PZ Myers EXPELLED from Expelled!?!?

Posted by RB on March 22, 2008 · 1 Comment 

A number of blogs have already commented on this unsurprising bit of irony: the makers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (an upcoming Intelligent Design/Creationist crocumentary attempting to cast mainstream science – and evolutionary science in particular – as a dogmatic and somewhat totalitarianesque regime, to misrepresent evolutionary biology and the research behind it, and to suggest linkages between acceptance of evolution to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia) EXPELLED PZ Myers from a Minnesota screening of the film! The makers of this movie are accusing the scientific community of illegitimately muzzling dissenters of “Darwinism” (Darwinism, by the way, is a term that ID/Cers often use to imply that evolutionists have deified Darwin, that evolutionary biology is not a science but a dogmatic faith-based cultish enterprise, and to link evolution to Social Darwinism (e.g., eugenics)), and stifling “legitimate” “scientific” discussion of intelligent design (as if ID were a scientific concept based on any evidence…), and then they boot evolutionary biologist and leading critic of ID/C PZ Myers from a public pre-screening of the film. What is even more amazing about this situation is that PZ MYERS IS IN THE MOVIE! Moreover, as Richard Dawkins pointed out, he was thanked in the movie for his participation!

This sort of thing is nothing new. The promoters of this movie have been engaging in careful audience engineering for the entirety of the crocumentary’s pre-release screenings, presenting the film to what are intended to be friendly audiences (e.g., church congregations) and working to selectively exclude likely critics.

Filed under Anti-Science and Pseudoscience, Evolution, Free Speech and Censorship, Intelligent Design and Creationism, Politics, Religion, Science, Society & Culture · Tagged with Ben Stein, Darwinism, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Mall of America, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins