1. Ben Stein Wins Intelligent Design Money

Comment #128265 by Spandrell on February 16, 2008 at 4:30 pm

Re: 50

Wow. I hadn't heard about how the producers conned their way into all the interviews, but that's hella shady.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/im_gonna_be_a_movie_star.php

Do you know if they can sue for fraud or some kind of willful deception if it could be proven that Crossroads was never intended to be released? It seems pretty obvious that Mathis obtained the interview under false pretenses.

2. Ben Stein Wins Intelligent Design Money

Comment #128050 by Spandrell on February 16, 2008 at 12:09 am

Re: post 21
Bill Maher is a very funny man, but don't expect him to be on your side on matters of evolution and elementary biology.

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/12/drinking_the_an.html
Maher believes that vaccinations do nothing to prevent disease, and that Pasteur's germ theory is "just that". I know he's thrown quite a lot of good zingers towards the Catholics over the years, but it doesn't make much sense to praise someone for being an atheist if they're such a willful cretin on matters of verifiable fact.

3. Ben Stein Wins Intelligent Design Money

Comment #127933 by Spandrell on February 15, 2008 at 6:39 pm

Exactly. The premise of the movie is 'Secular Humanists are persecuting Christians because evolution is considered a worthwhile topic for scientists to research, while Intelligent Design is not.' Bringing in any discussion of factual accuracy will do nothing to advance that premise, and the intended audience for this film, quite frankly, doesn't care about learning facts so much as getting a chance to develop their martyrdom complex.

Oh, and the review from the other thread:

http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3229

4. Ben Stein Wins Intelligent Design Money

Comment #127912 by Spandrell on February 15, 2008 at 5:50 pm

In the other Expelled thread, a review of the movie is posted and it claims that Evolution and Intelligent design are never defined, and Stein shies away from any question remotely involved with the factual accuracy of either. His mealymouthed position might be paraphrased better as "interpretations of evolutionary ideas have caused evil, therefore evolution shouldn't be talked about so much and we should talk about creationism instead." (At least the mainstream creationists don't debate so gutlessly.)


"Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, . ."

That says just as much as "German patriotism, (perhaps mixed with a rabid, vicious hatred of Jews) gave us the Holocaust."
It tells us absolutely nothing concrete about the issue being debated and sounds good in rhetoric, and the only truthful thing about the statement is that the speaker knows that it's easier to defend what you say when you hide behind a disjunction.

5. 'Expelled' Movie: The Extended Trailer

Comment #117492 by Spandrell on January 29, 2008 at 12:39 am

Re: post 32

I can't say for sure how many people will see it, but there's a good chance that the film will break some box-office record of the year.

Straight Dope thread on the subject

As noted on the film's webpage, bulk purchases of tickets will get rebates from the distributors; in effect, they'll be buying thousands of tickets for their own movie. Other Christian films have tried this before: The Omega Code broke records on gross per screen (and it opened the same weekend as Fight Club) precisely because the producers and marketers strong-armed churches into buying tickets for their congregation.

Edit: D'OH! It seems I was blind to all of the seventy-odd timestamps in this thread. Hope nobody's annoyed.