Expelled: The Background Reality

Via Pharyngula, we find that someone decided to introduce the allegations of the movie "Expelled" to the shredder of fact by actually doing - you know, research.

Unsurprisingly, when you examine each case in detail, the talking points collapse pretty quickly. (It's not unlike the talking points Alberta politician Ted Morton was tossing about not so long ago) - look at the case objectively, and the talking points collapse under the weight of context and reality.

No, Jason of Shock-and-Blog, this isn't about being "afraid" of anything, it's about intellectual honesty - something long lost on the makers of Expelled and those who think it's got any basis in some factual reality. (But then, religionists will use anything to justify playing the "persecuted" card)

No, no, that's not the point...

In what he thinks is a revelation, we find the resident genius over at "shock and blog" whining because critics of the film "Expelled" just won't give the movie a break.

It's the half-baked claim that he uses to justify it that gets me though:

So really, what the critics of "Expelled" have a problem with is the origins of life, even though they claim evolution has no opinion on the issue. ... Funny how no one ever defined science as excluding any sort of intelligent designer.

This couldn't be further from the truth. The simple reality is that there is no testable means to test the claim of an intelligent designer. Period. You can claim it all you like, but you cannot demonstrate it in any meaningful sense. (and no, a Behe-style argument-by-credulity approach doesn't count either)

The second, and more serious problem with the film, is the fact that it grossly mischaracterizes the political/academic situation by essentially claiming that the oh-so-evil evolutionists are trying to suppress a valid theory. Nothing could be further from the truth, but none of ID's proponents has come up with anything that substantiates their claims that would survive peer review.

The reason that science in general has no opinion on the "origins" of life is because to this point, there is no means to prove or disprove what exactly happened at the moment that life became identifiable. In the purest sense of the word, science is quite atheistic (in the "without god" sense, not the "excluding god" sense that is so often inferred). Science in general concerns itself with what it can describe based on what we know, not the utterly unknowable.

Along the lines of the classic philosophical "brain in a bucket" model, we cannot prove the validity of anything that we cannot describe with our senses. However unlikely, it is possible that our entire experience is the result of someone artificially stimulating our brain while it sloshes about in a bucket of fluid somewhere. Since we have no means to prove or disprove the assertion that we are just floating in a bucket somewhere, we cannot meaningfully support it or refute it.

Accepting as "fact" the notion of an "intelligent designer" being involved in the creation of life falls into the same category - it is simply an assertion. As a hypothesis, it remainjavascript:void(0)
Publish Posts quite untestable - which is why ID doesn't even qualify as valid science.

Expelled: Stopped Before It Enters Canada

Before the abominable waste of film called Expelled makes its way into Canada it's been stalled because they didn't license some of their soundtrack.

Somehow, given the intellectual dishonesty of the movie, it doesn't surprise me that they think that copyright law doesn't apply to them.

Ha Ha Ha Ha !

Over at Pharyngula, we find out that blog owner PZ Myers tried to attend a screening of the movie Expelled, which is supposed to show us all of the evils of Evolution theory. Prof. Myers was denied entry to see the movie.

I can only imagine how truly awful Expelled really is, but you really do have to chuckle at the reality that its producers are so thin-skinned that they have a list of people that they don't want to see the movie.

Oh - I see that the New York Times has a story on this.

It doesn't say much for the "argument" that the movie is making when they are so afraid of someone poking holes in it (and thus making it look bad) that they specifically ban that person from the movie. Granted, Myers is sometimes less than gentle in his critiques, but that's the blogosphere - it's not necessarily the most genteel of places. (and I've seen my own share of the kind of unreasoning hostility that some are quite happy to dish out)

Understanding Stonewall

Forty years ago, the gay rights movement was ignited by the Stonewall Riots.

While seen by many as the first steps in breaking down some of the social, economic and other barriers thrown up by the state to make life harder for GLBT people, there are those who choose to understand the riots purely as social unrest and unnecessary violence.

I choose to neither condemn or approve of precisely what unfolded on June 28, 1969. It is a matter of historical fact that the riots happened, and that they were violent.

However, it is not so difficult to understand the reaction to the Stonewall Inn raid when one begins to examine the social, legal and political environment which the GLBT community in the United States found itself facing.

Consider the following: (via Wikipedia)

Spurred by the national emphasis on anti-communism, Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted hearings discovering communists in the U.S. government, the U.S. Army, and other government-funded agencies and institutions, leading to a national paranoia. Anarchists, communists, and other people deemed un-American and subversive were considered security risks. Homosexuals were included in this list by the U.S. State Department in 1950, on the theory that they were prone to blackmail. Under Secretary of State James E. Webb noted in a report, "It is generally believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons."[7] Between 1947 and 1950, 1,700 federal job applications were denied, 4,380 people were discharged from the military, and 420 were fired from their government jobs for being suspected homosexuals.[8]

Let's be clear here, McCarthy's paranoia and hostility basically included anyone who didn't think and act in some stereotyped way that McCarthy and his allies had dreamed up. This is but one of many factors that played into creating a social pressure cooker that was going to go awry sooner or later.

