PZ Myers implores everyone to put a link on their site to another site called Expelled Exposed.
Vjack on Atheist Revolution also asks all atheists to oppose this film. At first he thought we should all ignore it and not give it any publicity:
With Expelled, creationists are deliberately trying to mislead the public by making the foundation of modern biology seem controversial when it is not. By dressing creationism up in scientific clothing, they seek to present it as a valid hypothesis which mainstream science is neglecting. Rather than openly complaining that science is destroying their religiously-derived worldview, they find it necessary to pretend that mainstream science is somehow biased against their "scientific" alternative.Make no mistake, ID (Intelligent Design) is not a scientific theory, it is not science at all and has no place in a science classroom in any way and never did. It is purely creationist propaganda that they hope to sneak in by fooling people into thinking that presenting both sides is only fair. It is only fair to present both sides in a science classroom - if it's science! If it is religion it does not belong in a science class. Vjack goes on to explain an even more alarming reason to oppose this movie:
I am also worried that Expelled both reflects and may help fuel bigotry toward atheists. By attempting to link Darwin, atheism, fascism, and even the Holocaust, we end up with an anti-atheist hate film as well as a pro-creationist propaganda film. This is truly a Christian extremist's wet dream!So that is the worst of it, Stein equates Social Darwinism such as what the Nazis believed, with actual evolutionary science and equates Darwinism with atheism. I find this incredibly ironic in that the only people today who still believe in Social Darwinism are the rich, right wingers like Stein, who feel the poor deserve to die from illness if they can't afford health insurance. In other words, the rich are rich because they earned it, and the poor are poor because they deserve to be. Social survival of the fittest.
4 comments:
Richard Dawkins has also pointed out that the biological Darwinists (to make up a term) usually back more compassionate social policies than the Social Darwinists. Yet the Social Darwinists are the ones fighting the theory of evolution.
It is an interesting paradox. Do you have any theories as to why this is?
Secular Dignity
Thanks for the link and for contributing to this important discussion. The crap about Darwinism leading to the Holocaust is so unfortunate because I am confident a great many who see the film will end up believing this. There are already so many misconceptions about science (e.g., evolution is only a theory) that this won't help.
Secular Dignity: Social Darwinism is not a part of evolution, it's just an excuse some people use to justify the bad things they want to do. Those who choose to believe in it do so for extremely selfish and self-serving reasons and they are always people with some kind of power and don't want anything to change and take away even a little bit of their power.
So they are out for themselves and not much interested in the welfare of others. Saying those that need help don't deserve help precisely because they need it is just to make the Social Darwinist feel better. That was Reagan's big appeal, he made people feel good about being selfish.
As far as a biological Darwinist I'm not sure who you mean by that, but if you mean the people, not just the scientists, who accept evolution then I think these are people who merely wish to look at the facts and make decisions based on that. Contrary to what the Creationists say believing evolution is not ideology nor does it require faith, it merely takes looking at the facts that have accumulated over the past 150 years. The evidence is so unequivocal that science can't even come up with a competing theory. The only disagreement among the scientists are in specific details of how evolution works, not in IF it works.
vjack: I'm glad to help spread the word, especially since people really do seem to be equating atheism to Nazism because of the message in the film. This is not only completely in error but is actually dangerous. I wouldn't be surprised to if we start hearing about hate crimes against atheist, or perceived Darwinists (Darwinist is a term I absolutely loathe).
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