Mile
Zero
know better, learn faster
November 24, 2008
Should Be
In the spirit of Bloodrayne, what better way to honor the intellectual brutality of Expelled (or as I like to call it, "Win Ben Stein's Last Shred of Dignity!") than to liveblog the wretched thing. Luckily, since it's streamable from Netflix, no currencies were harmed in the making of this production.
| Timecode | Comments |
| 0:00 | We begin, incredibly enough, with a string quartet covering Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower." I hope it's not Apocalyptica doing the cover. I used to be ironically amused by those guys. |
| 0:01 | The credits are all integrated into footage of what looks like concentration camps or prisons being constructed. This is already less subtle than Uwe Boll, which is quite a feat. |
| 0:03 | The opening scene is almost like a spoof of An Inconvenient Truth: Ben Stein backstage, emerging to deliver a lecture on Intelligent Design, intercut with footage of prominent scientists (Hey! PZ Myers!) dismissing ID. Stein immediately compares ID to freedom and Margin Luther King Jr. I think the scientists are ahead, particularly since the introduction for the speech (however quickly cut away) is known meth-abusing hypocrite Ted Haggard. |
| 0:06 | Expelled introduces us to Dr. Richard Sternberg, who says he wrote a paper that mentioned ID, and he was immediately called a terrorist. I am conditioned by the campaign season to immediately think of William Ayers. |
| 0:09 | Hey, they're ragging on George Mason University, my alma mater! It's pretty funny to accuse GMU of being a crazy left-wing witch-hunt, since the university is one of the biggest proponents of radical libertarian and supply-side economics in the world, to the point where it has been called by some "The Chicago of Virginia." But then, clearly a firm grasp of reality is not going to be a feature of the next hour. |
| 0:12 | During its footage of academics claiming to have been fired for whispering the words "intelligent design" while alone in their office, the editors continue to intercut "humorous" black and white file footage. One of these is from a Planet of the Apes movie, which seems a little funny in a movie about how God shaped evolution. Why did He kill off people in favor of those damned, dirty apes? Inquiring minds want to know. |
| 0:15 | To protect the creationist academics still somehow employed, they do that back-lit silhouette schtick. Whenever people do this, I always think of old Frosted Flakes commercials, which is a source of some amusement. |
| 0:17 | Unsurprisingly, even when severely edited, the actual scientists being interviewed seem quite a bit more serious than Ben Stein. |
| 0:18 | You know, guys, it's probably not helping your case to play "Spirit in the Sky" over a montage of Stein's man-in-the-street act. |
| 0:21 | Or "Personal Jesus" during a visit to Biola University, formerly named "Bible College." |
| 0:22 | "Evolution is a funny word," says the ID professor. "It can mean many things." Yes, indeed. If only we had a real definition for scientific words, instead of just a vague hand-waving motion. |
| 0:25 | The idea so far is that Ben Stein pretends to be cynical about what he encounters, only to be convinced by them after a few minutes of dialog. But it's funny that his objections still seem valid after that conversation--they're never actually refuted, just dismissed via non sequitor. As rhetorical devices go, it's not knocking me out. |
| 0:29 | Dr. Berlinksi asks whether Darwinism is even clear enough to be examined. After all, he says, it's just biology, which is less accurate than physics, which is less accurate than math! And who likes math, right? Case closed! |
| 0:32 | More ironic archive footage. Seriously getting old. |
| 0:34 | Dr. Wells insists that micro-evolution is valid, but Darwin overstepped his bounds when he talked about the "origin of species." What actually caused the origin of life? Is it God? The suspense is killing me. Incidentally, I should probably start putting the "Dr." in quotes for these quacks. |
| 0:36 | It's the argument from complexity! No mention is made of the enormous scale of time and space involved in evolution. After all, you can't do cute cartoons comparing evolution to slot machines if you want to actually get into the statistics. |
| 0:38 | Stein plays word-association with ID advocates: if Darwin thought a cell was a Buick/mud hut/cell, now it's like a Galaxy/Saturn 5/whole world. How this relates to evolution, I'm not really sure. Are they trying to disprove cells? I hear Darwin used pen and paper instead of a computer, so does math no longer exist? So much for "Dr." Berlinski's academic snobbery. Word association is a fun game to play, though. You can do it at home: if Darwin thought the cell was X, we now know that it's actually more like Y (my answers: quiche/nuclear winter). |
| 0:40 | Here's the infamous graphic that the film-makers cribbed from Harvard. It's very pretty, albeit completely random. A description, by the way, that's not far from the whole move. It's like Michael Moore filtered through Family Guy. |
| 0:43 | In the same sentence, they just implied that science is a multi-billion dollar business, then called evolutionary biologists "good comrades." I kid you not. |
| 0:49 | And now we blame the media. A clip of a news anchor pointing out, correctly, that there's not a single peer-reviewed paper supporting ID. Unless you already hate the media, this doesn't strike me as a very telling point. A couple of journalists claim that since writing about the topic, their articles have been closely scrutinized. And people say the Internet is killing newspapers. |
| 0:53 | You have to wonder, if ID isn't actually creationism, why its advocates seem so repulsed by Inherit the Wind. |
