Day 2653: Expelled Exploded

Sunday:


Exciting news! My top chum, Professor Richard – husband of one-time time traveller Romana, who used to be in Doctor Who, and friend of the late Mr Douggie Adams, who used to write for Doctor Who (and some travel books) – is going to be in Doctor Who too!

This seems like an opportune moment to WARN you about another screen appearance for Prof Richard, the man rightly acknowledged as the Theresnosuchthingasgodfather of British Atheism.

It is a movie called "Expelled", which alleges that science is really a conspiracy by atheist Nazis to suppress Unintelligent Design and persecute teachers who believe in Mr God.

And – proving that even the brightest of elephants can be taken in some of the time – Professor Richard got fooled into appearing in it.

“The incredible thing about Expelled is that we don’t resort to manipulating our interviews for the purpose of achieving the ‘shock effect’,”

How did they fool him? Well, when they approached Professor Richard, and also Mr Professor PZ Myers and a number of other REAL scientists, they CLAIMED to be making a documentary called "Crossroads" about a cheap soap set in a Birmingham motel… no, that's not right. They claimed that "Crossroads" would be a dispassionate appraisal of the clash between scientific and religious thinking.

This – as you may have been able to guess – turns out to have been what is technically described as a HONKING GREAT FIB, or in religious language: breaking Commandment Nine.

But Professor Richard got his own back by getting into one of their "invitation only" screenings… though, at the risk of undermining my hero's reputation as a MASTER SPY, that's "invitation only" in the sense of "free tickets available off of the wibbly wobbly web".

In fact, Professor Richard happened to be in town for the American Atheists conference, and Professor PZ was the one who got the tickets…

…which it was probably why it was Prof PZ who the brave little STORMTROOPERS for Freedom of Speech picked out of the queue and EXPELLED from "Expelled".

Clearly not "intelligently designed" with an IRONY GLAND there then.

Professor Richard gives his review of the "movie" here.

But why take HIS word for it, when you can LAUGH and POINT at their own propaganda.

"But even worse, along the way, Stein uncovers a long line of biologists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers who have had their reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment"

What the movie is ACTUALLY about is pushing the assertion that believers in Mr God the entirely scientific and credible (I say SARCASTICALLY) "theory" (likewise) of Unintelligent Design, that has nothing to do with Mr God at all honest injun, are being PERSECUTED: i.e. kept out of teaching jobs and even fired just for no other reason than that they want to ignore the set curriculum (not to mention the Constitutional separation of Church and State) and fill their pupils' heads with religiously motivated brain-bilge instead.

Remembering that this is the country where, when the President's DAD was Vice-President, he said:

"I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under Mr God."

is it COMPLETELY believable that it is the SECRET ATHEIST CABAL who are doing the persecuting, as opposed to, just for example, the blatantly out-in-the-open religious theocrats who make it difficult-verging-on-the-impossible for anyone to get a job in public service in Americaland without expressing a deep and abiding lurve (but not in THAT way) for Mr Jesus?

And anyway, it turns out that their "evidence" doesn't stack up. As this review by Mr Dan Whipple from Colorado shows, the cases of "discrimination" that they cite just don't stand up to examination. Claims that Mr Richard Sternberg was removed from the Smithsonian prove problematic when you learn that he never worked for the Smithsonian. The allegation that Mr Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure because the faculty of astronomy at Iowa State University "unfairly" based their decision on his book about Unintelligent Design collapses when you know that he HIMSELF submitted the book for their consideration. And so on.

"an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma… that allows absolutely no dissent from Charles Darwin’s theory"

Their OTHER "theory" is that knowing about Mr Darwin automatically turns you into a Nazi.

This is their equation:

"Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany."

which is said in HILARIOUS spoiler tags in this review on the movie's own website.

If you don't want to know the ending look away now… "Adolf did it!"

So, I know, Godwin's Law, but they mentioned the Nazis first so they lose.

