An Intelligent Design documentary offers rebates on movie tickets

Transcript of today's show:

Producers of a pro-Intelligent Design movie starring Ben Stein are raising money for schools by making donations in exchange for ticket stubs. Christian schools, in particular, are urged to book theaters during the opening weekend and receive up to $5 for each ticket stub returned. The film is called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and opens in theatres April 2008.

[source: The Expelled Challenge]

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from the Expelled Challenge web site:

Welcome to the Expelled Challenge web site where we can help Christian schools raise up to $10,000 while educating their students, parents, and staff of the controversy that is surrounding the Intelligent Design and evolution debate. This is an extremely important project for those of us who believe our world was designed by a creator and not an act of random chance. What is the Expelled Challenge? To engage Christian schools to get as many students, parents, and faculty from your school out to see Ben Stein’s new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. [visit the site]

from the blog The Frame Problem:

It is curious that on the one hand, leaders of the ID movement claim that ID is not about religion but about science, while on the other hand, the promoters of this movie are campaigning specifically to Christian schools. If it’s all about science, why not campaign to schools of all faiths and, dare I say it, public schools.

If ID is a secular scientific program, why direct act as if the only people who the film is aimed at is Christians—and not just Christians, but the kind of Christians that would attend or put their child in a Christian private school? Why describe your movie as being “an extremely important project for those of us who believe our world was designed by a creator and not an act of random chance”?

If it’s about science, then shouldn’t the movie be important to all of us? When early quantum physicists were promoting their colloquia and conferences, I’d be willing to bet that they didn’t run promotions exclaiming that the upcoming event was extremely important for those of us who believe in a non-deterministic probabilitistic universe. It was important to anyone interested in honest inquiry. [read full blog post]

from a comment posted on the Pharyngula blog:

These schools are disposed to favor ID already for the most part, but many of them would not ordinarily participate simply because schools (yes, even Christian schools) are hotbeds of competing activity. Without an incentive or strong leadership, even hardcore funded schools are not that likely to participate simply because teachers and staff have so many demands on their time.

But offer the school site a significant prize, and lo and behold, the full apparatus of administrative support is likely to manifest itself. Virtually all schools are chronically underfunded and looking for new, even one-shot revenue streams. The financial inducement is a clever strategy, because it will tip the scales in an area that is already conducive to being tipped---for both ideological and financial reasons.

Further, they are, according to the link, offering how much cash per school? 300 ticket stubs gets you a $2,500!! My friends, it might take as few as two teachers at a given school making viewing the film a required assignment to reach that goal. $2,500 is more than three times my annual classroom budget for supplies, so the incentive is definitely there…..

Add it all up, and we've got something that's going to have a considerable impact rebuilding the cottage industry of creationism within the churches. And make no mistake, that's the real motive, pumping up the market for creationism within Christianity. We can mock it from the outside for their marketing tactics, but the Christians who buy into this will see the financial incentives as a 'love offering' to Christian education, and they will be well-disposed to show it. I further predict that 6-12 months after it leaves the theatres many copies of this film will be purchased/donated by Christian high schools….

This film is going to make a big splash with the audience they are targeting, and it's going to cause problems for real science education, and it needs to be challenged. In particular, the slimy, under-handed way it was produced should be put out there, and those associated with the film's production should be challenged to justify it. [read full commentary]

Atheists are banned from an intelligent design movie

Transcript of today's show:

The banning of atheists from a prescreening of Ben Stein’s film, Expelled No Intelligence Allowed, drew hundreds of postings in the blogosphere this week according to Technorati, a leading blogpost barometer. Producers of the film about intelligent design claim the furor is around the value of their message. Atheists question a film that associates Darwin with the Nazi Holocaust.


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from a blog post by PZ Myers, who was banned from the film screening:

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn't going to cause any trouble.

I went back to my family and talked with them for a while, and then the officer came back with a theater manager, and I was told that not only wasn't I allowed in, but I had to leave the premises immediately. Like right that instant.

I complied.

I'm still laughing though. You don't know how hilarious this is. Not only is it the extreme hypocrisy of being expelled from their Expelled movie, but there's another layer of amusement. Deep, belly laugh funny. Yeah, I'd be rolling around on the floor right now, if I weren't so dang dignified.

You see … well, have you ever heard of a sabot? It's a kind of sleeve or lightweight carrier used to surround a piece of munition fired from a gun. It isn't the actually load intended to strike the target, but may even be discarded as it leaves the barrel.

I'm a kind of sabot right now.

They singled me out and evicted me, but they didn't notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn't recognize him. My guest was …

Richard Dawkins.

[read full blog post]

a comment posted on PZ Myer's blog Pharyngula:

The strategy of keeping the skeptical and rational sectors of society out of preview screenings of this movie makes a lot of sense. If we can't see it we can't destroy it's credibility before it is widely released, and it follows that they will be able to blindside uninformed people much more easily.



excerpt from a press release issued by the makers of the film Expelled:

Executive Producer Logan Craft noted: “EXPELLED makes it clear that academic freedom is at stake. Yet Dawkins and his friends continue to misrepresent the film and slander the producers. It is obvious that they do not want to debate the real issues raised in the movie. Their only interest is to control the damage their interviews have done to their cause. We are happy to let the public decide where the truth rests on this controversial issue when the movie opens nationwide on April 18th.”

Myers has apparently been asking supporters to sneak into the different private screenings for many weeks. After being denied his chance to see the movie, Myers blogged about his experience and expressed his outrage.

Executive Producer Walt Ruloff responded, “This is the typical reaction of Darwinists and atheists who are so blinded by their own self importance that they fail to understand what is really going on. They yell and scream when one of their friends isn’t allowed to see a movie weeks before it goes public. All this outrage while these same people organize witch hunts to expel those who disagree with them.”

[read complete press release]

An anti-evolution film is secretly screened in Florida

Transcript of today's show:

While the state of Florida prepares to adopt evolution as the official new science standard, an anti-evolution film was secretly screened to
conservative Christian ministers at a conference in Orlando. Like Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is being privately previewed by the religious right before its general opening in April.

[source: Orlando Sentinel]


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from a blog post by Roger Moore, film critic of the Orlando Sentinel:

[The filmmakers are] showing the movie to what he and the producers hoped would be a friendly, receptive audience of conservative Christian ministers at a conference at the Northland mega-church next to the dog track up in Longwood. They're marking this movie, which they had said, earlier, they'd open in Feb. (now April) the same way they pitched The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, said Paul Lauer of Motive Entertainment, who introduced Stein.

In other words, a stealth campaign, out of the public eye, preaching to the choir to get the word out about the movie without anyone who isn't a true believer passing a discouraging judgment on it.

They postered the Orlando Sentinel with email invitations, then tried to withdraw the one they sent to me. No dice. They also passed out non-disclosure "statement of confidentiality" agreements for people to sign. [read full blog post]