Most of you have probably already seen this: David Bolinsky accuses Expelled of theft. Bolinski is the professional who invested a great deal of time and money in generating the “Inner Life of the Cell” video, only to see it misappropriated, misinterpreted, and misused by creationists to promote their absurdity. You can tell that Bolinski might be a little bit angry about this, but of course there’s not much that a few poorly paid college professors can do against the huge buckets of money from unscrupulous fat cat investors and bloated right wing ‘institutes’.

To Mr. Dembski: The only reason I am involved in this discussion is because I do not want the reputation of my company, hard-earned as it is, to be sullied by even oblique affiliation to your sort of smarmy ethics, if only through works of ours, purloined to fit your agenda. Last year you were charging colleges thousands of dollars to give lectures showing a copy of The Inner Life of the Cell, you claimed you “found somewhere”, with Harvard’s and XVIVO’s credits stripped out and the copyright notice removed (which is in itself a felony) and a creationist voice-over pasted on over our music (yes, I have a recording of your lecture). Harvard slapped you down for that, and yes there is a paper trail. One can only assume that had we not taken notice then, we would be debating The Inner Life of the Cell being used in EXPELLED, instead of a copy. You have enough of a colorful history that Harvard, in its wisdom, decided to ‘swat the gnat’ with as little fuss as possible. Imagine our surprise earlier this month, to see our work copied in a movie trailer for EXPELLED! And you are in the movie too! Not quite a star, but brown dwarfs are cool. XVIVO has no intention of engaging alone, in asymmetrical fighting against an ideological entity with orders of magnitude more resources than we have. That might make great theater, but would resemble a hugely expensive game of whack-a-ID. Boring!

You might also want to read Wesley Elsberry’s account of an interview with Stein: one of the problems with lying is maintaining consistency — big elaborate lies involving many people tend to unravel as the principals begin to contradict themselves. Mark Mathis has one account of the creation of the movie that claims it simply, gradually evolved to its current ideological state; Ben Stein casually mentions, however, that he was drawn to the film because, right from the beginning and well before they interviewed me and others, they had a clear, predetermined accusation to make. This is a movie built on lies from the very beginning.

Meanwhile, the reviews are trickling in. Greg Laden tells me there is a review in Time, and it’s negative. You can tell the writer is inclined to be sympathetic to the movie and wants to give it some credit, but has to admit that the claims of the film are unsupportable. Since he can’t do that, though, he has to resort to irrelevant atheist-bashing.

In fairness to Stein, his opponents have hardly covered themselves in glory. Evolutionary biologists and social commentators have lately taken to answering the claims of intelligent-design boosters not with clear-eyed scientific empiricism but with sneering, finger-in-the-eye atheism. Biologist P.Z. Myers, for example, tells Stein that religion ought to be seen as little more than a soothing pastime, a bit like knitting. Books such as Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion often read like pure taunting, as when Hitchens pettily and pointedly types God as lowercase god. Tautology as typography is not the stuff of deep thought. Neither, alas, is Expelled.

Yes, I did say that. But remember, I was told specifically that this movie was to be about the “intersection of science and religion”, and their questions were all about atheism and religion, and my quote in that section is about why I think science erodes religious belief, well in keeping with what I was told the movie was about … if they’d asked me about specific issues in Intelligent Design creationism, I would have gladly addressed them (and they may have, but answers that were examples of “clear-eyed scientific empiricism” would not have made it into this movie). This is yet another example of how they skewed the interviews with editing. Hitchens isn’t in this movie, so why bring him up? And why get irate about capitalizing the name of a god? I can’t say that the typological argument for bestowing respect on a deity is very persuasive, either.

Man, at least Expelled is getting the reputation it deserves: a dishonest documentary that fails to make its case, that relies on dishonest interviewing techniques and misleading guilt-by-association … and don’t forget the Lord Privy Seals.

One thing I know: I never want to piss off Peter Irons, Esq., Attorney at Law.

