You probably didn’t hear about it in the MSM, but in late March, a documentary that wasn’t even scheduled to be released until April 18th became the most blogged about story on the Internet.
P.Z. Myers, an associate biology professor at the University of Minnesota/Morris, tried to sneak into an invitation-only screening of “Expelled” (www.expelledthemovie.com) at the Mall of America in Minneapolis with fellow atheist and Oxford evolutionist Richard Dawkins, both of whom appear in the film starring Ben Stein. Motive Entertainment producer Mark Mathis spotted Myers standing in line and asked security guards to escort him out because he was afraid Myers would disrupt the preview. Dawkins was admitted even though he hadn’t been invited to attend.
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In my review of “Expelled” in the March 6 Examiner (http://www.examiner.com/a-1261901~Barbara F Hollingsworth America s new blacklist.html) I reported that Stein had somehow managed to get Dawkins, who was paid for the two “Expelled” interviews, to speculate that “aliens” had “seeded the Earth.”
At the Q&A session following the Minneapolis preview, Dawkins reportedly stood up and demanded to know why Myers had been “expelled from ‘Expelled’.” According to witnesses, Mathis calmly replied that this was a private showing and that Myers could watch the film as often as he liked after its April 18 release. (Go to http://ti.org.antiplanner/ for theater locations.)
Dawkins then claimed he had been interviewed under “false pretenses,” even though Mathis reminded him of the emails between the two, which included the interview questions in advance.
Then Mathis cut to the chase, telling Dawkins that his alien-seeding comment proved that “you have a blind spot. You accept that there could be an intelligence outside our world, so long as that intelligence isn’t God, because of your devotion to atheism.”
Dawkins’ reply? “Nothing. He just sat there,” Mathis told me.
Richard Dawkins at a loss for words? That must have been something to see.
Another academic who appears in the film believes the furor over the movie represents a “significant social phenomenon.” Prof. David Berlinksi, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, a major proponent of intelligent design, is now in the U.S. on tour for his latest book, “The Devil’s Delusion.” A Princeton-educated secular Jew who lives in Paris, Berlinksi says that the academic debate between evolutionists like Dawkins and proponents of intelligent design was supposedly over in 1996/97, when Darwinists universally slammed Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe for his book, “Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution,” which argued that evolution alone cannot account for the complexity of the cell. Proponents of intelligent design soon became personas non grata on most college campuses – the main subject of “Expelled.”
Berlinksi says there is so much rancor over this issue because “the academic/scientiific community has a lot to lose.” In 1953, he added, the discoverers of DNA themselves inferred some sort of prior design for the elegant genetic framework of life. But 50 years later, what Berlinski calls a “prophetic and very shrewd criticism of Darwinian theory” cannot even be discussed on campus with evolutionists who, he says, prefer to “withdraw from the discussion and sneer” instead.
Although Darwinists believe they have already won the debate, the rest of society is just beginning to pay attention, Berlinski added. “This is the first time there is widespread opposition to a previously established scientific dogma. It’s unprecedented.”
Which explains why “Expelled” will be opening Friday in 1,000 theaters nationwide – 132 more that for Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911,” which at the time was the largest opening for a documentary film ever.
And Moore got a lot more free advertising in the mainstream media.
From here, it looks like the real debate is just getting started.
