Monday, February 18, 2008

Another day, another load of creationist lies and hypocrisy

These people just can't not lie.

From the Expelled blog:

Big Science doesn’t like it when they can’t control the message: it’s why we made EXPELLED.

From a report on an Expelled press conference [emphasis added]:

Now if Expelled can be said to have a theme, it is that all sorts of ideas should be batted around the ballfield of science and theology, that there should be freedom of expression... This makes it ironic, at least, that they expected the Orlando Sentinel to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Freedom of expression is unseemly at an Expelled press conference. There was no give-and-take, no open marketplace of ideas, in fact, scarcely any questions at all. Ruloff and Stein batted one softball after another out of the park from those posed by Paul Lauer, a representative of the film's public relations firm. Questions from non-employees had to be submitted by email. Lauer (or somebody at his firm) screened them.

I've participated in a lot of press conferences in my thirty years as a journalist. I once bumped into President Gerald Ford on the front lawn of the White House. I had a question for him, which he politely answered. I went to a press conference by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who took all of our questions and hung around afterward to talk with me. I've had press conference questions answered by physicists Hans Bethe and Edward Teller, "father of the hydrogen bomb"; by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson; by John Wayne; by U.S, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney; by U.S. Sens. Alan Simpson, Craig Thomas, John Kerry, Malcolm Wallop and Gary Hart, and by lots and lots of other public figures whose time I've wasted. Some of my questions were argumentative, but all were thoroughly — if sometimes equally argumentatively — answered.

Until I got to Ben Stein. Though calling for the rough-and-tumble of openness and debate, Stein didn't have time for questions.

Hmmm. Who's "controlling the message" here again? "Big Science," or Big Fat Fscking Lying Asshats for The Magic Sky Fairy?

Go viral on this stuff, people, and let's expose to all the world just what two-faced dishonest scumbags are marketing this deceitful propaganda masquerading as a brave blow for freedom of inquiry. Sure, it'd be one thing if ID were all about an honest scientific pursuit into facts about biodiversity, and had actual research to show for it and an actual theory out there making predictions in the real world. But they have none of those things, and must resort to despicable conspiracy theories about the evil ninja Big Science baddies suppressing their brilliant work at every turn. Evidence? Pshaw.

This quote from the Colorado Confidential article sums things up with admirable bluntness.

...not only is Expelled and the intellectual movement behind it hypocritical in its supposed defense of "freedom of expression," it's an attack on the entire superstructure of science and technology that has created the modern world. Expelled is anti-rational.

And disgraceful.

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