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First Fox News, now Scientific American gives Expelled both barrels. They dedicated a fair amount of space to ripping into the movie, and you might be wondering if it isn’t giving the movie more publicity than it deserves, a question I’m getting asked a lot, too. Of course it is! The controversy is exactly what they want, since it will help put butts in seats. However, this is bad publicity, and what serves our ends is that people see the movie skeptically, and are made aware of the fundamental dishonesty of the makers. John Rennie notes this problem:

Rather, it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, “You can’t handle the truth!”) Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie–which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.

Unfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film’s attacks–all recycled from previous pro-ID works–would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.

I agree — this is a movie that goes beyond stupidity to actual malice, and it shouldn’t be ignored. SciAm does a great job in exposing the intellectual poverty behind this propaganda film.

Also, remember how Mark Mathis was mentioning that they allowed Michael Shermer to see the movie, as if he were expecting a thumbs-up from Shermer? His review is also online, and as I expected, it is not kind.

Oh, my — you know a right wing Christianist propaganda film is bad when even Fox News pans it.

Some wacky creationists are having a Creation Supercamp in Australia. I am surprised by one thing: their opening description of the event is actually true! I can’t find one thing I disagree with in this statement.

The atheists are on the march like never before. Why? Because creation is also being discussed like never before and they are worried! This weeklong series of lectures and activities will equip you and your children with the necessary tools and information to dramatically affect this world for Christ.

Yes, I think we are seeing an atheist surge right now, and yes, we are worried by the growing creationist activism — I’d even say that rising creationism is one factor in motivating many of the “New” Atheists. Of course, that isn’t a good thing. We also think that the risks of measles prompts worldwide efforts to vaccinate against the disease, but no one thinks that is an endorsement of sickness.

I also think these kinds of events do help misguided people “dramatically affect this world for Christ”. Always for the worst, always with greater and greater levels of stupidity, but sure, they’re affecting this world. That Christ guy seems to have said a few smart things; it’s too bad his name has become such a symbol of deluded idiocy, thanks to people like Carl Wieland, one of the conference organizers.

Unfortunately, too, that one paragraph seems to have exhausted the creationists’ full quota of honesty, and looking over their schedule of speakers, it looks like they’re going to babble out a whole week of lies to compensate.

People are still interviewing me about the silly Expelled movie. The most prestigious news source so far, though, has to be my campus newspaper, The Register. They even ran it on the front page of their April Fool’s issue, a signal honor which I only acknowledge at this late date because I was so busy gallivanting about that I missed it. You’re supposed to be able to read it at the source, but the link seems to have gone all flaky, so at least until it’s fixed, I’ve put the interview below the fold.

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On Saturday, 19 April, I’m supposed to be in a debate on campus. It’s with Angus Menuge of Concordia University and the Discovery Institute, a fellow who did not impress Josh Rosenau, and who professes to have been converted by C.S. Lewis, which bodes ill right there. The organization has been a low-level, simmering clusterkluge ever since a few students asked me to do this months ago, exemplified now by the signs that have gone up all over campus that misspell my name (of course), and by this amazing announcement of the topic on the campus Lutheran ministry web page.

SPRING RETREAT: The Spring LSF Retreat will be held April 19th at the U of M, Morris chapter. Dr. Angus Menuge, professor at Concordia University Wisconsin will be the main speaker. There will also be a debate between Dr. Menuge and Professor P.Z. Myers (UMM) discussing “Does neuroscience leave room for God”. Myers has postulated that the reason people believe in God is because there are “ghosts” in their brains, and as Pastor Jarvis understands it Myers believes that theists have something wrong in the way their brains function that make them believe in God. If you have any questions regarding this debate, please forward them to Pastor Jarvis from UMM. [email protected]. If you are interested in going to the retreat please see Shaina or Pastor.

I am always impressed at how much creationists can get wrong in one sentence.

Anyway, I don’t think this will be much of a debate. Menuge will drone out some theology, the creationists in the audience will be happy; I plan on discussing some real neuroscience, and if that audience listens they might learn something, but more likely they’ll come away with some mangled, confused mess of scrambled ideas, like “Myers thinks there are ghosts! In brains!”, that gets everything completely wrong. I am not going into this with a high estimation of the majority of the audience, unless, of course, you show up. I may have to invite students in my classes to go just to bring more good minds into the room.

I wonder if Menuge is getting coached by his fellow Fellow, Michael Egnor?