Cities performed "sweeps" to rid neighborhoods, parks, bars, and beaches of gays. They outlawed the wearing of opposite gender clothes, and universities expelled instructors suspected of being homosexual.[10] Thousands of gay men and lesbians were publicly humiliated, physically harassed, fired, jailed, or institutionalized in mental hospitals. Many lived double lives, keeping their private lives secret from their professional ones.

Now we get more into the heart of the issues that ultimately led to and provoked the Stonewall Riots. We aren't talking about the US Federal Government running its own little "Spanish Inquisition" to ferret out "enemies of the state", but also of an atmosphere of systemic criminalization and discrimination against GLBT people in their day to day lives. As revolutions around the world, and throughout history, have repeatedly shown, it is unlikely that such a harsh form of oppression will be sustainable. Even the Magna Carta's roots are in an uprising against abuses of power.

Closer to the Stonewall Inn itself, we have the following environment being fostered by the politicians:

By the early 1960s, a campaign to rid New York City of gay bars was in full effect by order of Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., who was concerned about the image of the city in preparation for the 1964 World's Fair. The city revoked the liquor licenses of the bars, and undercover police officers worked to entrap as many homosexual men as possible.[31] Entrapment usually consisted of an undercover officer who found a man in a bar or public park, engaged him in conversation; if the conversation headed toward the possibility that they might leave together—or the officer bought the man a drink—he was arrested for solicitation. One story in the New York Post described an arrest in a gym locker room, where the officer grabbed his crotch, moaning, and a man who asked him if he was all right was arrested.[32] Few lawyers would defend cases as undesirable as these, and some of those lawyers kicked back their fees to the arresting officer.[33]

So, in New York, we have a situation where the police were engaging in entrapment - clearly this is well before any laws that made entrapment illegal. I don't think it's terribly difficult to infer from this that the GLBT community in New York would be less than trusting of the police.

But wait, it gets better.

Police raids on gay bars were frequent—occurring on average once a month for each bar. Many bars kept extra liquor in a secret panel behind the bar, or in a car down the block, to facilitate resuming business as quickly as possible if alcohol was seized.[3] Bar management usually knew about raids beforehand due to police tip-offs, and raids occurred early enough in the evening that business could commence after the police had finished.[47] During a typical raid, the lights were turned on, and customers were lined up and their identification cards checked. Those without identification or dressed in full drag were arrested; others were allowed to leave. Some of the men, including those in drag, used their draft cards as identification. Women were required to wear three pieces of feminine clothing, and would be arrested if found not wearing them. Employees and management of the bars were also typically arrested.[47] The period immediately before June 28, 1969 was marked by frequent raids of local bars—including a raid at the Stonewall Inn on the Tuesday before the riots[48]—and the closing of the Checkerboard, the Tele-Star, and two other clubs in Greenwich Village

So, not only do we have an atmosphere of legal oppression levied against a group of citizens, but there had been an increase in police raids.

Further, laws which attempt to dictate that men must dress like men, and women like women falsely presuppose that the state has an interest in defining what is "masculine" clothing and what is "feminine" clothing. It does not, and worse, it is next to impossible to define that in any reasonable sense. Such laws are nothing more than blatant attempts to criminalize the fundamentally harmless activity of cross-dressing. In many respects, these raids impacted the transgender part of the population disproportionately although I imagine a fair number of "butch" lesbians were caught in the same net.

Whether the Stonewall riots were "unnecessarily violent" or not is immaterial. One cannot reasonably examine the riots themselves in a vacuum without giving consideration to the environment which gave rise to them. Any population that is actively suppressed from living peaceable lives will sooner or later rise up against their oppressors. While the New York police might have only been the instruments of oppression, it was with them that the GLBT population in New York ran into constant conflict. What happened in 1969 has happened before in other contexts - it only took a few cross-dressers deciding it was time to fight back for the rest of the people in an already tense situation to follow suit.

The issue is not, as some would claim, one of mere momentary violations of rights, but rather the consequences of a protracted campaign of oppression, harrassment and abuse at the hands of the state.

God Is Not A Testable Hypothesis

Every time I hear some religious advocate such as Ben Stein, producer of "Expelled" ranting off about how science excludes God, or the notion of a God, I get a little annoyed.

On CBC's "Where Is God Today"
feature this morning, they were interviewing Ben Stein about how hard done to some researchers he knows of are because they were pursuing research to demonstrate the existence of "intelligence" in the design of life.

Science is about what we can know and demonstrate with facts. I don't care what spiritual knife you use, it is simply impossible to tangibly test any hypothesis that is based on invoking supernatural forces that may or may not exist. Hypothesis like Intelligent Design fail as "science" because of this very basic precept.

Any hypothesis has to be testable - that is a fundamental underpinning of science. Anytime you invoke the supernatural, even in the abstract sense that "Intelligent Design" does, you guarantee that the hypothesis or model you are working with is no longer testable because anything you cannot explain rationally is automatically subsumed by the external, unverifiable "intelligence".

