Hacker Cinema
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
2008 · Film · documentary · 90 min
Directed by Nathan Frankowski
Pro-intelligent design scholars and scientists are often chastised, fired or denied tenured positions by those who believe in Darwin's theory of evolution.
3 negative3 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
> the idiots who made that movie used very similar language to the OP > immediately assume assume the OP was one
Come on. This is an obvious case of unwarranted guilt by association. For the record, I've never seen Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and from briefly looking up what the film is about, I don't think I'd agree with it at all.
I didn't respond to that argument because of multiple reasons.
First, this is the same argument that many creationists, followers of intelligent design and other religious nuts use to discredit evolution. In fact, if you look up the wikipedia page for Expelled: No intelligence allowed, you'll see that the idiots who made that movie used very similar language to the OP and in fact, my instinctive response when I read this bit, thanks to having heard this so many times from creationists was to immediately assume assume the OP was one. I didn't want this to color the rest of my response so I decided to ignore this bit.
Also, it's seems like flamebait to me. I suspect the OP threw it in there to antagonize those who disagreed with that idea while simultaneously enlisting the support of everyone who was once slighted for his/her political views by a professor.
Finally, are you seriously suggesting that because university professors tend to have certain political views we need to fix this by cutting university funding? I must be missing something because this makes no sense.
Also, the OP's made a very broad claim that most university departments are rife with ideology and hostile to conflicting views. You are referring to some instances of ridicule relating to the specific subject of political views, which is a much much weaker claim.
PS. I believe there's research that shows that the political leanings of professors has little effect on the political views of students. And I'm sorry that you were ridiculed and I think this is unacceptable behavior.
> "discredited scientist lashes out at his critics (some of whom are poor journalists and/or political mouth-pieces)" with "scientists try to silence someone who doesn't tow the party line."
But here's the rub: How do you know which is which? Well, if you agree with one party, it's the former; and if you don't, it's the latter.
The incident I mentioned is the centrepiece of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" -- a documentary about how the evolutionary biology community allegedly silences anyone who doesn't tow the party line.
I finished watching Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" documentary. I thought the documentary was good, in that it talked about otherwise reputable scientists/teachers being expelled from their institutions because their name appeared in the context of ID where they did not vehemently reject it. Even if they didn't support or believe in ID, if they wrote an article merely wondering out loud about it, they were expelled. Interesting part is that in most cases authorities denied that that was the reason for the firing - eventhough their termination letter mentioned it.
Dawkins is so thick-headed. He has a bias about how believers think, and applies this to all of his arguments.
Check out this passage from page 6:
DAWKINS: There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.
COLLINS: That's God.
DAWKINS: Yes. But it could be any of a billion Gods. It could be God of the Martians or of the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri. The chance of its being a particular God, Yahweh, the God of Jesus, is vanishingly small--at the least, the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think that's the case.
Collins has just told him his definition of God and Dawkins rejects it.
I honestly don't want to jump into an argument on the merits of each side, but intolerance is unacceptable. There certainly exist religious nuts, but this God-delusion belief is itself dogma and is blind to the articulate believers.
PS--in that Ben Stein movie (Expelled) Dawkins himself states that life could have been brought to this universe from a higher being, but that that higher being itself had to come from somewhere. This IS "God" for many people. Not very many people believe God is some guy with a white beard who yells and throws lightning bolts.
Ah yes, fluffy pablum from the man who stared in Expelled, the movie about why big science is a big conspiracy to keep down THE TRUTH about intelligent design.