The Florida Senate Judiciary committee is meeting just a few hours from now to conder the fate of SB2692, the bill that would promote the teaching of creationism in science classes in that state. Call the members of the committee and tell them that you strongly oppose SB2692!

The new generation of creationists has been doing something rather remarkable. Flaming anti-scientific religious nutcases like Wells and Dembski have been diligently going to real universities, not the usual hokey bible colleges, and working hard to get legitimate degrees in actual fields of science and math to get themselves a superficial veneer of credibility. It’s basically nothing but collecting paper credentials, though, since they don’t actually learn anything and never do anything with the knowledge they should have acquired, other than use it to razzle-dazzle the rubes.

One other example is Paul Nelson, and today is the anniversary of an infamous interaction. You see, Nelson likes to flaunt the pretense of being knowledgeable about developmental biology. Several years ago, he invented this mysterious metric called “ontogenetic depth” that he claimed to be measuring, and which he claimed to have used as evidence that the Cambrian fauna did not evolve. He even dragged this nonsense to professional meetings where he was ignored, except by vicious anti-creationists. I harshly criticized the entire vacuous notion. (I also expressed sympathy for the poor graduate student Nelson had lured into this waste of effort…it was Marcus Ross, remember him?)

He said he’d write up a technical summary that would explain exactly what ontogenetic depth was and how it was measured. He gave us a whole series of dates by which he’d have this wonderful summary. Every one of those dates sailed by without a word. And ever since we have commemorated Paul Nelson Day on 7 April, one of the dates in 2004 that he promised us an explanation. Here’s my anniversary timeline from last year.

I was just reminded that last year at this time I announced an anniversary. In March of 2004, I critiqued this mysterious abstraction called “ontogenetic depth” that Paul Nelson, the ID creationist, proposed as a measure of developmental and evolutionary complexity, and that he was using as a pseudoscientific rationale against evolution. Unfortunately, he never explained how “ontogenetic depth” was calculated or how it was measured (perhaps he was inspired by Dembski’s “specified complexity”, another magic number that can be farted out by creationists but cannot be calculated). Nelson responded to my criticisms with a promise.

On 29 March 2004, he promised to post an explanation “tomorrow”.

On 7 April 2004, he told us “tomorrow”.

On 26 April 2004, he told us he was too busy.

On 13 January 2005, he told us to read a paper by R Azevedo instead. I rather doubt that Ricardo supports Intelligent Design creationism, or thinks his work contributes to it.

Ever since, silence.

This year he is apparently off in Brazil, proselytizing his lies and fake science to the people there, so I’m assuming he won’t get around to explaining his magic metric tomorrow, either. Isn’t it amazing how creationists can make stuff up and get a career speaking at exotic places all around the world?

Oh, and get a day named after them! In his honor, we should all make it a point to ask people “How do you know that?” today, and the ones who actually can explain themselves competently will be complimented by being told that they’re no Paul Nelson.

We’ll celebrate it again next year, I’m sure.

One of the serious shortcomings of Intelligent Design is that it does nothing to provide any new or productive insights into the workings of biology. ID proponents seem to be at least vaguely aware of this failure, in that they do frequently claim to be thinking about working on a preliminary, tentative approach towards the beginnings of a potential research program (my paraphrase), but most of the effort has been directed towards political and legal enforcement of their ideas, rather than actually testing those ideas. One advantage of pursuing only legalisms is that they don’t give scientists anything to grapple. Invariably, when ID proponents do dip their toes in the scientific waters, they end up getting eaten by the sharks that lurk there.

One example: Paul Nelson, of the Discovery Institute, has been peddling a peculiar idea he calls “ontogenetic depth” as a scientific concept that emerges from Intelligent Design. To his credit, he has been presenting this idea in legitimate science venues, at the Geological Society of America and Society for Developmental Biology meetings. Note that getting on the program at these meetings is not subject to peer-review, so it is not automatically a recognition of merit that this work has been presented publicly. It is a good sign that Nelson is willing to expose his work to criticism, though.

I’m going to give it some criticism here. “Ontogenetic depth” is a developmental idea, and I’m a developmental biologist. Today I also get to play shark.

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