The Atheist Blogger

What’s the best way to support the theory of Evolution? Make a 2 hour Creationist propaganda film packed with every lie every told about the theory. You may think you have heard all the idiotic arguments that try to undermine Evolution, but I bet there are still some in this documentary that have eluded you.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2783773121996810582

The movie is quite old so you may have seen if before, or seen parts of it (the Peanut Butter bit on YouTube), and if you haven’t yet seen Expelled, this movie is probably just as funny.

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It seems that Expelled is generating a load of publicity recently, and not because of it’s release today. So far, the list of items Expelled has stolen is this:

• “Inner Life of the Cell” made by Harvard professors
• Music from John Lennon
• Music from The Killers

Could breaking web design licenses also be on that list? After a bit of poking around I found that the blog theme used on the Expelled site (http://expelledthemovie.com/blog - I’m not making it a hyperlink for very good reasons) is the same theme I use on my personal blog, albeit very edited.

Editing this theme isn’t against the license it has on it, but is has this very specific line:

A link back to N.Design Studio must be retained in the footer (either modified or unmodified)

The theme in question is GlossyBlue by the N.Design Studio mentioned, and it is a very good theme, being both attractive and XHTML compliant. I have contacted the designer to enquire whether Expelled purchased a license for the theme (which would enable them to remove the link), but considering they didn’t bother to pay for most of the rest of the film content, I really wouldn’t be surprised if they “overlooked” this as well.

On a related note, it seems the Expelled producers are denying making a copy of the animation (the similarities are hopefully enough to be prosecuted). This statement was place on their website:

Editor’s Note: Questions have been raised about the origination of some of the animation used in our movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Claims that we have used any animation in an unauthorized manner are simply false. Premise Media created the animation that illustrates cellular activity used in our film.- The Producers of “EXPELLED: No Intelligence 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:

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