Never mind all the publicity the movie has gotten over the past several days; this clip said it all for me.

I guess it’s been awhile since I’ve heard Ben Stein’s voice, because it took a few seconds for his whiny monotone to register. My immediate reaction was, “What on earth were they thinking?” Even if I was the most fervent of cdesign proponentsists, there’s no way I would be willing to sit through 90+ minutes of Ben Stein’s voice.

I realize that to the True Believers, Expelled is going to be the proverbial all that and a bag of chips, but I would think that anyone who is neutral on the issue is going to be turned off by Ben Stein’s voice.

Apparently, professional voice talent like Keith David and Peter Coyote weren’t willing whore themselves out and put on a silly schoolboy outfit.

I’ve read that Ben Stein was chosen because he’s not overtly religious. Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know. Judging by some of the idioitic things he’s said in the past, I tend to think the producers of Expelled saw in Stein the requisite amount of douchitude needed to capture the ridiculousness of the film. Furthermore, Ben Stein’s initials must have come in handy on the set. I can picture the producers hovering over the editor’s shoulder at the editing bay, saying, “I think this scene could use some more BS”.

Since Expelled will probably be nothing more than an hour an a half of “preaching to the choir”, the producers should have gone ahead and hired a Christian to host the film. Kirk Cameron’s schedule must have a few openings, and he’s got plenty of experience making a fool out of himself while cameras are rolling. If Cameron couldn’t be coaxed to remove his lips from Ray Comfort’s ass long enough to narrate a documentary, maybe Willie Aames could have done it. He at least has a great “willing to wearing silly outfits” reference in his resume.

If Cameron and Aames are too cheesy, perhaps the producers could have gotten Stephen Baldwin; he could pull in the dozen or so people who still think he’s cool based solely on his performance in The Usual Suspects.

Bunnell to Myers, Dawkins and Eugenie Scott:
“All three of you are in so much shit, it’s almost unbelievable.”

If I had a hand in the production of Expelled, my choice for narrator would have been Sheriff John Bunnell. He would have kicked ass:

These dizzy Darwinian dogmatists might have thought they were dealing Deistic Design a deathblow by defending their draconian dissertations with deftly-delivered doublespeak, but thanks to this sudden surge of sanctimonious sectarian pseudoscientists selling a sentient Sky-Daddy to susceptible schoolchildren, the only place these evil-utionists will be holding class is… in hell!

Shit, I’d pay money to hear some of that.

The more I think about it, the more I’m down with Cephus’s idea of going all Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Expelled. I’d like to see Expelled re-dubbed a la Shogun Assassin, or better yet, Kung Faux. Or maybe taking dialog and narration from existing movies and splicing it into Expelled would work. I think using some of Ron Howard’s narration from Arrested Development would be perfect.

My family and friends consider me a Movie Nazi; it takes very little for me to get turned off to a movie. For example, while most people would agree with me that Daredevil blew chunks, it was the fact that at the start of the movie, starving attorney Matt Murdock was prosecuting a case that did it for me. I realize that suspension of disbelief is part and parcel of the movie viewing experience, but too many filmmakers use that as an excuse to be lazy. Suspension of disbelief shouldn’t even apply to a documentary, anyway; I bring it up only to say that while I enjoy Droopy cartoons I wouldn’t necessarily want to see a documentary narrated by Droopy Dog. If I did watch a movie narrated by Droopy, I’d expect anvils to start falling out of the sky at some point in the film.

It’s the same thing with Ben Stein. A few seconds after hearing his voice, I’m either looking for the Visine, or changing the channel. It has nothing to do with what an asshole he is; we’ve all heard the expression “he has a face made for radio“… Ben Stein has a voice made for mime.

When an Indian politician recently accused a foe of placing some sort of Tantric hex on her, a TV station in India scheduled a debate between rationalist Sanal Edamaruku and black magic practitioner Pandit Surinder Sharma. The result? Sharma got pwned, big-time.

The debate went in to overtime when Edamarku challenged Sharma to kill him using his tantric magic:

The encounter took place under the open night sky. The tantrik and his two assistants were kindling a fire and staring into the flames. Sanal was in good humour. Once the ultimate magic was invoked, there wouldn’t be any way back, the tantrik warned. Within two minutes, Sanal would get crazy, and one minute later he would scream in pain and die. Didn’t he want to save his life before it was too late? Sanal laughed, and the countdown begun. The tantriks chanted their “Om lingalingalingalinga, kilikilikili….” followed by ever changing cascades of strange words and sounds. The speed increased hysterically. They threw all kinds of magic ingredients into the flames that produced changing colours, crackling and fizzling sounds and white smoke. While chanting, the tantrik came close to Sanal, moved his hands in front of him and touched him, but was called back by the anchor. After the earlier covert attempts of the tantrik to use force against Sanal, he was warned to keep distance and avoid touching Sanal. But the tantrik “forgot” this rule again and again.

When the clock struck midnight, the show’s anchor declared Sharma’s magic an Epic Fail:

Millions of people must have uttered a sigh of relief in front their TVs. Sanal was very much alive. Tantra power had miserably failed. Tantriks are creating such a scaring atmosphere that even people, who know that black magic has no base, can just break down out of fear, commented a scientist during the program. It needs enormous courage and confidence to challenge them by actually putting one’s life at risk, he said. By doing so, Sanal Edamaruku has broken the spell, and has taken away much of the fear of those who witnessed his triumph.

I wish our news channels would do stuff like this; it would be a welcome relief from these “Breaking News” stories about Britney Spear’s New Look.

Welcome, Pharyngulites Pharynguloids readers of Pharyngula! Pull up a chair and set a spell.

What made the film so interesting, however, was the way the editors spliced archival footage into the movie. There were a lot of clips of preachers, politicians, parents and otherwise “concerned citizens” ranting about the evils of rock music; in 1956, it appears there wasn’t an evil under the sun that couldn’t be blamed on Rock & Roll. Chief among the Evils of Rock Music was that it led to *gasp!* integration. According to the authorities back then, black people sharing the same dance floor as white youths would ultimately lead to the downfall of civilization.

A lot has changed since then. Sure, there’s a fringe element who still rails against rock, but the sad fact is, what kids are listening to these days is pretty tame. Face it: since GG Allin and El Duce died, parents can sleep a little safer at night.

The internet can take part of the blame for the decline of Rock & Roll’s influence on today’s youth. What with goatse.cz, Tubgirl, and 2 Girls 1 Cup hiding behind hyperlinks, it seems almost quaint that the anti-rock establishment’s last hurrah placed a Prince song at the top of their “Filthy Fifteen” list.

There is another notorious Minnesotan arousing the ire of concerned parents these days: PZ Myers. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Professor Myers was some sort of serial killer on the loose, preying on unbaptized children and stealing socks from the dryers of God-fearing Americans.

PZ Myers: Shown in Expelled only from the waist up

The Information Age must be frightening to parents who wish to keep their children insulated from the scary outside world. All a child has to do is type the word “atheism” into a search engine, and they’ll find millions of pages dealing with the subject. For young people who subscribe to the stereotype of the atheist as the unhappy, god-hating local crank who tries to get nativity scenes removed from people’s lawns, the internet probably does a lot to shatter some myths about atheism.

To counteract all this information, some religionists have taken to Defending the Faith by shooting the messenger, so to speak. Why bother refuting atheism or providing evidence for Intelligent Design when it’s so easy to attack a biology professor in Minnesota?

I’ve been a semi-regular reader of Pharyngula for several years. Lately I’ve discovered that the reactions to PZ Myers are just as entertaining as the man himself.

The name “PZ Myers” is to religionists much like Red Kryptonite is to Superman; there’s no telling how they will react upon hearing those words. Even though Myers defended Robert Marks in the Baylor/Evolutionary Informatics Lab flap, according to The Discovery Institute’s Bruce Chapman, Myers “is the most vociferous advocate of expelling Darwin critics from academia.”

This sort of we’ve-always-been-at-war-with-Eastasia rhetoric is common when dealing with PZ’s critics, and often comes up even when Professor Myers isn’t the topic of discussion. On a Christianity Today article about atheist summer camps, a commenter chimes in with:

Preaching is what atheists do - at least many of the louder ones. Have you ever been to pz myers blog? Have you ever read Dennent [sic] or Dawkins? These guys are more evangelistic than the most ardent evangelical.

That’s funny… the last time I checked, PZ works for a living and doesn’t have to solicit donations like other evangelical missions. The day an atheist knocks on my door and tries to convert me using bullshit arguments is the day that I will concede that atheists are “evangelical”.

After having his ears thoroughly boxed by PZ over his “Where are the giant mammaried mosquitos?” article, Timothy Birdnow has since been reduced to a blubbering moron when it comes to dealing with Myers:

Of course, the pious P.Z. is piously atheistic, and has the usual child-like understanding of history that is the hallmark of atheists and liberals in general, so he ends his blogpiece by calling for an end of the “superstition“ of religion.

Someone get that man a thesaurus! Pardon me for using the F-word, but I’m amazed at how often religionist anti-atheist rhetoric is framed in religious terms. “Evangelical”, “pious”… these are words with positive connotations in the world of religion, yet they’re thrown around as epithets by religionists. I honestly don’t get it.

It comes as a shock to Christians that PZ Myers has a daughter, Skatje. Perhaps there’s an old wives’ tale that claims atheism leads to sterility, because some god-botherers just can’t seem to get their heads around the fact that Myers raised a child. Perhaps the last person on earth who should be discussing fatherhood, the disturbingly misogynist Coach Buzzcut lookalike, Vox Day, put Myers’ parenting skills to question because Skatje had written an article advocating the repeal of laws against bestiality. Never mind that she plainly stated in the first two sentences of her article that she was not in any way interested in having sex with animals, the anti-PZ crowd jumped on the post like William Dembski on someone else’s intellectual property. Only a few days into the new year, Salvador Cordova earned the coveted Asshole of the Year award by writing a post so foul and contemptible that it eventually managed to trigger a rare public display of shame by Cordova.

Salvador Cordova removed the offending article after being prodded by the Number One Concerned Parent in the State of Kansas, “For the Kids“. This is surprising, considering it was FtK’s baiting that initially inspired Skatje Myers’ Zoophilia post.

There are very few bloggers who can bring the anti-PZ hysteria like FtK. Virtually any defense of atheism is met with “Oh yeah? Well, PZ Myers…” by the self-proclaimed “Reasonable Kansan”. Her blog is a treasure trove of PZ-on-the-Brain. The mere sight of him renders her speechless (for which we are grateful, even though the effects are only temporary), and when she manages to string together a complete sentence, stand back, people, you might get hurt:

If I had only to go by the attitudes and the hatred displayed by the majority (not all) of the atheists at AtBC and the horrendous tactics and hate filled rants of atheist bloggers like PZ Myers, then yes, I’d believe that atheists are less than honorable and, in fact, quite hateful and despicable individuals.

Keep in mind that FtK’s “atheists are mean” shtick is often contrasted by her cheerleading on behalf of people like Salvador Cordova and Vox Day.

It could be that FtK is nursing a broken heart. In a piece that deserves to be read in its entirety, she writes:

I once tried emailing PZ and reasoning with him, but he said something negative and told me he wouldn’t respond to any further emails from me.

If FtK’s blog isn’t testament enough, here are 200+ pages of evidence that the so-called “Reasonable Kansan” couldn’t reason her way out of wet paper sack. PZ was only saving the both of them a lot of pain and misery by brushing off her clumsy attempt to “reason” with him. This is someone who genuinely thinks that Walt Brown’s hydroplate “theory” is somehow valid. Furthermore, she seriously believes Expelled is going to pose some thorny problems for scientists (a.k.a. “OMG! DARWINISTS!” in the FtK lexicon). Weighing in on the recent controversy, she greets the prospect of DI flacks debating Myers, Dawkins and other “Darwinists” at Expelled screenings with glee:

Oh, Dear God, please let this come to fruition, and let there be plenty of press and cameras surrounding the scene. Amen.

FtK can be forgiven if she’s forgotten how Myers’ last debate with a DI Fellow went; after all, Uncommon Descent shitcanned the discussion of the debate’s aftermath.

Whether or not the recent controversy will translate into free publicity for Expelled remains to be seen. I find it strange that a documentary allegedly promoting academic freedom tried to prevent a real-life academic from seeing the film. The publishers of The Design of Life have gone on record stating that they have no intention of offering review copies of the book to people qualified to give it a negative review, yet William Dembski brags about the positive reviews. And so it goes with Expelled; the film’s boosters seem terrified that someone who can offer a qualified analysis of the movie’s content might - of all things - see the film.

Denyse O’Leary weighs in on the Myers/Expelled scandal with her usual nonsense, claiming Myers should at least be allowed to see half of the movie, because he only read half of her book, The Spiritual Brain.

Anyone who has read more than one of Denyse O’Leary’s blog posts will have to admit that Myers exercised a lot of patience by making it halfway through her book. How much poorly-written nonsense must one read before coming to the conclusion that it’s nothing but poorly-written nonsense? Do you need to actually drink the milk before deciding it’s gone sour?

The religionists’ level of disconnect when dealing with PZ Myers is amazing. Take a peek in his dungeon and see for yourself some of the absolutely nutty behavior of his detractors. He has inspired not one, but two (now-defunct) blogs supposedly dedicated to “exposing” him.

This is something that the Crusaders can’t seem to understand: arguing against PZ Myers is not an argument against atheism. Nor is it an argument for Intelligent Design. If it suddenly turned out that Myers was an alcoholic wife-beater, it would have absolutely zero effect on atheism. Sure, creationists and fundamentalists would revel in schadenfreude and tell their children, “See! That’s what happens when you become an atheist!”, but there would be no discernible negative consequences to the “cause” of atheism.

The internet has made it much more difficult for parents to bring up mindless robots like the infamous VenomFangX. Although most reasonable people would view this as a Good Thing, to the authoritarian mindset, the prospect of a child who might abandon the religion of his or her ancestors is a scary thought. With such an abundance of information so readily available, today’s youth is able to rebel against the Powers That Be with an eloquence far beyond the days of, “Hey! I didn’t ask to be born!”

What parents must realize is that these kids aren’t jumping on some bandwagon, they’re making a choice based on reason (and to a person who thinks people used to live among dinosaurs, making choices based on reason must be a totally foreign concept). None of the adjectives used to describe the atheism of PZ Myers (evangelical, vehement, pious, militant, piously pious, etc) are in any way relevant to atheism in general; atheism is not some sort of collective with leaders and sleeper cells, it’s the absence of a belief in god(s). Nothing more, nothing less.

Attack PZ Myers all you want; I’m well aware that he is perfectly capable of defending himself and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t have any bearing on atheism. Like Rock and Roll, atheism is here to stay.

Preemptive strike: No, this doesn’t mean the Richard Dawkins is the Cliff Richard of atheism.

I happen to agree with Walker; Muswell Hillbillies is my favorite Kinks album too, but The Village Green Preservation Society is pretty high on my list of favorites. The album contains “Big Sky”, a great tune featuring Ray Davies’ thoughts on god:

Big Sky looked down on all the people looking up at the Big Sky.
Everybody pushing one another around
Big Sky feels sad when he sees the children scream and cry
But the Big Sky’s too big to let it get him down.

Big Sky too big to cry
Big Sky too high to see
People like you and me

One day we’ll be free, we won’t care, just you see
‘Til that day can be, don’t let it get you down
When I feel that the world is too much for me
I think of the Big Sky, and nothing matters much to me.

Big Sky looked down on all the people who think they got problems
They get depressed and they hold their head in their hands and cry.
People lift up their hands and they look up to the Big Sky
But Big Sky is too big to sympathize

Big Sky’s too occupied
Though he would like to try
And he feels bad inside
Big Sky’s too big to cry

One day we’ll be free, we won’t care, just you wait and see
‘Til that day can be, don’t let it get you down.
When I feel that the world is too much for me
I think of the Big Sky, and nothing matters much to me.

Incidentally, Walker’s article doubles as a review for Thomas M. Kitts’ Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else, which approaches Davies’ lyrics as literature. It sounds a bit pretentious, but it might be worth looking into if rock star biographies are your thing.

How does Discovery Institute director Bruce Chapman spin the issue? Evidently he’s not happy with Intelligent Design’s failure in trying to redefine science so that “God Did It” becomes a scientific proposition, so he’s moved on to redefining etiquette.

In the mysticism-addled mind of a creationist, signing up for a free screening of Expelled constitutes “gate-crashing”. Not only that, but by following the same procedures as everyone else, Dawkins and Myers stooped to gate-crashing. Oh, the humanity!

This should be a major embarrassment to the producers of Expelled and the Intelligent Design movement in general, but Intelligent Design advocates aren’t bothered by such things as facts; they’re more concerned with spin.

While the Discovery Institute cries about gate-crashers, Jeffery Overstreet prints an alleged eyewitness account from an ID sympathizer:

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. [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, Mark Mathis is telling the New York Times, “I meant to do that”:

Mark Mathis, a producer of the film who attended the screening, said that “of course” he had recognized Dr. Dawkins, but allowed him to attend because “he has handled himself fairly honorably, he is a guest in our country and I had to presume he had flown a long way to see the film.”

