Sunday, April 20, 2008

The Grand Miscalculation of Expelled

The ID guys may have badly miscalculated. The Dover trial might have been a big deal to those of us who follow this issue intently, but for the average American, the sins of the IDers remained fairly invisible. But putting their dishonesty out there in a major film for all to see just might be the exposure we need them to get. It is clear from the light box office results and the near universal negative reviews, that viewers have not bought the bullshit. Even potential allies like Foxnews have panned the film.

So the disinterested middle has spoken on an issue it probably didn't give much thought before. But now more people than ever know what kind of dishonesty lies at the core of the Intelligent Design movement. Wouldn't it be delicious irony if the next time someone tried to smuggle ID into a school board meeting, they got responses like "Oh yeah, this is that stuff peddled by the liars that did that horrible Ben Stein movie. Forget it."

Whoever said any publicity is better than no publicity never met Ben Stein.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

just saw Expelled... Ben Stein's goal in making Expelled (i gather) is not so much to break any box office records, but rather to promote free thought, especially more thinking about motivations that drive American academia and a lot of other behind-the-scenes worldview that we tend to take for granted.

ScienceAvenger said...

So far it looks instead like he's caused more thinking about the behind-the-scenes motivations that drive the anti-evolution movement, and the conclusions people are drawing aren't complimentary.