Wheat-dogg’s world
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Not to me, really, but to my site’s visibility. Two years ago I wrote a post debunking the so-called “water gas”/HHO/Brown’s gas technology of running your car on water. Then, starting in January this year I have had several visitors commenting positively and negatively on the post. I suspect it has something to do with gasoline prices rising above $4 and diesel prices inching toward $5 a gallon.

I won’t go over the whole “water gas” scheme here, but the gist of my argument is that it (1) is unsafe and (2) not a cure-all. I won’t even get into the whole “oil company conspiracy” thing, since paranoid people cannot be made un-paranoid no matter how much you try to reason with them.

Rather than do the sensible thing and DRIVE LESS, PEOPLE!!, many US drivers are looking for a magic bullet to maintain their wasteful use of fuel to putter around town. We are so damn spoiled here. Despite our rising fuel costs, we still pay less than Europeans have to years. Detroit (and to some extent Japan) encouraged us to buy big-ass cars and SUVs (fancy trucks, in my book) that get crappy fuel mileage, which suckered US car buyers into these land yachts that now suck their wallets dry at the gas pump.

So now I guess they’re looking up ways to pay less at the pump on the ‘Net, and have stumbled upon the water gas guys, and my post. Good luck, suckers!

It’s easy. Take out any words suggesting a Divine Creator and replace them with words “intelligent agency” or “intelligent designer.” Then insist the new version is in a fact a science textbook that should be used in schools.

Too bad the ID crowd’s feeble attempt at subterfuge failed. Some fine detective work at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) revealed the genealogy of the new ID text, Of Pandas and People, as the center prepared briefs for the 2005 Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District legal case.

This YouTube video explains it all.

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge has promised a fast decision in a lawsuit brought by Yoko Ono to get the song Imagine taken out of a movie challenging the concept of Darwinian evolution.

A lawyer for the movie’s distributors has warned that the litigation could wreck the movie’s political message by preventing it from impacting viewers in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential campaign.

The movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, features Ben Stein challenging Darwinian theories and suggesting life could have originated through intelligent design. About 20 to 30 seconds of the song are played in the movie.

Ono has accused the movie’s producers of infringing the song’s copyrights by using it without her permission, giving the impression that the Lennon family had authorized it.

US District Judge Sidney Stein’s ruling will settle whether the producers of the film can release it to Canadian theaters and to DVD as planned. The Canadian premiere is scheduled for June 6, according to Premise Media’s attorney Anthony Falzone. DVD rights have to be finalized by the end of this month for an October release, he said.

As for the political impact of the film, this decision will have little effect. The movie is a dog. It has been losing audiences and theaters steadily since it opened April 18, despite all the publicity — good or bad — about it. If the producers of this film think it has any political impact, they’re dreaming.

Academics that teach theories contradicting evolution are harassed, lose their jobs and reputations or are refused tenure, according to Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It offers four examples of the so-called Darwinist conspiracy to silence “anti-evolutionists.”

All of which are pitiful examples, since none of them lost their jobs because of their Intelligent Design beliefs. There were other reasons they lost their jobs.

For perhaps obvious reasons, the movie fails to discuss the number of academics subjected to harassment by the creationist/Intelligent Design “hegemony” — y’know, the “good guys.” Blogger Blake Stacey has found at least 12 examples of creationists interfering with the careers of science instructors. You need to read his post in case any Expelled fans rail at you about the Darwinist conspiracy.

John Lennon’s 1971 song, “Imagine,” is the theme song of neo-Darwinists, according to Walt Ruloff, CEO of Premise Media, and was thus used appropriately in his company’s movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

In an interview with the conservative news site, World Net Daily, Ruloff insisted the use of the song fit the theme of the movie.

“If you really listen to the lyrics of ‘Imagine’ then you realize that it represents everything that the Neo-Darwinists want. ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven … No hell below us … Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too…’ That’s exactly what the Darwinist establishment wants to do: get rid of religion,” said Walt Ruloff, CEO of Premise Media. “And that’s what we point out when we play less than 15 seconds of the song and show some of the lyrics on screen.”

Rrrright … John Lennon channeled Charles Darwin, who wrote a biological theory proposing that we do away with religion. I don’t understand how I missed that connection before.

Expelled alleges that a “neo-Darwinist” conspiracy seeks to quash any debate about the theory of evolution and that evolution — Darwinism — is directly responsible for racism, the Holocaust, abortion and euthanasia. The movie opened April 18 and has grossed just over $3.4 million so far.

Part of the movie includes a short excerpt of “Imagine,” in an attempt to make a connection between the sentiments expressed in the lyrics and the movie’s allegations of this neo-Darwinist (in the old days, it was called secular humanist) conspiracy.

