difficult and convoluted endeavor, without one single “right” way to do it. There are too many ways to define species, all valid, but none of which capture everything we might want to talk about.

We can define species by natural interbreeding.. but what about unnatural situations? What about occasional hybrids? What about ring species? What if the barriers are basically “cultural” (i.e. some fish CAN mate, but refuse to mate with fish of a certain color, but then will mate if we shine an artificial light that confuses that color) rather than genetic, or physical (i.e. the mechanics of reproduction, like a Great Dane and a Pug, aren’t right, even though the genetics are).

The irony here is that a lot of the problems with defining a species exist precisely BECAUSE evolution checks out as science: species are, as we might expect if evolution was going on, indistinct, with many different sorts of continua instead of hard distinctions along a single idea.

Indeed, part of the problem is that we inherited a taxonomic system from a decidedly static and non-evolutionary era. We have to fit things like species names into this system, but it’s endlessly confusing, especially to laypeople.

For instance, when something speciates, it’s given a new species name. This implies to most people that it has turned into something else: it has a genus and a species name, and the species name is different: it’s now a different “kind” of animal in the same genus as its ancestor. But in reality, the evolutionary explanation is that it is a SUBGROUP of the ancestral species, not a parallel one. But the taxonomic system doesn’t really have a good fit for that idea. We use “species” to designate a single breeding population AND as a “rank” in the taxonomic system. But evolutionary biology is nested clades (i.e. groups within groups: descent with modification), not discrete eternal ranks.

Some biologists have tried to propose better, alternative taxonomic system, but the problem is that everyone already knows and is familiar the original one, and its very hard to get people to change (especially across borders and languages). So again, the problem is not that we are ignorant of what a “species” is, it’s the huge logistical mess in trying to define and explain all the complications and strange details in one term.

Berlinski doesn’t even hint at this. He makes a statement that could be technically correct in a sense, but is wildly misleading in its implications.