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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/15/2008 7:04:00 AM | Another good example of the Ignorance Movement sweeping the country. Hard to believe, but people sit in think-tanks and come up with ways to inflict people with ideas that will make them less likely to improve themselves, or anyone else. Most always on behalf of one conglomerate or another.
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/15/2008 9:53:19 AM | RE msg 50 by weaselontoast:
I teach honors World Lit and British Lit to high school seniors, and of course we sample everything from Ancient Greek to Buddhism to Zoroastrianism to Existentialism...along with the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's very hard to expand or enrich perspectives in the Bible belt. I have complaints when I play "Sympathy for the Devil" as prep for teaching Paradise Lost. I receive some very impassioned essays about the sin of presenting Lucifer as tragic HERO....and some irate students walk out when I show the Monty Python "Every Sperm is Sacred" clip as a parallel to A Modest Proposal. weaselontoast, I saw your post, and thought that you might be struggling like most of my teachers in high school. They were all very well-read, and very smart people. But they didn't understand us as kids or as teens, and certainly didn't understand how we learned things.
My English Lit teacher could not understand why we weren't interested in learning Henry IV. It wasn't that we didn't want to learn Henry IV. We did. We just didn't want to learn his way, because it didn't work for us. But I didn't understand that at the time. All I knew what that Shakespeare was boring. But 5 years later, I started reading my flat-mates copy of Jane Austen's Persuasion that he left in the bathroom, and I was hooked. I read 5 of Austen's novels, and moved onto Shakespeare, and loved his works. But I didn't force myself to learn Shakespeare's work in the way I was taught, but rather, I just gently tread my way, trying different methods, until I quickly found a way that I liked to learn Shakespeare, and suddenly Hamlet became wonderful in my eyes.
I've had a couple of similar experiences with others, that suggest to me that the process of teaching not an active process but a passive one, and that it is the acceptance of knowledge by your students that is the active process.
I enjoy the challenge of exposing kids to perspectives...but the "box" is a tiny one, and getting them to look outside it is a struggle. Unfortunately most people who profess a flavor of "faith" really have only accepted the putative traditions of it and have NOT examined the texts, the precepts or the needs of the culture that engendered it. It is very difficult to expose kids to perspectives, because from their POV, they are being asked to claim that what their parents have told them are false. If any ONE thing that their parents told them was false, then maybe everything their parents told them was false. Maybe they don't need to brush their teeth. Maybe they don't need to eat their greens. Maybe they don't need to get a job. Maybe it is OK to rob and murder. The minute you claim that what ONE thing their parents told them was false, however irrelevant, you are basically saying their parents are liars. But you are not looking after them. You don't feed them. You don't clothe them. So your knowledge is no better. You are claiming that everything they know is false. So they have nothing to rely upon to understand the world, and that makes life incredibly insecure.
Before you can expect kids to absorb exposure to new perspectives, you have to give them a framework within which they can understand everything that is already in their life, and feel happy about their situation living with their parents and be able to accept that new perspective as a possible truth. Only once they have that extended framework, can they be able to accept your new perspective, because it will no longer threaten their security in their understanding of the world, and their place in it.
However, if you can give them the extended framework first, they are then EAGER to learn the new perspective. It is like painting a picture. You have to paint in the edges, and only THEN paint in the centre.
Consider Monty Python's "Every Sperm is Sacred", which I saw as a teenager. I would have had massive problems with it too. The only reason I didn't was because I had already been exposed to Charles****ns' Oliver, and Great Expectations. I knew that the Victorian Era was full of massive inequality and poverty, where human life was degraded to the level of a c0ckroach, and that the song alluded to the idea that in that era, giving a child to "medical experiments" was no worse than having no food at all, and letting them starve to death. The allegory to A Modest Proposal is a very true one, because of corruption, but not because of religion. In Swift's time, the idle rich were NOT religious, other than they would go to Church every Sunday. But they would not stop their carriage if it was about to run over a working-class child who had falled over. These idle rich lived in their rich mansions, while soldiers in Ireland took all the food that the Irish people had during the Irish potato famine, leaving them nothing to eat at all, and letting many Irish men, women and children literally starve to death, while these idle rich would eat steak and have 6-course dinners, waited on hand and foot. It was that abominable inequality, that the poor in Ireland would be forced to starve, to give the rich in England the ability to have a 6-course dinner instead of a 3-course dinner, that Swift was mocking. When you consider Monty Python's "Every Sperm is Sacred", it becomes clear that the connection is that the poor in England were treated just as badly, and that selling your children for experiments was not such an atrocity, because if they did sell the children for experiments, some of the children might live, while if they didn't, there was literally nothing to eat, and all of the children would surely die.