It’s Easter weekend, so Christians all over the world are exercising their brains in an attempt to harmonize the conflicting narratives of Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. Come Monday, their minds should be sufficiently nimble enough to explain away the contradictory accounts of what actually happened in Minnesota that night. We can expect to see Myers’ and Dawkins’ version of events to be dismissed outright; they’re atheists, after all, and are not to be trusted. But since ID proponents never lie - they just spin the issue - cdesign proponensists will have multiple versions of the truth from which to choose.

I was called to jury duty in Compton, California, the city that has been called “the murder capital of America.”

Sure, Compton has a high murder rate, but unless neutron bombs are dropped on Washington, D.C., Detroit, Baltimore and New Orleans, the CPT will never be in the running for The Murder Capital of America. Even lowly Gary, Indiana has Compton beat.

But that’s only the beginning. Ray Comfort isn’t satisfied with just being wrong, he has to show the world what a prejudiced choad he is:

I looked across at the two gang members who were on trial for the murder of an Hispanic “human being,” as the judge had put it. They looked nice enough, in their plush suits and ties. I imagined them in their baggies, with their long socks and hats to the side, holding their guns the way gangs do.

That statement is offensive on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin. Just how oblivious does one have to be regarding their own cluelessness to be able to type something so incredibly stupid? Since his target audience is probably too stump-dumb to digest the idiocy of his words, he’s illustrated his post with an equally offensive image. Jesus Fucking Christ… if he didn’t lift that image from some racist website, I’m the Man in the Moon. Imagine if an atheist wrote about his day at jury duty like this:

I looked across at the black evangelist who was on trial for the murder of a Jewish “human being,” as the judge had put it. He looked nice enough, in his plush suit and tie. I imagined him tap dancing, eating watermelon and speaking ebonics the way black preachers do.

The only context in which I could imagine someone actually writing about their day in the courtroom with something so reprehensible would be if the article was entitled, “I’d like to alienate all my readers who have an IQ above room temperature”.

Reading the apologetics of Ray Comfort - and those of his sidekick, Kirk Cameron - a recurrent theme begins to appear. They both act like overbearing assholes, yet they honestly believe they’re making some positive difference in people’s lives.

The signal-to-noise ratio of the remainder of Comfort’s post is too much to deal with, so I’ll sum it up: He decides to slow down the voir dire process by requesting a sidebar with the judge, then goes into some moronic spiel in front of the judge and lawyers about how gang members should be “lined up against a wall”… and preached at. He claims he told the judge they should sentence him to seven days of preaching to gang members instead of giving him jury duty.

I’m sure Ray Comfort thinks he touched everyone’s heart, but I can guarantee that the majority of the people in that courtroom went home and told their wives, lovers, and family members, “You would not believe this fuckhead who was at the courthouse today”.

I used to work for a company doing multimedia presentations for civil trials. I often had to sit through the jury selection process, waiting to set up our gear. It didn’t take long to realize there is one of each in every crowd: The Obnoxious Asshole Who Wants to Get Out of Jury Duty, and The Obnoxious Asshole Who Wants to Get Assigned to Jury Duty. We would bide our time, trying to pick which juror would be the one to slow down the process by trying to get out of jury duty, and which one would make a scene trying to get empaneled. I guess I’m fortunate to have never encountered The Obnoxious Asshole Who Wants to Preach.

Needless to say, Ray Comfort did not get assigned as a juror. Maybe that was his goal all along, but judging from his post, it looks like his M.O. was the same as always: To make an ass out of himself.

To paraphrase Nicolas Worth in Heartbreak Ridge, “If you wanna get out of jury duty, you don’t have to grease him so hard.”

I was planning on blogging about this eventually, but PZ’s post lit a fire under my ass. I’m curious: do you plan on seeing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed? If so, do you plan on seeing it in the theater, waiting for the DVD release, or waiting for it to be broadcast on your local Public Access station?

The more I think about it, the more I want to see the movie at the local Cineplex. I know about all the arguments for not wanting to give these scumbags any money, but the opportunity to “people watch” is getting to be tempting. I’m really interested in what sort of person will be going to see the movie. Will it be people who genuinely think Expelled is going to be some sort of damning indictment, or will it be people going to see it out of morbid curiosity?