Wheat-dogg's World

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.