If you wanted to give this comparison again, I would suggest that you start with novels such as****ns, following on with a history of the state of poor people in England and Ireland during that time, and how abominably they were treated by the rich, and then ENDING with A Modest Proposal. If you THEN wanted to play the Monty Python sketch to them, I feel sure that most of them would understand it.
But that is only my opinion as a student of mostly bad teachers, and a few good ones from whom I learned a heck of a lot. | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/15/2008 10:46:44 AM | ScorpioMover says
You are claiming that everything they know is false WTF? Easy, scorp - I am NOT Claiming anything is false, and I am careful to point out that this is what SOME cultures/eras/theorists believe, EVERY time I approach a new work of Literature or philosophy.
So they have nothing to rely upon to understand the world, and that makes life incredibly insecure
Life IS incredibly insecure. I keep my own faith-based ideas out of the curriculum...I don't proselytize...but these same students KNOW they can discuss faith with me after school, in an unofficial environment, and sometimes they do. For for the record, I'm not "struggling"...simply stating that being in the Bible Belt makes it more of a challenge.
Before you can expect kids to absorb exposure to new perspectives, you have to give them a framework
...a schema, yes, that's what I do - and I've studied education methods, thanks for your input. WTH, do you think we just throw Lit selections at kids for the sake of shock value? They're introduced to it in increments, with plenty of preparation, examples, etc.
<div class='quote'> within which they can understand everything that is already in their lifethere are far too many adults who don't...I don't expect kids to understand everything, either
<div class='quote'>and feel happy about their situation living with their parents and be able to accept that new perspective as a possible truth.
I cannot make anyone feel happy about living with their parents...and I don't expect them to accept it as a truth, only as another person's perspective...and the framework takes time.
<div class='quote'>Only once they have that extended framework, can they be able to accept your new perspective, because it will no longer threaten their security in their understanding of the world, and their place in it
As for "Every Sperm is Sacred", it was presented MERELY as an example of Modern Satire, on a similar topic - at the END of several weeks' study of satire...and was brought in because many of the kids had expressed interest in Monty Python. MOST of them saw it as satire, and appreciated it as such. They have read "Tale of Two Cities" and other Victorian writers as well, in previous courses. MANY of them are fine with exploring - and I'm not the Curriculum Designer, I simply try to extend it and make it accessible...satire was also discussed in the vein of nursery rhymes, political cartoons, mock epic, parody, Springsteen's "Born in the USA", and other "ironic" contexts...they have had PLENTY of "weaning" onto this level. I'm not in the habit of throwing anyone into water over their heads. | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/15/2008 3:44:35 PM | | ^^^ Sorry, weaselontoast. Here in the UK, we have plenty of teachers who claim they do what is necessary to teach their kids, but they don't, and it is obvious from the ONE teacher in that school that ALL the kids flock to. In my high school, it was the Maths teacher. Despite the fact that Maths was one subject that people avoided like the plague and everyone found it hard, everyone made the effort in his classes, and only 2 out of 30 pupils would make the effort in any other teacher's classes. The same was true in university. Everyone made the effort to turn up for every lesson given by one lecturer, and no-one made that kind of effort in any other classes, and his class was the hardest subject in my degree. I assume that you are the ONE teacher who does what is necessary. | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/15/2008 4:34:02 PM | | Sorry Scorp but I don't think I'm the only ONE , by any stretch of the imagination. I don't know why so many people blame teachers - MANY (not all) of us go out of our way to find ways to get the kids interested. Sometimes it works, sometimes not...but I'm certainly not the only one who tries. | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/15/2008 9:36:44 PM |
This is the Christianity of the Founding Fathers.
Bingo! The founding fathers were, by and large, not Pauline Xtians. Jefferson said it made no difference to him whether his neighbor believed in one god or many--not the view of a fundamentalist Xtian.
