EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed - Science Under Attack

I don't think 'Expelled' presents any threat to science. Even as 'criticism' from the YEC camp seemingly would pose a threat, what they both in reality do is bring the issues into the public eye. It may be 'bad' PR but it is PR nonetheless. Someone will be made to think about the topic who would otherwise be content to engage in other pursuits and remain oblivious to it all. When any sort of cursory search is done into the matter the reality of which side has any merit becomes apparent rather quickly with todays' high speed information via the net. Those engaged in such efforts essentially end up shooting themselves in the foot.

Hi Coyote,
Let me clarify my statement. Expelled and the creation research institute are a threat to science in the sense of what they propose to be scientific. They are not however because they have no case to support their arguments.What struck me about the movie (it reached red box, I was bored) was how small this group is. Several minutes in the movie were taken to show how difficult it was for Ben Stein to locate the office. Once inside we see a couple of secretaries and one or two significant players. Yes they dream big don't they? But who believes their nonsense? Those who already reside in their camp of thought. I have not met anyone yet who became a YEC based on their arguments, only people who were already YECS grasping at the straws offered them. And I have met many more who have rejected the YEC view as a result of looking into the debate. The evidence now is just too overwhelming to deny evolution and the means to access it via the internet too easy. Some of the youtube presentations are literally being attacked in a manner to prevent them from being seen at all.I'm not suggesting to ignore the fight by any means. I'm saying that there doesn't seem to be any reason to worry about the outcome of the fight.I just took a look at BS's expelled website. The only threats there were the "academic freedom petition" and an opportunity to purchase a limited edition Ben Stein bobble head..

The NCSE is a non-profit organisation.
The 4000 members are scientists, teachers, clergy, and citizens with diverse religious affiliations.
This work is supported primarily by membership contributions, with some additional assistance from grants.
I found a figure of $670K for 2003.From the ICR site:

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The ICR has a staff of ten part-time scientists, each of whom has many other duties besides speaking on creation.
There are thousands of well-qualified creationist scientists today, a large percentage of whom are in the life sciences. Over half of the present and past members of the Board of Directors of the Creation for Research Society, for example, are in biological fields. In addition, of the 29 scientists associated directly with ICR (including the ten staff members, plus trustees, advisory board members, and regional representatives), 17 are in the life sciences. At least 15 scientists in these two groups have regular Ph.D's in Biology from leading universities, and the others all have terminal degrees in closely related fields (biochemistry, medicine, etc.). As far as research is concerned. the ICR staff may be typical. These ten scientists (H. Morris, Gish, Bliss, Barnes, Slusher, Parker, Cumming, J. Morris, Austin, and Rybka) have published at least 150 research papers and ten books in their own scientific fieldsall in standard scientific refereed journals or through secular book publishersin addition to hundreds of creationist articles and perhaps 50 books in creationism and related fields.

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The Institute for Creation Research is not well-funded. ICR has five major divisions with many functions and activities, and a current full-time equivalent staff of at least 20 persons. This large and complex operation is financed on a very modest budget of $650,000which is considerably less than the financing available to many university departments of biology, for example. ICR never has initiated or lobbied for any creation lawsuit or legislation, believing that education and persuasion are more appropriate and effective than compulsion. ICR staff members occasionally serve as expert consultants or witnesses in such situations, but these actions are wholly initiated and financed by local groups of concerned citizens.

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As far as profits from potential book sales are concerned, this may well be the reason behind much of the opposition to bringing creationist literature into the schools. Evolutionist writers and publishers have for many years reaped tremendous profits from their monopolistic control over school-adopted book sales. Such publishers, in the past, have refused even to examine creationist (or two-model) textbook manuscripts. Accordingly, some of us had to pool our own very limited resources in order to get ICR books published. Rather than being profitable, however, this operation has been at a significant loss to all its investors, each of the six years it has been in existence.

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Probably because they are already in a YEC mindset or they haven't thought it out very deeply yet to realise the implications. There is nothing to learn after all from ID 'science'. A few cherry picked arguments sound convincing until it all has to be harmonized as a whole with the rest of the known facts. Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.Edited by AdminModulous, : Erm, no idea what happened there. I was trying to edit my post, but then the system crashed. I came back and it had edited this post and refused to let me log back in. Sorry about that.

Looks like wedgy then..The article pulls up as though it is current. The date for the article is listed as "accessed Feb 27, 2009" but in different print "This article was originally published in July, 1981."The university in Dallas Texas shows an annual budget of $7 million with a faculty of 4 full time and a student body amounting to 50 approx. Date for this is Dec 16, 2007. How in the hell did they get accreditation with that mission statement?So they're spitting out about 10 graduates per year..Institute for Creation Research in Dallas wants to train future science teachers yep the discovery institute was what I remembered from the documentary - located in Washington.
I'll have to rewatch it to see if they mentioned the budgets. I don't remember anything along those lines.
Looks like they had a budget of approx 4 million annual. Funded by Baptists who hoped they'd be able to disprove evolution. Guess some things can't be bought.
Think Tank.. bit of an oxymoron. Edited by shalamabobbi, : No reason given.

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In 1988, California education officials tried to remove the institute’s authority to grant master’s of science degrees, arguing that the program didn’t pass academic muster. The institute sued the state, arguing that the decision violated its constitutional rights. The school received $225,000 in a 1992 settlement. By then, a new state panel was in charge of evaluating such private schools.

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Sounds like they were given a green light for a number of years.But they've been found out, the wedge plan discovered, ID discovered to be the regrouping of creation science. So how is there now any worry that they can still be successful in their efforts? Will they now recast ID again? 'Teach the controversy' is going to find adherents. But I'd wager the vast majority of them will be people in transition from a lack of knowledge about evolution to becoming aware of all the current evidence.All that annual budget supposedly went into paying scientists to research creationism. What have they come up with? Polonium halos? Big whoop. I met one old lady, a neighbor, who found that one convincing, but again she was already in that camp of thought. What is really happening is that all the possible/apparent arguments against evolution are being taken up and disposed of one by one. They are in actuality proving it true by failing to be capable of proving it false. By fighting evolution they are advancing it's dissemination into the public mind.

Hi Mod,
Just finished re-watching the documentary. When Stein is interviewing Bruce Chapman from the Discovery Institute he asks "when you go out and raise funds do you tell people, oh by the way we're going to get Jesus back into the classroom?". Then follows the denial that ID is a religious issue.The only other place where funding is mentioned follows shortly thereafter when interviewing Paul Nelson at Boila University with ties to the Discovery Institute. Stein asks him if he has ever gotten any money from Jerry Fawell or Pat Robertson with a little laughter, the point again being that ID is not a religious issue (per the documentary).
The documentary focuses most of its sentiment on the concept of academic freedom, persecution of dissenting professors from Darwinism, and ending with how Darwinism was the basis of Hitler's mistakes and is still behind planned parenthood keeping undesirable low lifes from breeding within society by promoting abortions.The funding would not be considered an issue in American culture because of freedom of religion. No one would view that information in a negative light. There is no regulation of how people choose to throw away their money. The fact that the funding came/comes from Baptists would however disclose the fallacy that ID doesn't involve religion.What have they accomplished though with all the funds? Polonium halo studies and the like. Give them 10 times the funds and they would squander it all down the hole without much threat of overthrowing evolution in the classroom.One unfortunate result of Stein's interview with Dawkins is to polarize the audience by creating a false dichotomy between ToE and religion. This was likely intentional to focus the religious crowd to fight for ID.