Producers of Expelled trying to bribe Christian schools into encouraging, bribing or forcing their students to see their movie
Producers of the Intelligent Design propaganda film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed are trying to bribe Christian schools in America to facilitate or even force their students to go see their movie.
The team at Expelled call this marketing campaign the Expelled Challenge, and describe it as follows:
What is the Expelled Challenge?
To engage Christian schools to get as many students, parents, and faculty from your school out to see Ben Stein’s new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (opening in theaters April 2008).Here are some suggestions as to how to do that:
Organize a school field trip and invite parents to attend as well. Offer extra credit to your students to go on their own time.What is the reward?
Generous donations can be awarded to schools according to the number of movie ticket stubs they turn in. By accepting this challenge, your school could be awarded a donation up to $10,000, just for bringing your kids to see this film!Your school will be awarded a donation based upon the number of ticket stubs you turn in (see submission instructions in FAQ section). That structure is as follows:
- 0-99 ticket stubs submitted = $5 per ticket stub
- 100-299 ticket stubs submitted = $1,000 donated to your school
- 300-499 ticket stubs submitted = $2,500 donated to your school
- 500 ticket stubs submitted = $5,000 donated to your school
Each school across the nation will be competing for the top honor of submitting the most ticket stubs with that school having their $5,000 donation matched for a total donation of $10,000!
And then in the FAQ section we see this piece of advice on how to rack up the most money for one’s school:
In speaking with Christian Schools, we’ve found that hosting a school-wide “mandatory” field trip is the best way to maximize your school’s earning potential. Send a field trip home with your middle school and high school students, have each child pay for their own ticket, then collect the stubs at the door once you get to the movie theater. With this model, you also will be able to benefit from the ticket stubs purchased by parents who choose to come as well.
Wow! Well what a great deal all of this is! Schools are being provided with the opportunity to profit off of encouraging, bribing, or forcing their students to pay their own money to see a blatant propaganda film depicting a fabricated victim complex of the religious right as they attempt to argue that their ideas are not complete and utter bullshit! Sign me up! And what makes the opportunity all the more exciting is that schools get to compete with one another for the “top honour” of being the most prolific seat fillers.
What’s sad is that you know that a number of schools will enthusiastically engage this challenge and will view this movie as truly being educational, rather than a pack of misrepresentations. What’s funny is how these promotional efforts reveal the true underlying force behind the ID movement: Christian Creationism. As pointed out on The Bad Idea Blog, it is curious that on the one hand, leaders of the ID movement claim that ID is not about religion but about science, while on the other hand, the promoters of this movie are campaigning specifically to Christian schools. If it’s all about science, why not campaign to schools of all faiths and, dare I say it, public schools. If ID is a secular scientific program, why direct act as if the only people who the film is aimed at is Christians—and not just Christians, but the kind of Christians that would attend or put their child in a Christian private school? Why describe your movie as being “an extremely important project for those of us who believe our world was designed by a creator and not an act of random chance”? If it’s about science, then shouldn’t the movie be important to all of us? When early quantum physicists were promoting their colloquia and conferences, I’d be willing to bet that they didn’t run promotions exclaiming that the upcoming event was extremely important for those of us who believe in a non-deterministic probabilitistic universe. It was important to anyone interested in honest inquiry.
(Hat Tip: The Bad Idea Blog)
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The Frame Problem 
Good point about the quantum physicists. You really have to wonder whether the ID movement is ultimately very happy about this film. They certainly have been jumping on the bandwagon to promote it, but they’ve been curiously silent about its explicit “we are fighting this battle for Christ” overtones.
I have always been chary whenever religious organizations make attempts to force anyone to do anything, including watching a movie. I don’t care how “educational” they think it is. If it has any validity at all, it will be able to stand on its own merits. Forcing or coercing children to watch it and penalizing them if they don’t watch it is conscription and indoctrination, and I consider that to be an act of war. Going to war against children — who have no way of fighting back — is a shameful act.
For the uninitiated, “chary” is a real word, not a typo of “wary.”
🙂
sick.
I wish I could just rewind to the “Bueller…………………..Bueller…………” days.
Even if one accepts the basic premise of intelligent design, aliens are a far more plausible explanation than gods, and polytheistic religion more plausible than monotheistic religion (since polytheism doesn’t posit omnipotence or omniscience, too highly problematic attributes which all monotheistic faiths insist on despite their total incoherence.)
Exactly. And the polytheisms don’t claim omnipotence, omniscience, AND omnibenevolence simultaneously (“Is God not able to help me get out of this burning house? Does he not know about the fire? Or does he just not care?”).
MC:
I’m going to be brief here.
There is still absolutely no good reason to teach that some God did all of this, regardless of by what mechanism. There is no reason to believe in a God. There is also no reason to believe in no Creator—though there is plenty of reason to be highly highly doubtful of the Creator specified by any of our world’s religions. In science, we can talk about what there is evidence for and then be honest about what we do not know and be honest in discussing the arguments for and against different possible answers to these unknowns.
Next, just because Darwin said what he said—I’ll take your word for it—does not mean that we should teach that. We do not teach what Darwin says because it was Darwin that said it. Biology is not a Darwinist cult that just laps up every word he says and accepts it as gospel. Science, ideally, is not about the scientist, it’s about the science. The ideas. The evidence.
Wow, If not God then who ( made made made ) this all in complete balance. We come from a seed and grow by complete design and wisdom of the Creator. Jest spend some time examining creation. I think ideally christian producers should rely more on God!
S.