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Earlier today I got the following e-mail;
Hi:
The greatest film I have ever seen in now in theatres in
In a time when an African-American can win the nomination of the Democratic Party to be the President of the United States of America, you would think that our educational system would be free from racism, and open to freedom of thought, expression, and inquiry. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For theatre details, information and trailer go to www.expelledthemovie.com
Please forward this email to your friends.
Dr. Charles McVety
President
I had no idea who these people are. They sound a little crazy…so I googled them. Apparently it’s some theologian school. It reminded me of the Rand Institute for some reason.
Some of the things they had on the website contained parts of the most annoying dogmas of religion. Mainly what annoyed me was the tendency to credit God for human achievement. They praised some guy named Dr. Elmer McVety for following God’s path in a task that “many men told him that it could not be done.” Then they thank God for his success and for designing the students for success.
Excuse me, but I’m sure this McVety fella worked really hard to make the school what it is. Why are you shipping the credit out to someone else? The basic assumption here is that humanity can’t accomplish anything without the help of God (or the devil). This would make for a really crappy creator if it was true.
But whatever, I know lots of people who think this way and I’m always happy to engage people in a debate. So I went to the website of the movie that they were promoting.
It turns out that the movie wasn’t really about intelligent design. I’m sure that they talk about it and promote the concept, but the focus of the movie (as far as I could tell from the trailer) was intellectual diversity. The movie claims that academics are being expelled from faculties for promoting intelligent design ideas.
As someone that tends to disagree a lot with academics I have a certain amount of sympathy for this. Especially as someone who admires J.S. Mill, I think it’s important that we have debates and are always questioning our conclusions. This prevents ideas from becoming dogmas. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for intelligent design, but like abortion and a host of other issues, I strongly feel that universities must be willing to facilitate debate. Otherwise a university is pretty pointless in regards to the Arts and the Humanities.
So, though I think these people may be nuts, I think I might go see this movie.
(Except maybe not. I don’t think Ben Stien is funny.)
9 comments:
This McVety guy is on the really weird end of Christianity opposite the end occupied be the equally weird United Church. You can safely ignore both of them.
Don't get taken in by this propaganda hit-piece. That email you received is so far off the mark that it could be interpreted as satire (a-la Poe's Law).
To learn the truth about this idiotic propagana hit piece, check out http://www.expelledexposed.com/
McVety got his lists from the botched Frank Klees nomination campaign when all the lists got released. At least that's when I started getting his drivel in the mail.
PS thanks for featuring the latest BC vid!
Yeah I forgot that Klees did that, what an ass he is.
Don't worry Dave, I tend not to trust any documentary with an obvious axe to grind. Especially when they are so obviously nuts (they accuse the devil of trying to destroy them on their website) But I went to see the Michael Moore movies and I expect that this movie is in the same league as that. Interesting though that we haven't heard of this in Canada and there are already sites debunking it.
sorry by 'they' I meant McVety and that lot.
Michael Moore seems a paragon of virtue compared to some of the reviews that I've read. The expelled exposed web site is a good start for info though and even the blogs at the Expelled site.
Conflation and misrepresentation seem to be the mainstay of this film.
I watch McVety's broadcast Word.ca
on CTS and keep tabs on what's going on in their circles.
From time to time Frank Klees has been a guest on the program as well as being on the stage at College events. He usually sits a few seats away from Senator Ann Cools.
He seems to be McVety's go-to guy at Queen's Park and that's probably how the voters list--complete with e-mail addresses--came to Charles' possession.
It's quite something to see the guests of honour on the stage at a graduation exercise or another major event. On the stage are Cools, Klees, Day, Jason Kenny, Rondo Thomas, Frank Diamant (sp?) to name a few.
It's usually called a rogues gallery.
If you go to www.word.ca and look at the pictures on the top and move your mouse you'll see the whole gang. Two sets of photos with a move of the mouse.
I hope this information is of some use to you.
What does it mean to disagree a lot with academics? Aren't academics busy disagreeing with each other?
Don't you mean you disagree with some of them, and agree with others?
Or do you have opinions that fall outside those of all academics? In which case, could you show your work please? And might doing so make you an academic?
The whole "teach the controversy" argument is a straw man. If ID has some evidence, it's in. Period.
And by all means, criticize the academy. But on a case by case basis, and with evidence. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed does so. It claims several specific cases of academic persecution. See expelledexposed.com for additional information that they chose to exclude from the documentary on those cases.
Summary: fail.
Teaching the controversy is not a straw man. For someone to have a well rounded understanding of a concept they have to hear multiple points of views. Otherwise they never actually think of the concept and it becomes dogma rather than knowledge (even truth should not become dogma).
As far as disagreeing with academic opinion. I think you may be reading hostility into my comments that don't really exist. What I meant was that a Libertarian Hobbesian tends no to be common at the average university faculty meeting.
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