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Civil Disobedience: Pirate Expelled

Ben Stein’s use of Lennon’s “Imagine” in the creationist (no-)think-piece, Expelled, pushed the limits of copyright law. Maybe it’s time to push back. Now that the DVD is up for pre-order – kudos to “The Lay Scientist” for a lovely agglomeration of reviews – let’s ask ourselves, faced with a positively dangerous, offensive, and categorically wrong piece of film, what would Thoreau do?

Pirate it. I submit that Thoreau might fire up his uTorrent and, if anybody out there on the internets ever wanted the movie, provide it to them free of charge, thus denying Ben Stein a dime, if he could help it. While undoubtedly contrary to copyright law, piracy would deny Stein the right to profit from the exploitation of the weak of mind, and correct – or, weigh against – a defect in the marketplace of ideas, by which rich fools pollute the thought of the rest of us.

While I *ahem* don’t urge or “expressly incite” others to follow this course of action – nor do I declare my own intention to do so – I express my sympathies for those that take the marketplace of ideas into their own hands. I also imagine that even abstract advocacy of unlawfulness in defense of science might play into the ID creationists’ persecution complex. At any rate, I suppose we have until October 21, 2008 to decide.

RationalWiki 3.0: the Internet for Rationalists

RationalWiki, the wiki-sphere’s response to pseudoscience and radicalized religion, has reinvented itself to cover the world, and the good and bad of the blogs, from a rationalist perspective. Originally the community at RationalWiki developed as a home for intelligent Conservapedia expatriates, enraged and ready to speak out against the sidelining of science in the broader culture, and I’m thrilled to see the site focus that energy on tackling the larger problems of pseudoscience and irrationality outside of the context of Conservapedia.

But you can’t go wrong with a re-invention of the basics, either.  RationalWiki’s original claim to fame (its Conservapedia coverage) faces integration into the site’s broader context in the form of a blog-style, week-by-week focus piece on the worst of the fundamentalist side of the internets – including, occasionally, Conservapedia. First on the hit parade: Conservapedia’s “article” on “the theory of evolution,” less an article than a glorified cut-and-paste job of decontextualized (“mined”) quotes strung together with permutations of the phrase “in regards to,” and Google-bombed to the top of the Google rankings.

The only redeeming quality of a site like Conservapedia, as RationalWiki has proven, is that such compilations of idiocy occasionally have the effect of getting a group of hitherto unaffiliated people together, and giving them a good cause to fight for. A bad act may inspire such a response as to dwarf the initial evil. Cheers to RationalWiki for giving voice to the minds of a dedicated group of rationalists. May their influence continue to outstrip that of the Conservapedias of the world.

Foray into the Fundamentalist Blogs: Cruciform Molecules Prove Creationism!

Or, “Fundamentalist Christian Bloggers Read Too Much Dan Simmons.”

According to Jason of “The Real Jesusland,” a protein in the human body, bearing a shape reminiscent of the cruciform, proves that the Christian God is the one true God, and that He “intelligently designed” the human body to bear witness to Him with its… molecules.

Wow. This is the face of fundamentalist science: coincidence become canon, poetry become proof. While I can’t deny the saccharine quality of the symbolism Jason puts forth, neither can I defend his logic. Jason assumes causation from coincidence, reasoning that will just as soon have you believe the clouds are conspiring against you. Is that dagger-shaped cloud a strategically placed water vapor formation, or a message from God?

Interestingly, Jason can’t defend his reasoning either: his best defensive argument in the comments appears to be an inappropriate burden shifter – “prove that it’s not a sign from God!” – and he screens and discourages commentary on his “spiritual journey.” Ignorance plus vehemence plus denial of debate: the trademark signs of religious fundamentalism, be it Christian or Muslim

More on Conservapedia: Schlafly v. Science, Round 5

Indeed.

Andy Schlafly’s first experimental foray into the field of science (reported here), an attempt to discredit a real scientist (Lenski) on his own turf, has ended poorly, mainly in debunking and ridicule.