| 0:58 | The film digresses into a discussion of atheist and religious scientists. This is transparently beside the point. |
| 1:01 | Will Provine of Cornell gives us a "disturbing" view of Darwinism. What is it? Well, he'd never heard of evolution growing up in Tennessee, and when he begin learning biology in college, he challenged the professor. Yet, unable to find any flaw in the science, he began to doubt the existence of God. Provine has a tumor, and insists that he doesn't hold any regrets about being an atheist in this particular foxhole. Instead, he wants to die cleanly instead of suffering. To be honest, it's kind of moving, but not the way Stein probably wants. Again, if your initial thesis is that ID isn't creationism, it's probably not too smart to claim that atheism is the worst possible outcome of evolutionary science. |
| 1:04 | PZ Myers says, quite genially, that he'd like religion to be "something fun that people get together and do on the weekends." I understand why that's supposed to be terrifying, but it still just seems kind of comical instead. |
| 1:05 | GODWIN'S LAW VIOLATION. By all rights, I can stop typing now and no-one will hold it against me. |
| 1:11 | "I wanted to explore this connection further, so I met with the author of 'From Darwin to Hitler.'" I'm beginning to suspect that this is really an elaborate joke, particularly when said author directly compares Planned Parenthood to eugenics. |
| 1:11, cont'd. | My Internet connection is actively trying to stop me from watching this movie. Even Comcast hates Expelled. |
| 1:14 | Can Evil sometimes be rationalized as science? Stein asks. "I know Darwinism doesn't automatically equate to Nazism," he notes, letting it go without said that he's implied exactly that (and sometimes explicitly stated it) for the past 20 minutes. |
| 1:19 | For six minutes, Stein just tours Darwin's home and tries to look profound. It comes off more as sleepy. |
| 1:21 | Note should be taken: the cinematography of this is honestly not bad. It's derivative, schlocky, and intellectually shoddy, but it's not cheap-looking. EDIT: Someone really should have told Stein not to cut his hair halfway through, though, because it's a jarring continuity error. |
| 1:25 | In his attempt to confront authority, Stein is the world's worst Michael Moore impersonator. His idea of subversion is to gently interview a few spokespeople, and then throw up his hands and go back to his pet experts. Come on, man! At least march around in a mitochondria costume or something! |
| 1:27 | The clips of Dawkins being prepared for an interview, obviously by the film's own staff, is kind of an odd rhetorical trick. Are we supposed to believe that he's some kind of prima donna? Stein then asks him to put a number on the likelihood of God existing, and then attacks him for not having an exact figure. Begging the question doesn't begin to describe this. |
| 1:31 | Dawkins explains that even if mankind was created by a higher intelligence, something would have to have created that power. This is paraphrased as "Dawkins is okay with some forms of ID, just not the religious ones." No, not really. |
| 1:33 | Back to the lecture hall. I wonder if we'll get another shot of Pastor Ted? Nope. But there is a comparison between ID and the fall of the Berlin Wall, complete with copious file footage. Also, a shot of Ronald Reagan. Stein recieves a standing ovation from his staged auditorium of listeners. |
| 1:36 | The film closes with Stein asking if anyone will remain fighting for ID if individuals don't stand up for it. "Anyone? Anyone?" It's kind of sad to be reminded that the man's entire career is basically one long Ferris Bueller joke. |
July 1, 2008
Cultured
Shorter Conservapedia: We don't really understand this whole "evidence" thing.
November 13, 2007
Creativity
In lieu of original posting, please enjoy John Scalzi's visit to the Creation Museum:
...The guy who built the temple, satisfied that it truly represents his beloved load of horseshit in the best possible light, then opens the temple to the public, to attract not only the already-established horseshit enthusiasts, but possibly to entice new people to come and gaze on the horseshit, and to, well, who knows, admire its moundyness, or the way it piles just so, to nod in appreciation of the rationalizations for its excellence or to clap in delight and take pictures when an escaping swell of methane causes the load of horseshit to sigh a moist and pungent sigh.When all of this is done, the fellow turns to you and asks you what you think of it all now, now that this gorgeous edifice has been raised in glory and the masses cluster in celebration.
And you say, "Well, that's all very nice. But it's still just an enormous load of horseshit."
And this is, in sum, the Creation Museum. $27 million has purchased the very best monument to an enormous load of horseshit that you could possibly ever hope to see. I enjoyed my visit, admired the craft with which the whole thing was put together, and was never once convinced that what I was seeing celebrated was anything more or less than horseshit. Popular horseshit? Undoubtedly. Horseshit hallowed by tradition and consecrated by time? Just so. Horseshit of the finest possible quality? I would not argue the point. And yet, even so: Horseshit. Complete horseshit. Utter horseshit. Total horseshit. Horseshit, horseshit, horseshit, horseshit. I pity the people who swallow it whole.
The museum, for those who have not been following it over the last couple of years, is the work of Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis, and is located in my home state of Kentucky. Thus forcing me, once again, to consider telling people that I'm actually from West Virginia, because that might honestly be less embarrassing.
