“No Intelligance Allowed”
One of the largest groups on Facebook supporting Ben Stein’s new Intelligent Design (a.k.a Creationism) film “Expelled” is called ‘Suporters of Ben Steins Movie – Expelled “No Intelligance Allowed”‘.
Surely evidence against Intelligent Design???
The creator of the group, Chelsy Askren posted this explanation in the news section:
I have tried and tried and THERE IS NO WAY TO CHANGE THE SPELLING. PERIOD. I have followed everyones suggestions and there is NO WAY. If you comment on this site about the spelling i will delete the comment…..if you email me about the spelling i will delete your email……if you dont like the spelling of this group name than you will have to take it up with Facebook themselves. They are the ones that make it so i cannot change the name. There is nothing i can do to change the Spelling of this group….however incompetent that may make me sound to you it is reality……
So other than all the spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors in the above, everything is fine. What really interested me was the insight into the minds of the people who support this film. The following is written in the group description:
[Ben Stein's] heroic and, at times, shocking journey confronting the world’s top scientists, educators and philosophers, regarding the persecution of the many by an elite few.
Heroic? No. Shocking? Not really considering the nature of I.D. Wait a minute though, “the persecution of the many by an elite few“??? Are these people really so deluded to think that the majority of scientists, educators, and philosophers are in support of Intelligent Design!? I think you will find that it is the elite many who are persecuting the ignorant few, and they do it for perfectly valid reasons.
Ben travels the world on his quest, and learns an awe-inspiring truth…that bewilders him, then angers him…and then spurs him to action!
I’m pretty sure the amount of money he is being paid to do this film also helped the “spurring”…
Ben realizes that he has been “Expelled,” and that educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the “crime” of merely believing that there might be evidence of “design” in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance.
Well seeing as combining religous belief with state education is a crime (at least against the U.S Constitution) in the U.S.A, they should know better than the try and force their delusions into the education system. I haven’t heard of any I.D research facilities being shutdown because they believe Evolution is false…but to be honest, I haven’t heard of any I.D research facilities either…probably because it’s not a real science?
To which Ben Says: “Enough!” And then gets busy. NOBODY messes with Ben.
Well, I think PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins might have something to say about that…
Thanks to Friendly Atheist
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Cool blog an all… but your blog feels like an echo of the Friendly Atheist.
my goodness. what is with this trend of critical comments?
i can’t wait to get my first, if they’re all like this.
Oliver,
Cheers for the comment. I understand what you mean, since a lot of articles I write about are either found on, or also featured on Friendly Atheist. Whilst I do get the content ideas from Friendly Atheist a lot of the time (Hemant Mehta is a crazy posting freak :D) I hope that I expand on them and write a lot more on the subject. For example, in this article all Hemant mentioned was the facebook group, and the explanation. I went on to attack the entire site description in detail.
In the future though I will try to cut down on the amount of articles I talk about from Friendly Atheist. If anything, it proves that Hemant Mehta writes a load of good articles, and I’d be pretty certain this blog isn’t the only blog that takes a lot of articles from him.
There’s a great podcast with Scientific American and Mark Mathis (co-producer of Expelled) where the journalists and editors debunk most of what is said in Expelled, including the fact that the science community refuses to acknowledge (Un)intelligent design, not because they are afraid of it, but because there is no evidence of it, and when a christian scientist tries to conclude in that matter, it’s just they couldn’t find a conclusion or were specifically trying to attribute it to (Un)intelligent design again without evdence.
Mr. Mathis then tries to tell the journalists and editors at Scientific American that it should be involved in science, but science intentionaly limits it from doing so with its scientific process.
Thanks for understanding. Like you said, Hemant is a crazy posting freak, and it can be hard to write about a topic before he can get to it.
Now that I think about it, I’ve never heard of a research facility devoted to creationism or I.D.
Oliver,
You’ll be glad to hear that I spent about an hour offline tonight thinking up all sorts of new and wonderful things to write about. I won’t stop writing about other blog content though, because the entire blogging system is set up for precisely that usage. Someone writes a great article, and it gets blogged about everywhere. The way I see it, it is getting the message out more, and upping the pagerank, technorati rank, etc of the original blog.