Thing is, Mr Adolf WASN'T an atheist. He was some sort of weird cross-breed between Norse Mythology and Roman Catholicism, neither of which are RENOWNED as Atheist belief systems.

And Mr Adolf did NOT base his ideas on evolution.

For that matter "eugenics", which is selective breeding applied to human monkeys rather than pigs or dogs or cows or sheeps or other animals, does NOT follow from evolution either.

Selective breeding had been going on for AGES and AGES before Mr Darwin realised that it was going on in nature TOO. About TEN THOUSAND years, in fact since the agricultural revolution and people started farming crops (your mileage may vary if you believe the Earth was created in 6000 BC).

To say that something is happening in nature is NOT the same as saying that that is a good reason for people to do it too.

It is a FALLACY to suggest that just because a person ACCEPTS a FACT about how something works in one part of nature it means that they believe that that way of working should be IMPOSED universally.

In fact, Professor Richard often says that he is passionately AGAINST Darwinism being APPLIED. He believes in social services, universal education, health care and support for the unemployed. If ANYONE is a "Darwinist" in the area of public policy it is the right-wing Mr-God-bothering THATCHERITES like Mr Balloon with their "get rid of the failures" policies.


Suggestions that "evolution is racist" or that "Mr Darwin was a racist" are just as FALSE. If anything, evolution and genetics show that, for all of your different colours, human monkeys are one of the LEAST differentiated species on the planet. Famously, there is MORE genetic differentiation between two tribes of CHIMPANZEES on opposite sides of a river than between any tow humans ON EARTH. (You can thank a near miss with extinction in the last Ice Age for that, by the way.)

To point at "the Origin if Species" and hoot about the rest of the title being "…or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" is to show DRAMATIC IGNORANCE. Mr Darwin talks about races of CABBAGES, or PIGEONS and all sorts of things. He is talking about VARIATION within species. He's not recruiting for the KKK.

As Professor PZ explains, Mr Darwin was no more a racist than anyone else in the Victorian era… that is to say actually quite a bit racist, but only because he'd been taught all his life that the British were the Best. And certainly no worse than Mr "I freed the slaves" President Lincoln.


If by now you are worrying that I am only going to stop writing my fluffy diary in order to go back to my secret volcano base and polish my black leather jackboots before receiving my next set of secret instructions from Uber-Professor Richard, then I suggest you put on your best TINFOIL HAT and go out to see this movie.

Otherwise, I should look forward to some more EXCITING Doctor Who!

PS:

I am indebted to Uncle Alan for bringing this BUNKUM to my fluffy attention.

Day 2341: Dinosaur Theme Park

Wednesday:


Oh very fluffy dear, America!


I suppose that most of you already know about the BONKERS Disney ride that the Creationists have opened in Kentucky to “prove” that back in the Garden of Eden, little baby Cain and little baby Abel played nice with little baby Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Sigh.

We had to get the stepladder out to scrape Daddy Richard down off the ceiling, of course, after listening to the BBC’s Mr Justin Webb reporting from this Lala Land. In spite of his wry tone of “look, you’re kidding, right?”, Mr Justin still allowed the Creationists to get away with presenting as “facts” such nonsense as there being “proof” in Palaeolithic paintings that people and dinosaurs lived together or that before the Fall, all animals were vegetarians. The idea of a super-adapted predator like a sabre-toothed Cat Monster, or a Great White Shark or even Mr Tyrannosaurus Rex himself might be designed for yumming down a FRUIT SALAD is almost as RIDICULOUS as the idea that they were DESIGNED in the first place!

You cannot give these people an inch. You really do need to challenge them on every made-up little “fact” or they’ll end up building a thumping great TOYTOWN and saying “look, there’s your “proof” – see the animatronic!”

After all, assertions without proof is where this whole creationism comes from in the first place

Day 1927: Missing Links

Thursday:


Today we learned that scientists have dug up some bones that they think is the last missing link in the family tree of HUMAN BEINGS. This is jolly good news as maybe it will stop the CREATIONIST TWITS from talking about the missing link as though it proved that people were not descended from monkeys.

