Posted on 09/27/2007 9:05:18 AM PDT by Alter Kaker
A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”
The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford Universityin England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.
But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised — and in some cases, angered — to find themselves not in “Crossroads” but in a film with a new name and one that makes the case for intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. The film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” also has a different producer, Premise Media.
The film is described in its online trailer as “a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions.” According to its Web site, the film asserts that people in academia who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes have unfairly lost their jobs, been denied tenure or suffered other penalties as part of a scientific conspiracy to keep God out of the nation’s laboratories and classrooms.
Mr. Stein appears in the film’s trailer, backed by the rock anthem “Bad to the Bone,” declaring that he wants to unmask “people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Setting up phony websites and production companies, deliberately lying to dozens of prospective interviewees -- all in all standard operating procedure for those who feel that anything is justified in carrying out what they feel is the will of God. What is completely lacking is any semblence of honesty.
This reminds me of the run up to Passion of The Christ. The Left is going to do an all-out assault on this movie before it is released in February. I expect to see more of the same from the dinosaur media in the months to come.
Looks like the ID folks have given up on science and are doing a PR blitz.
Why would athiests care about honesty or being lied to? I mean really, It’s just a different set of chemical reactions right?
It’s also especially conspicuous here on the FR Crevo threads where creationists who fail to understand science falsify scientists’ positions just so they can attack them with lies.
That sounds like Michael Moore's tactics.
Yawn, this type of thing happens a lot. They all probably got paid for their interviews and it is still their views. Don’t be a hypocrite. There have been science journalists for major publications pretending to be ID supporters in order to infiltrate ID clubs. ALso look at the creative edits used Dawkins for his BBC documentary when it came towards his interview with Alistar McGrath.
Why do they do that?
Oh, pleaze.... Would they have changed what they had to say on camera if they knew what the real intentions had been? Would they even had appeared on camera?
I certainly don't condone what these people did to get these scientists talk, but don't go making this out to be one sided. These scientists have their agenda as well and they just happened to be caught with their guard down.
And please consider the source-The New York Time. Great for wrapping fish guts in.
If the NY Times says it’s true, well then...IT MUST BE!!
“Why would athiests care about honesty or being lied to? I mean really, It’s just a different set of chemical reactions right?”
Ping to that. I guess truth, like man, evolves over millions of years.....
“And please consider the source-The New York Time. Great for wrapping fish guts in.”
...and also replaces TP in the bathroom
Religious belief, morality, and science interact, however, your implication is that atheists have no moral values. That’s incorrect. One of the most moral, caring people in my life was an atheist. I might also add that I got scammed out of $500K by a group of church-going conservatives who apparently had no problem lying to me and committing other criminal acts. Despite those two examples, I have observed that conservative Christians are almost always trustworthy, moral people.
Whenever the left are caught red-handed acting like vile, loathesome filth — which is to say, like leftists — they try to shift the focus from what they’ve been doing to the means that were used to catch them.
Frankly, I don’t care what means are used to expose them, so long as they are exposed.
Evolution contradicts the fossil record, the record of genetic mutations and has never been observed.
Have you figured out any responses to evolution's fatal flaws yet?
"The gaps in the fossil record are real, however. The absence of a record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement of one by another, and change is more or less abrupt."
(Wesson, R., 1991, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 45)
"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the fossils are missing in all the important places."
(Francis Hitching, archaeologist).
"A major problem in proving the theory [of evolution] has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argumentthat each species was created by God."
(Mark Czarnecki [evolutionist], "The Revival of the Creationist Crusade", MacLean's, January 19, 1981, p. 56.)
"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism ... and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record."
(Mayr, E., 1991, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, p. 138)
"The search for ‘missing links’ between various living creatures, like humans and apes, is probably fruitless…because they probably never existed as distinct transitional types...But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures…If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory."
Dr. Niles Eldredge, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, "Missing, Believed Nonexistent", Manchester Guardian, 26 November 1978
Nice of you to try to chance the subject, but the article isn't about evolution per se, it's about the complicated lies told by creationists in order to bag interviews. Your canned list of silly quotes doesn't really have much to do with anything.
“It’s also especially conspicuous here on the FR Crevo threads where creationists who fail to understand science falsify scientists’ positions just so they can attack them with lies.”
The most blatant dishonesty here on FR is the equation of young-earth seven-day creationism with intelligent design. They are not the same, nor is ID a “creationist notion,” as the article claims.
So anyone who believes in evolution is "vile, loathesome filth" ?
Sorry, that is incorrect. Repeating it, as you frequently do, does not make it correct.
Google "ring species" for an example of both evolution and transitionals:
Ring species provide unusual and valuable situations in which we can observe two species and the intermediate forms connecting them. In a ring species:
- A ring of populations encircles an area of unsuitable habitat.
- At one location in the ring of populations, two distinct forms coexist without interbreeding, and hence are different species.
- Around the rest of the ring, the traits of one of these species change gradually, through intermediate populations, into the traits of the second species.
A ring species, therefore, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet. Ernst Mayr called ring species "the perfect demonstration of speciation" because they show a range of intermediate forms between two species. They allow us to use variation in space to infer how changes occurred over time. This approach is especially powerful when we can reconstruct the biogeographical history of a ring species, as has been done in two cases. Source
“Nice of you to try to chance the subject, but the article isn’t about evolution per se, it’s about the complicated lies told by creationists in order to bag interviews. “
See? There you go again, trying to shift the focus from the wrongful conduct that was uncovered to the means that were used to uncover it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.