As a recap, this Lenski fellow published an article which firmly gave the lie to creationism, and Andy won’t have that: by Schlafly’s conclusion-based reasoning, Lenski must be wrong, and is in dire need of correcting.  Having built himself a lovely windmill, Andy’s proceeded to tilt against it, going from personal letters to Lenski (who destroyed Andy), to legal threats (which never materialized – someone burn this kid’s bar card, really), to the making of foolish arguments in the internet equivalent of a no-scientists-allowed treehouse, and now, undaunted by failure, our Hero now plans to send a letter to Lenski’s journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, proffering the same debunked and ridiculed arguments.

See a draft of his proposed letter here.  And stay tuned for fun.

Creationism’s Trojan Horse is Empty: the Public Perception of Intelligent Design

Since its inception in the dark, smoke-filled rooms of the Discovery Institute, intelligent design was little more than a PR stunt.  The goal was credibility: creationism lost it, and mainstream science.  Provided the “theory” managed to couch its resignation to the supernatural enough in scientific terms, and avoid public identification explicitly with religion, the hope was (as made clear in the Wedge Document) that intelligent design could somehow smuggle God in through the backdoor.

The goal was both cultural and legal: a creationism nominally independent of the Christian God would in theory be palatable to more Americans, and would also, provided federal judges didn’t look closely enough into the matter, escape detection as a “state endorsement of religion,” if offered to students in public schools as “science.”

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ended all that when a nakedly partisan fundamentalist Christian school board member – Bill Buckingham – foisted intelligent design on the children of his district, but failed to speak in the proper Discovery Institute code.  He conflated ID with fundamentalist religion, to the downfall of both.

Whatever independence ID still retained from fundamentalist religion, as I wrote early in this site’s history, Ben Stein destroyed, by openly and publicly equating the movement with religion in Expelled. As always, idiocy contains the seeds of its own undoing: the conflation of ID with religion in the public mind is complete, firmly neutering its public relations and legal appeal.

As the most recent example of this, we need look no further than the funny pages, at “Get Fuzzy.” While PZ Myers took note of the comic, he missed its important subtext.  Laugh at intelligent design through Bucky Katt, and see if you can spot what I mean:

Yep, that’s it.  “Get Fuzzy” plainly references the role of the supernatural in ID as “creating” things.  The general public unequivocally sees ID as creationism.  Congratulations one and all.  We’ve pierced the veil, we’ve opened the Trojan Horse outside the city wall, and we’ve won.

Parents, Talk to Your Easily-Impressionable Kids About Creationism: Expelled Re-Release Pending

My God in heaven, Expelled has risen after three days months, and will be re-released to a limited audience. As we reported back in the day, Yoko Ono lost her copyright suit against Stein for his creative appropriation of “Imagine,” and apparently the Expelled crowd is touting this as a major victory, arguing that the only reason people didn’t go see the God-awful movie was because of the cloud of the lawsuit. I don’t think that’s the case… and neither does Rotten Tomatoes (8%! Ouch!!! That’s Gigli territory!).

In any event, movie theaters aren’t going to take the risk of showing this bomb again, so the “re-release” is only to groups of 200+ who book the theater and pay the price of their tickets in advance: they’re treating Expelled like a hardship case with bad credit.

We all knew that Expelled was only going to be appreciated by the Choir of existing cdesign propontentists, and now Stein’s proved it, by re-releasing the film only to the people it’s already convinced, a fact made more hilariously sad by Stein’s pre-release belief that Expelled would single-handedly unseat “Darwinism.” If creationism ever does strike a PR deathblow against science, it won’t come in the form of a heavy-handed, Hitler-laden movie.

Obligatory plug.

N.B. to “the Sensuous Curmudgeon”: while Ono did just lose her preliminary injunction, Judge Stein’s ruling included factual findings that Expelled constituted fair use of “Imagine.”  Factual findings won’t be disturbed on appeal unless clearly erroneous – read, not going to happen – and while Ono could proceed to a trial on the merits, re-litigating the full issue before a judge that’s already essentially found against you just isn’t good strategy.