Of course, the really interesting thing is that there is not really any such things as “missing links” because this assumes that you have one species and then you have the next and they are completely separate. This is often expressed as “which came first, the CHICKEN or the DINOSAUR EGG?”

But REALLY each species sort of blurs into the next one. You can look at monkeys from a million years ago and easily say that they are from a different species to people. But if you took someone from now in a time machine back in time a thousand years, then you would expect that they could get out and happily get married to anyone from a thousand years ago (give or take having to learn ye olde Englyshe). Then if you took seomone from a thousand years ago back to two thousand years ago, you would also expect them to be able to get happily married to anyone that they met then. Then take someone from two thousand years ago and take them back to four thousand years ago… and so on and so on.

As you go further back, you would probably realise that the passengers that you are picking up and dropping off are getting a bit PRIMITIVE and probably a bit SMELLY. But they are still quite happily able to get together in a BIBLICAL sense with people from a thousand years earlier. In fact after you have done this about a hundred and fifty times, then the people you are ferrying in your time machine stop being modern human people (called homo sapiens by scientists or saps by The Tomorrow People) altogether!

But there is never a definite point where the species change, and never a point where the people from a thousand years later are “incompatible” even if you realise that YOU would be incompatible with your latest passenger… probably because they would rather eat the loo roll than use the toilet properly!

I guess what I’m actually saying that there ARE no missing links, and there NEVER WERE!

Day 1900: Creating a Fuss

Thursday:


Today I have learned about CREATIONISM.

Oh very fluffy dear.

Apparently, this is the idea that the WHOLE WORLD and EVERY LIVING THING IN IT were all created by god.

NOT Cuddly Cthulhu! A nice god, more like Mr Blair's imaginary friend. NOT Mr Frown!

Not only that, but it was done in seven days – or rather six days and a day off.

Now this is a VERY NICE STORY that was made up in the OLDEN DAYS (even before Daddy Richard!) in order that Daddies could tell their baby elephants where things came from when they did not really know.

But I have watched all of Daddy Richard's DVDs including WALKING WITH DINOSAURS and THE PLANETS and LIFE ON EARTH with DAVID ATTENBOROUGH and the ASCENT OF MAN ELEPHANTS and so now I know LOTS AND LOTS of stuff.

Nowadays people (and ME!) have learned LOTS AND LOTS of things such as where stars and planets and elements and elephants come from and so now Daddies CAN tell their baby elephants the answers to lots of these questions. (Or at least, baby elephants can go and look the answers up on the Internet!)



But it turns out that some people think their nice story from the olden days is TRUE!

(At least, they SAY that – Daddy Alex thinks that it might be a PRACTICAL JOKE and has a good laugh!)

Perhaps they do not know that people have gone to all the time and trouble of finding out the proper answers for them!

But the worst thing is that some people say they do not believe my new best friends Professor Richard and Romana about EVOLUTION!

Apparently this is because they DO NOT WANT TO BE RELATED TO ANIMALS!

That is VERY RUDE! I feel SNUBBED!!!!!!

I don't want to be related to THEM, but – as the saying goes – you can't pick your relatives, can you!

Now it seems that Mr Blair has given some SCHOOLS to these people so that they can brainwash indoctrinate educate OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN with this anti-elephant propaganda belief.

They say that this is because their belief is as good as Professor Richard's theory but this is NOT TRUE because their belief is just "the story from the olden days is right" whereas Professor Richard's theory has EVIDENCE that he got with his TIME MACHINE!

[R: a time machine in the form of archaeology, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology and a brain.]

I don't understand why they don't listen to what Professor Richard (and LOTS of other SCIENTISTS) can tell them.

Honestly, if you were walking along and someone stopped you to say "Look! Your shoelace is undone." You wouldn't stick your fingers in your ears and say "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" now would you?!?

Children should have proper schools to go to, and not bamboozling brains trusts run by Mr Blair’s funny friends.