You can join in, and many of you here are old pros at this exercise:

In promoting the creationist propaganda film Expelled, Ben Stein managed to stick his foot in his mouth over and over again, issuing what seemed to be a ceaseless stream of ignorant, offensive, and just plain daffy claims. Here’s your chance to set Ben straight. Send your favorite claim to [email protected] along with a refutation. We’ll post the best for all the world to see. And five lucky entrants will receive a year’s subscription to Reports of the NCSE along with their choice of a book from NCSE’s shelf – including such useful books as Mark Isaak’s The Counter-Creationism Handbook, Eugenie C. Scott’s Evolution vs. Creationism, and the AAAS’s The Evolution Dialogues: Science, Christianity, and the Quest for Understanding. But you only have ten days, and a wealth of silliness to examine, so act now!

Read the more detailed rules. Note that you don’t actually have to see the movie to enter; Stein has opened his mouth at enough venues that there a multitude of opportunities available in the public domain.

This is just getting weirder and weirder. What kind of dummies are behind Expelled, anyway? First they lied about the premise of their movie to get interviews; then they copied Harvard/XVIVO’s cell animations; then they threatened XVIVO with a lawsuit; now it turns out that they’re using music from John Lennon and The Killers without permission, stirring the ire of Yoko Ono. It’s total legal chaos, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not going to even guess how any of it will turn out. Is the movie industry always this rife with sneakiness and dishonesty?

Anyway, no matter how the lawyers dance, one thing is clear: the makers of Expelled have been paragons of ethical dubiety, doing their best to skirt the edges of the law and sneak as much doubtful, dishonestly obtained content into their little propaganda movie as they can. I guess they had to skimp on the budget for the actual content of the movie to scrape together a very large advertising budget — it’s as if their movie is a metaphor for all of Intelligent Design creationism.

How stupid can they get? First it’s discovered that the makers of the stupid propaganda movie were stealing some of their cell animations from XVIVO, and now it is revealed that other segments were ripped off from PBS. It’s as if there isn’t a single bit of creativity in the whole movie — they can’t even lie imaginatively.

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In related news, here’s something really weird. Expelled is suing XVIVO! Oh, and take note of the bizarre complaint that I’ve put in bold in the middle of this freaky press release:

Premise Media is ready to challenge the unfounded copyright infringement claims asserted recently by representatives of XVIVO, LLC concerning original animation Premise Media created for the documentary, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.

On April 14, 2008, Premise Media filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas seeking declaratory judgment that there is no copyright or other infringement. Premise Media also seeks its attorneys’ fees in responding to the XVIVO claims.

The suit results from unfounded claims recently made by representatives of XVIVO. These claims have received wide distribution as part of an ongoing campaign attempting to discredit the film and its producers.

Premise Media has also learned of grass root efforts that are underway to try to influence the ranking of internet searches regarding Expelled by those wanting to learn about the film. Their stated goal is an attempt to counter-site those searchers to other websites that criticize the themes in the movie.

“We are not surprised that opponents of our film are attempting to interfere with its important message. As the movie documents, similar tactics are being used across the country against many of the researchers, scientists, and professors who want to engage in free debate within science but have inadequate resources to challenge the Establishment. However, we do have the platform to confront the ‘thought police,’ and we will work tirelessly to open the doors of free speech and inquiry,” said Executive Producer and Premise Chairman Logan Craft.

Executive Producer Walt Ruloff noted that, “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed opens in over 1,000 theaters nationwide this Friday, April 18th. It is interesting that these efforts are made less than ten days before the movie debuts and involve those who continually seek to thwart open debate. While bullying tactics may work against some individuals who are trying to explore the origins of life, it will not work against us. We certainly will not allow a small group of self-appointed gatekeepers to infringe our rights of free speech and our obligation to expose them for what they are — namely, intellectual thugs unwilling to accept any dissent from Darwinian orthodoxy.”

Ben Stein, the star of the movie, also makes it clear that no one will shut him up. “I came to this project unsure what I would find. I am now amazed at the intolerance of many academic elites. I feel that it is my mission to speak out on behalf of targeted dissenters and fight for their freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry.”

Tell me…do you see anyone trying to shut Ben Stein up? Their faux macho posturing is not persuasive.

It is good to see that the NCSE’s counter-site has made them cry.

On the non-necessity of evolving large brains:

It requires big brains and they in turn demand lots of protein, which, outside modern yuppie societies, generally means meat. As the late evolutionary paleontologist Jack Sepkoski used to say: “I see intelligence as just one of a variety of adaptations among tetrapods for survival. Running fast in a herd while being as dumb as shit, I think, is a very good adaptation for survival.”

(from a review of an interesting book.)

Don’t just link to the Expelled Exposed web site, read it! A whole bunch of new content has gone live, including this video of Chris Comer.

One of the more effective parts is the truth behind Expelled, which goes one by one through the cases of “expelled” creationists, and shows that they weren’t — the quality of a good persecution has gone down considerably since the days of Romans with lions, I guess.

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE EVOLUTIONARY APPARATUS DIRECTIVE
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We need to get the NCSE’s counter-site to the hideous little propaganda film, Expelled, to rank higher in the search engines. The way to do this is for lots and lots of you to link to the Expelled Exposed site with the word Expelled. It’s not hard: just copy this code into a blog post.

<a href="http://expelledexposed.com/"><i>Expelled</i></a>

Whenever you write about the movie, use that link. Do it a bunch of times, if you want. It’s more effective if many people use the same link every time, though, than for one person to be repetitive.

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CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE EVOLUTIONARY APPARATUS DIRECTIVE

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Every semi-knowledgeable moviegoer and reader of movie criticism knows what the words “not screened for critics” means: The movie is a dog.

So what are we supposed to make of Maciel Giertych, anti-Darwinist loon and one of the interview subjects in Expelled, who is also an anti-Jewish bigot who characterizes Jews as “those who did not recognise Jesus Christ as the awaited Messiah”?