The FilmTraveler Guidebook to Expelled

A couple of months ago, I started writing a long post about the movie Expelled. I made the mistake of assuming there were but a handful of sane voices in the meeting-place of public opinion, and that I needed to join them to be heard above the crowd cheering on this insidiously dishonest movie. But when I showed up at the meeting, the crowd was jeering and the filmmakers had already been laughed out of the room. My humble services were not needed–much to the relief, I'm sure, of those who would have received them.

So I just slapped together this list of links so you can enjoy the saga if you like. For those who are curious about the Expelled kerfuffle (a polite term deriving from the Latin word "clusterfuck"), I include the following one-paragraph synopsis:

Expelled is a Hoax

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a pseudo-documentary which was released in 200. It invents two false premises–that Intelligent Design (Creationism) is a scientific concept, and that its advocates are being persecuted by Big Science for their beliefs. The first premise, of course, is not true, since there is no scientific content in Genesis, a religious book. The second premise is not only not true (the "victims" portrayed in the film were not, in fact, fired from their jobs for the reasons they stated, if at all) but irrelevant (because it makes no more sense to for Creationists to complain they're being "persecuted" by scientists than it would make for a blind man to complain he's being "persecuted" by the military for not being allowed to be a fighter pilot).

Ignorance Is Not a Valid Point of View

Definitive article about the movie and all its surrounding hubbub:
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Overview site revealing the deceptive tactics and deliberately misleading arguments used by the filmmakers:
Expelled Exposed

Great critical summary from Scientific American:
Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know

New York Times review doesn't fall for the bullshit:
Resentment Over Darwin Evolves Into a Documentary

The core logical fallacies at the center of ID propaganda:
Burden of Proof
Argument from Ignorance

Not content to lie and misrepresent, the filmmakers actually plagiarized an animation (first they denied it, by the way, then they said it was deliberately copied in order to pick a fight):
'Expelled' ripped off Harvard's 'Inner Life of the Cell' animation

A quick summary of the lies the filmmakers told participants in order to get the interviews they later edited with deceptive techniques in order to prove their point:
Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin

The Wikipedia entry (often edited and re-edited in a war between intelligent people and wacko Creationists):
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

And on a Lighter Note

One of hundreds of blog posts finding the obvious, hysterically funny irony of PZ Meyers (one of the misled "interviewees" in the film) being expelled from the movie premiere by the filmmakers:
PZ Meyers Expelled

Awesome Cectic comic about the PZ Meyers incident

Another awesome Cectic comic about the bad filmmaking techniques

And another awesome Cectic comic about the intellectual dishonesty of Creationists/ID proponents

banner photo © Stasys Eidiejus | Dreamstime.com

Link Summary