I realize I have spent an inordinate amount of time and space critiquing the Leader’s Guide for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but a careful examination of this so-called resource is valuable. Parsing it allows me to address the fallacies and inconsistencies inherent in the movie, which opens Friday.

So far, I have examined the Guide’s own presentations of the scientific “proof” against and cultural consequences of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The Guide — typical of many anti-evo websites — takes quotes out of context, misquotes, repeats factual errors, ignores standard rules of logical argumentation and in general provides no scientific basis for the claim that Intelligent Design is a viable scientific theory.

The end of the Guide its readers a list of sources to read, and suggests “talking points” for discussion leaders, pastors and teachers to use.

The source list is hopelessly biased toward only one side of the so-called debate. Under normal circumstances, a reference guide would include the major works on both sides of an issue. In this case, though the Guide quotes them several times, neither Darwin’s The Origin of Species or The Descent of Man are on the suggested reading list. Nor is any modern resource, printed or electronic, on evolutionary theory.

One single source that might be considered pro-evolution is Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. The rest (excepting Hitler’s Mein Kampf and a letter by Karl Marx) are all pro-ID. There are no links to pro-evolution websites, of which there are a multitude. If the premise of the movie and the Guide is to “teach the controversy,” then omitting evolution resources belies the premise.

Lawyers for XVIVO, which produced animations of cell biology for Harvard, sent a letter this week to Premise Media, the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, claiming that Premise plagiarized their work.

Premise Media denies the accusation, of course.

Editor’s Note: Questions have been raised about the origination of some of the animation used in our movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Claims that we have used any animation in an unauthorized manner are simply false. Premise Media created the animation that illustrates cellular activity used in our film.

The Producers of “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed”

Fellow blogger SA Smith has the gory details at her site, ERV here and here.

After summarising the last section, Why Does It Matter?, the Guide finishes its informational portion with a two-column comparison of evolution and intelligent design.

Guide:

Under the heading, “What Is Evolution?”, the Guide offers three variants of the meaning of the word, “evolution.”

1. Evolution is “change over time,” meaning that present-day life forms are different from earlier ones, or that minor changes within species can occur over a short time.
2. Evolution is associated with the theory of common descent, meaning that all organisms existing today have a single common ancestor.
3. Evolution is the “unguided process of DNA randomly mutating with ‘natural selection,’ blindly acting on those changes to gradually produce the variety of all life.”

The Guide then cautions its readers that this multiplicity of definitions can confuse discussions when someone takes evidence for Evolution #1 and tries to make it look like it supports Evolution #2 or Evolution #3. Conversely, someone may discuss issues with Evolution #2 or Evolution #3 but is then falsely accused of also rejecting definition of Evolution #1. This is simply not the case, for most scientists who dissent from Darwinism accept Evolution #1.

Comments:

This bit of sophistry obfuscates the real issue here. There is one theory of evolution, just as there is one atomic theory or one Big Bang theory. The theory of evolution comprises all three “definitions.” You logically cannot accept some parts of the theory and reject other parts, if those parts offend your religious beliefs.

You would hope that Scientific American would pan Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” but the reviewer on Fox News? When the network that carries the likes of Sean Hannity can say “‘Expelled’ is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) ‘expose’ of the scientific community,” you know the movie gotta be bad.

Why does it matter?

The guide continues with smear campaign against evolution, by accusing it of fostering “relativism, religious skepticism and a dehumanized view of men and women.”

All this from a scientific theory! But wait there’s more!

In particular, it says evolution provides “Darwinists” justification for abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, racism, and Nazism. Therefore, evolution must be wrong. Try our new faith-based “theory,” satisfaction guaranteed. Operators are standing by.

Guide:

After establishing that most evolutionary biologists are atheists and agnostics, the guide repeats the allegation that evolution is a kind of religion. “Darwinism has become the substitute ‘creation story’ for those who embrace materialism. Materialism is a philosophy which says that the physical realm is the only reality that exists.” This “worldview” leads to moral relativism, religious skepticism and dehumanization.

Hmm, sounds like Satanism to me. Whaddaya you think, Davey?

Comments:

This one paragraph contains multiple falsehoods. First, the Guide preaches a lie, that evolution, a scientific theory, is directly responsible for Social Darwinism, a completely different animal. Anthropologists, sociologists, politicians, demogogues, have applied a bastardized interpretation of evolutionary theory — the fit survive — to social and political structures. Social Darwinism has existed in one form or another since humans’ early history: the strong can subject the weak, because they’re “better.” After Darwin published his theory, the strong now had a “scientific” justification for their behavior.