Cheers for reading :D
I misspelled Intelligence…….SO WHAT………i made a mistake……i even tried o fix it……i am human i am allowed to make mistakes you know…….i bet there was a time in your life when you misspelled a word or two…….you know i think it is a shame that you would take the time to mention this in your blog….you obviously have allot of time on your hands and i suggest you find more profitable things to do with it……since you’re so good at spelling why not become a teacher……just a thought. If your going to bother offering advise to people i also suggest doing it in a more constructive way so that its not a complete waste of your time…..people might actually respect and listen to what you have to say.
Kind Regards,
Chelsy Askren
Oh yeah and also……..i choose to rarely use punctuation online because I’m not writing a paper or doing anything that requires me to do so…….and sometimes ill be honest i don’t have allot of time……and sometimes i just dont feel like it…….i also dont use my spell check either…….oops did i say i needed a spell check…….thats not very intelligent is it…….You know whats funny about all this……you must find yourself very intelligent for pointing out my lack of intelligence for spelling intelligent incorrectly…….seriously get a life.
Chelsy,
Did you even read the other half of the article? The subject of spelling was discussed since it was pretty ironic given the whole “intelligent design” thing. It wasn’t just in the title though, it was in everything you wrote on the site and in your two comments above.
You claim “i choose to rarely use punctuation online because I’m not writing a paper or doing anything that requires me to do so” which is rather silly to me. Punctuation is there to help the reader understand what you are saying. It’s very important in every aspect of writing.
The only instance where I ever use a lack of punctuation / misspellings is in an Instant Messaging chat where such a thing is the norm (brb, lol, etc). Nevertheless, I find it deeply ironic that when justifying your lack of using punctuation you use it everywhere. I have no idea why someone would want to separate parts of sentences with …….. and then include a comma afterwards. One full stop is enough.
“why not become a teacher”
I’m currently working towards a degree in Computer Science, and then a PhD in the subject, so I am gradually working towards this goal.
-Adrian
well at least youre doing something profitable with SOME of your time I don’t see why you care so much about my punctuation………….You don’t even know me….you do not know my education….my background….you know NOTHING this blog is purely a product of your opinion…………………………………………………………………………maybe i do use a full stop when i feel like it i don’t have to explain myself and youre not with me 24-7 so how would you know……and if there was a comma in between these..,. it was a typo……i know its shocking that i would have a typo….so sorry…………….YES i am very aware of proper punctuation…………..to me this is no different than an im so i dont use it……….so you admit to using no punctuation and you admit to misspelling on im…..i rest my case…….get a life man……and find something better to do with the other half of your time. Ciao
I still don’t see the problem you seem to be having. Your group was an advocate of Intelligent Design, and you managed to misspell the word “Intelligent” which to many of us was ironic. It certainly wasn’t an “intelligent” thing to do. I make mistakes when in IM because as soon as I press “Enter” the message is gone, I can’t do anything about it. Whenever I create a group on Facebook however, I double check everything because it matters. Instead of being between two people (IM), most of whom wouldn’t care if I spelt something wrong, this is global, and I don’t like people pointing out my errors as much as you do.
Nevertheless, the rest of my article was on the blatant lies and propaganda your group was spreading, as well as your misunderstanding of Evolution. This is the internet Chelsy. I may not know anything about you, so the only way you present yourself is through the words you type. If there happen to be a load of spelling errors, grammatical errors, punctuation errors etc, this only fuels the opinion that your are not “intelligent”.
Whatever…..i can see your a great judge of character and also intelligence. At least i know where i stand in your book intelligence wise.
No i read the rest of the article…..but for some reason i couldnt get past the part about me:
“Surely evidence against Intelligent Design??? ”
I resent the fact that because i make a typo my intelligence is in question. It’s not like im a know it all….im admitting that i made the typo but nooooooooo you cant let it go…..whatever makes your day i guess……get a freaking life.
Have a nice day