Weasel, I am sure it is even more difficult in HS than it is in college. When I was getting my MA, I was in a class with a bunch of high school instructors (in MO, elementary and secondary teachers MUST get an MA). I can't remember what the class was, but one of my peers said he taught stories from the Hebrew Scriptures as myth in his high school English class.
One of our other peers almost exploded. He said if HIS child were in that class, he would be in the principal's office the next day to protest. He was outraged that HIS Bible could be taught as myth.
In college, at least I don't have to worry about angry parents. I have never had a student protest what I teach in a myth or lit class. Religion stays out of composition. | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/15/2008 9:40:05 PM |
My English Lit teacher could not understand why we weren't interested in learning Henry IV. It wasn't that we didn't want to learn Henry IV. We did. We just didn't want to learn his way, because it didn't work for us.
Methinks that Scorp has a basic misunderstanding of what Weasel said. It isn't a matter of teaching some material in a different manner in order to make it interesting to the students, but of teaching something that goes against the status quo or what they have been brainwashed into thinking by their parents and the culture of the Bible Belt. | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/15/2008 10:33:58 PM | Just look at the reaction the Harry Potter series got from the religious zealots. We are talking about a series that triggered a love of reading in God knows how many kids. In our age, this is almost unheard of.
Get them into reading, and you open a highway for their mind.
And yet the zealots go off the deep end....
Tom Barrett, editor of Conservative Truth, reported in a column posted Monday on WEB Commentary that parents and grandparents who had formerly encouraged their children to read the books are “finally starting to see the light.”
“They have repented and have removed the books from their children's libraries,” said Barrett. “They say they are trying to undo the damage they have done to the children by their exposure to them.”
Jack M. Roper, a Christian broadcaster on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network responded to the revelation saying, “I would never allow my own children or grandchildren to read the books or watch the movies, and other parents should do so too.”
Roper reminded his viewers that much Christian opposition to the Harry Potter series stems from the books’ basic premise, that the heroes use magic and sorcery to manipulate situations and other people. Calling Harry Potter a hero who has “captured the innocent heart of many children”, Roper said, “When such a hero uses evil as a problem solving tool, we need to be warned. Over time the child can become adapted to the dark world of witchcraft and not even know that it is dangerous.”
“As a cult researcher for many years, I have seen contemporary witchcraft packaged in many seductive forms, and Harry Potter is the best. Potter makes spiritualism and witchcraft look wonderful,” he added.
Roper’s comments, and the reaction of some Christian groups follow comments made two years ago by the former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who wrote that the Harry Potter books were a spiritual danger to children. In 2005 LifeSiteNews.com obtained copies of letters, dated March 2003, from the then-Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thanking Kuby for her "instructive" book “Harry Potter - gut oder böse” (Harry Potter- good or evil?), in which Kuby says the books corrupt the hearts of the young.
“It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly,” wrote Cardinal Ratzinger.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/oct/07103003.html
Looks like we are all five minutes out of Salem , in the express lane, with the turn signal already blinking sometimes.... | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/16/2008 9:42:34 PM |
Finally, the actual questions up for discussion: Have you seen or read any of the material advertising this new movie*****, and what impressions did you get? Have you seen, read or researched any of the incidents alluded to in the trailers, and again, what did you think? Utimately, considering the state of religion and politics in the US, do you think this high profile and controversial movie will have an impact, and how?
Well I just watched the "supertrailer" seen here...(again)
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playground.php
Actually my first impression after seeing that (Ben Stein? Didn't see that one coming!) trailer was that it sounded exactly like what the scientists who disagree/question the "human caused global warming" as well as the catastrophic predictions of global warming. Like, refusal to fund, the harrassment, defamation or being intimidated to stay silent, so I thought that kind of interesting.
I still haven't researched what exactly "intelligent design" is or how it would be taught. I'm trying to imagine my catholic high school calsses with a religion class, a science class AND an intelligent design class???
Would intelligent design mean everything was created by advanced beings...aliens?? Or what about, picture humanity (or what we evolve into eventually) maybe 100 billion years down the road. The expanding universe is disintigrating into nothingness but mankind over the ages has harnessed the power of the sun, a supernova....the big bang. So it ends up being us who create the big bang all over again. Nutty, yeah I know but is this "intelligent design?"