Testing a hypothesis always contains the prospect that you will find the hypothesis is falsified by the test. The presence of "meta beings" in such circumstances inhibits further inquiry as the "meta being" becomes an explanation for any data points that "don't fit".

Critics of science of complain that "the goalposts move" because the details of theories change and refine as new evidence comes into the picture (or leaves it). Michio Kaku does a lovely job of describing the often tortuous path that String Theory has taken in Parallel Worlds. If you want to talk about "god" or other metaphysical beings, go for it, but don't expect science in general to take you seriously.

Wingnut Education In Alberta

I have a problem with these "Lifestyle Covenants" that Christian Schools seem to be in love with.

It is not that these schools are publicly funded, although I do consider it a gross abuse of public resources for them to be used in this manner which so clearly flies in the face of both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and provincial Human Rights Codes.

My primary objection to these covenants is that they reach far beyond the walls of the school itself.  It creates an environment where both students and staff are subject to constant surveillance.  If they are seen by a classmate, staff or faculty member engaging in something "unseemly", they become subject to arbitrary sanctions in their education and professional lives.

While traditionally, students are held to a certain degree of propriety outside of the school in general (e.g.  students who are caught vandalizing the neighbourhood in which the school exists may find themselves suspended or even expelled from a school), it's far from the kind of restrictions that these covenants impose:

All teachers will uphold the sanctity of marriage, defined as that between a man and a woman, and abstain from homosexual relations and sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage. 

All teachers are expected to regularly participate in the corporate worship, fellowship and ministry of their church.

Think about these.  Both are very open ended, and place what I would consider to be unbounded constraints on the staff.  The definitions used are extremely vague, and are subject to arbitrary interpretation - something which should render them invalid to start with.

For students, they impose similarly arbitrary constraints and objectives which require interpretation:

To develop the "mind of Christ" toward godliness and sin, and to teach the student how to live an overcoming life through the exercising of self-restraint and consideration of others. 

To encourage the development of self discipline and responsibility in the student based on respect for and submission to God and God ordained authority. 

To help the student develop for himself/herself a Christian world view by integrating life and studies with the Bible.

One can well imagine that this creates an environment where the student lives in perpetual fear of being "caught" doing something "wrong", and being harshly judged for it by the school, their parents and their peers.

I take great exception to these schools exercising this kind of religious control over their students and teachers outside of the school walls.  This is ultimately teaching students nothing constructive except fear and control.

Should these schools have the right to create and enforce these covenants?  If they are a privately held school, funded by tuition fees paid by the parents, then I can (to some extent) look upon these covenants as private agreements between the parties.  I may believe that they set up an environment which is fundamentally abusive to the students and unreasonably invasive in the lives of staff at the school, but the participants in the agreement are free to enter into such agreements.

However, when public money is involved as it is in the two cases recently revealed, then it is my opinion that these schools should be held accountable to the human rights legislation in Alberta and Canada.  Failure to ensure that the schools abide by the same rules that other publicly funded organizations are held to creates double standards that are profoundly troubling.

So, Mr. Harper, How is doing NOTHING realistic?

If there is one thing that infuriates me about PMSH and his glib pronouncements on the world stage, it is how utterly devoid of meaning they are.

This week, we find "Dear Leader" prancing about Europe, further damaging Canada's reputation as a player on the world stage, and reinforcing the idea that Canada is being run from Washington these days.

But Harper this week is going on the offensive, trying to explain to leaders and others that, in his view, climate change policies or programs that protect endangered plant and wildlife species must be based on targets that are affordable, realistic and try to balance any economic costs against environmental gains. It is a pitch he and his environment minister, John Baird, have often made to a domestic audience.

"We have vowed to get past the empty rhetoric and to take real action to require Canadian industry to make real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," Harper said in a speech in Bonn, Germany, at the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity, a meeting attended by delegates from 119 countries.

Meanwhile, at home, Harper has done exactly nothing to rein in some of Canada's worst emissions producing industries. Oh wait, he's putting money into "carbon sequestration" technology - more or less filling salt caverns with CO2...technology which barely exists today, and requires decades of active work to become meaningful. Meanwhile, his government is doing little or nothing to set meaningful standards against which we can measure progress, nor have they set any kind of targets that are even remotely meaningful.

We cannot assess whether something is meaningful, affordable or realistic when it is primarily the CO2 filled air being expelled from Harper's lungs as he speaks. I wasn't impressed much with either Chretien or Martin on their handling (fumbling) of taking steps with regards to Kyoto - Harper's worse on the subject because he speaks out of both sides of his face, and does even less.

Getting rid of Bernier might have been a good start, but replacing him with the ever present face of PMSH the Micromanager is NOT an improvement.

Dawkins on Expelled

Here's Richard Dawkins' review of the movie - go read.

Possibly The Funniest Movie Review Ever

Since Expelled takes itself so serious, at least one reviewer got the spirit right.