(Untitled)

[mod]

So PZ Myers, atheist prince, went to an early screening of Expelled. Expelled is a propaganda film that tries to draw a straight line from Darwin through evolution up to atheism and directly to Nazism and Communism (yep). The premise being that the EVIL ATHEIST SCIENTISM CONSPIRACY (no doubt in cahoots with the Islamist fascists) are suppressing

Comments

[arachnophilia]

they asked dr. myers to leave?!?

man, if i was PZ, i would have politely pointed out that i was in movie.

[mod]

Mark Mathis was there and was presumably calling the shots, I assume he knows perfectly well that PZ is in it. Apparantly PZ gets a good showing on the film - I take it that they have put him forward more after his criticisms of the film.

How they managed to ignore, erm, you know. Richard Fucking Dawkins who was stood right with him I will never know.

[arachnophilia]

sheer force of idiocy perhaps?

[mod]

After many years, I still find it natural to underestimate the magnitude of that force.

[wizzard]

That's pretty funny, although Richard Dawkins and his producers do the same thing with their TV shows they have made for Channel 4 etc. I've read lots of interviews with people from various Universities and places who have been invited to debate with him on various topics and then asked to leave the studio if they present anything argument of evidence that contradicts Richard Dawkins or the aim of the show.

[mod]

Any links?

[wizzard]

This is the only one I can find to the last thing I read.

http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/Dawkins.html

Less to do with reigion and more to do with an intolerance for anything not considered 'proper' science despite the fact that a lot of scientific revolutions and breakthroughs come from people experimenting on the fringe or with alternate ideas that are more often or not dismissed by the traditionalists who already know everything they need to know about which science is proper orthodox science and what is not.
It is onle thing to dismiss arguments with theologeans or philosophers as that is not a compatable mode of thinking with science but to dismiss fellow scientists research just because it doesn't fit your own model whilst expecting people do drop theor models in favour of your own is a little hypercritical.

[mod]

Well, accounting for the inherent bias in interviews I don't see a problem here. An assistant gave incorrect information about the nature of the interview, and when the error surfaced they admitted the error and left. They didn't use the interview in the final product.

In the case of Expelled, the interviewees were given false information about the nature of the program they were being interviewed for and when they complained, their complaint was ignored and their interviews were still used, and when they criticised the information coming out about the final work they were criticized because they hadn't even seen the film, and when one of them goes to see the film he's asked to leave.

Somewhat different tactics.

Unfortunately pseudoscientists are numbered in their thousands whereas genius mavericks are very very rare. Sheldrake relies on small sample sizes, and I haven't seen any independent verification of any of his peer reviewed work (reviewed in fringe journals with an obvious agenda).

Discussing these problems, such as

[neuromantix]

Heres a talk you might find intresting by Slavoj Zizek you might like hes a Slovenian sociologist and largely psychoanalytic philosopher. If you can get past his heavy accent he makes some interesting statements on Atheist viewpoint and the theology of Islam and Christianity which he sees supporting each other in some surprising ways.

[neuromantix]

He also talks about bio ethics and environmentalism in the later parts too.

[mod]

I'll check it out.

[mod]

The theology of Islam and Christianity are largely the same. There is variance really only in some aspects of mythology and emphasis on different aspects.

I doubt I'm going to find myself agreeing with him, idealism seems like a bit of a dead end to me, but I'll watch it and post what I think of it afterwards.