I just read about a catholic priest (apparently also a scientist) winning the 1.6 million dollar Templeton prize. In his acceptance speech he CRITICIZED intilligent design.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Rev. Michael Heller, a prolific Polish scientist, author and Roman Catholic priest who bridges disciplines to explore the universe's origins, was named Wednesday as winner of a religion award billed as the world's richest annual prize given to an individual.
Heller, 72, a philosophy professor at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow, Poland, won the 2008 Templeton Prize.
Heller said in a statement that he intends to spend his winnings -- worth more than $1.6 million -- on developing an academic center in Krakow devoted to research and education in science and theology.
Karol Musiol, rector of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, wrote in nominating Heller that he "has brought to science a sense of transcendent mystery, and to religion a view of the universe through the broadly open eyes of science."
Heller in his statement criticized adherents of intelligent design -- which holds that aspects of
the universe and living beings are best explained by a higher power -- as committing a "grave
theological error."
Heller will receive the prize May 7 in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
Maybe it would be of interest to note that the idea of an expanding universe, (big bang) from the "primeval atom" was made famous by a catholic priest/physicist/astronomer Georges Le maitre. Albert Einstein scoffed at the idea.
Sources please ?
If we want to discuss this topic in more detail, I think having any scientist or academic who believes in intelligent design brought into the discussion would assist us.
And by this, I don't mean a "self-described" scientist.
Show us someone with credentials , a bona fide one.
I think you'll find those answers if you watch the trailer/movie as those scientists appear to be the basis of the movie...and the inquiring mind of Ben Stein! | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/18/2008 2:01:55 PM | """What is the topic, then? Premise Media*, a corporation that claims it "develops, finances and produces independent films, books and DVDs for the domestic and international marketplace"**, has announced its release of the movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", a film that, from what I can tell, purports to expose a conspiracy in the scientific community to shut out Intelligent Design as a viable scientific theory.""""
I finally think I know what you are getting at. OF COURSE its a paid media production. Next....? | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/21/2008 3:03:02 AM | http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php
here is a rich, deep kind of irony that must be shared. I'm blogging this from the Apple store in the Mall of America, because I'm too amused to want to wait until I get back to my hotel room.
I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn't going to cause any trouble.
I went back to my family and talked with them for a while, and then the officer came back with a theater manager, and I was told that not only wasn't I allowed in, but I had to leave the premises immediately. Like right that instant.
I complied.
I'm still laughing though. You don't know how hilarious this is. Not only is it the extreme hypocrisy of being expelled from their Expelled movie, but there's another layer of amusement. Deep, belly laugh funny. Yeah, I'd be rolling around on the floor right now, if I weren't so dang dignified.
You see … well, have you ever heard of a sabot? It's a kind of sleeve or lightweight carrier used to surround a piece of munition fired from a gun. It isn't the actually load intended to strike the target, but may even be discarded as it leaves the barrel.
I'm a kind of sabot right now.
They singled me out and evicted me, but they didn't notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn't recognize him. My guest was …
Richard Dawkins.
He's in the theater right now, watching their movie.
Tell me, are you laughing as hard as I am?
I am!  | |
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| Expelled - The Intelligent Design Movie
Posted: 3/22/2008 2:28:44 PM | From intelligentdesign.org...
What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.
Is intelligent design the same as creationism?
No. The theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent design" in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. Intelligent design starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what inferences can be drawn from that evidence. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected through science is supernatural.
Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism. University of Wisconsin historian of science Ronald Numbers is critical of intelligent design, yet according to the Associated Press, he "agrees the creationist label is inaccurate when it comes to the ID [intelligent design] movement." Why, then, do some Darwinists keep trying to conflate intelligent design with creationism? According to Dr. Numbers, it is because they think such claims are "the easiest way to discredit intelligent design." In other words, the charge that intelligent design is "creationism" is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to delegitimize design theory without actually addressing the merits of its case.
Is intelligent design a scientific theory?
Yes. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.
Actually (a bit off topic here) I saw a nightline program the other night where creationists were touring science/history museums and "debunking" .....uh, science. You can see that one for yourself on the Nightline Webcast under "Touring with the Bible"
http://abcnews.go.com/nightline
Somehow I wouldn't lump the ID people in with these guys. | |
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