Discovery Salutes Expelled

[Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman just asked me to post this on his behalf:] Discovery Salutes Expelled by Bruce Chapman The producers of Expelled have high hopes as the film opens today. Practical questions of theater exposures and audience awareness are things that we, as a think tank, cannot assess, of course. But we are cheering the filmmakers on. First signs look positive. The over-the-top attacks of most official reviewers–offended by the film’s message, not its quality–may turn out to help in some quarters. These are the exact same reviewers who commonly tell us not to object to offensive Hollywood products, but just to judge a film for its production quality. By now a large share of the population is Read More ›

Opponents of Academic Freedom on Teaching Evolution Using Outlandish Rhetoric

A modified version of the Louisiana Academic Freedom Bill moved out of the Louisiana Senate Education Committee on Thursday, following testimony from both proponents and opponents of the bill. I recently predicted that, “For the Darwinists who oppose the bill, this battle is about falsely appealing to people’s emotions and fears in order to suppress the teaching of scientific information that challenges evolution.” If you don’t believe me, consider the latest testimony from Darwinists encouraging legislators to oppose the bill yesterday before the Louisiana Senate Education Committee: Unfortunately, Senator Cassidy’s amendment seems to have passed into the revised version of the bill; however, the bill still contains good language encouraging school boards “to create and foster an environment … that Read More ›

Michael Shermer’s Fact-Free Attack on Expelled Exposes Intolerance of Darwinists towards Pro-Intelligent Design Scientists (Part 3)

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] In Part 1 and Part 2 I discussed how Michael Shermer’s review of Expelled applies one-sided skepticism to anything that challenges Darwinism, withholding skepticism of claims made by pro-evolution sources. When claiming that Richard Sternberg faced no discrimination after sympathizing with Darwin-skeptics, but simply invented a “conspiracy,” Shermer failed to scrutinize the blatantly false and contradictory claims by Darwinists trying to cover up what really happened. In that case, Eugenie Scott made private concessions that Sternberg did not do anything mortally wrong in his handling of the publication of Stephen C. Meyer’s paper on intelligent design (ID), and spoke as Read More ›

Michael Shermer’s Fact-Free Attack on Expelled Exposes Intolerance of Darwinists towards Pro-Intelligent Design Scientists (Part 2)

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] In part 1 I observed that the famous skeptic Michael Shermer’s attack upon the movie Expelled over at Scientific American adopts the following approach when denying the persecution experienced by intelligent design (ID) proponents: Shermer Blames-the-Victim Case #1: Richard SternbergThe conversation with Michael Shermer in the Expelled film revolves around the publication of Stephen C. Meyer’s pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific paper in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The editor who oversaw the publication of that article was Dr. Richard Sternberg, who, according to investigations by both the U.S. Office of Special Counsel and also by subcommittee staff Read More ›

Michael Shermer’s Fact-Free Attack on Expelled Exposes Intolerance of Darwinists towards Pro-Intelligent Design Scientists (Part 1)

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] Scientific American has a long history of opposing intelligent design (ID), so it comes as no surprise that they have tasked their columnist Michael Shermer with the job of attacking Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Michael Shermer is the founder of Skeptic Magazine, who loves to boast about how evolution liberated him from belief in God. In fact, he does just that in his article attacking Expelled, opening it by saying: “In 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory,” but when he “finally took a course in evolutionary theory in graduate school Read More ›