TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE 'LIARS'

An intelligent if often adversarial reader of my blog wonders why I would call the people who crafted the movie 'Expelled' liars. What's the evidence, he wonders? Well....

Let's ignore the purported 'Darwin caused the Holocaust' argument which is supposed to occupy a substantial portion of the film. I haven't seen the film, and I'm not going to judge its merits until I've seen it, but for the record I think that is a deeply misleading argument, the kind of faux history whose only intent is to slur the scientific community.

Here, I'm referring specifically to the manner in which Stein, Mathis and Company have created the film and the way they have represented themselves since that point.

What are the facts? For one thing, they solicited interviews and gathered footage under false pretenses. While interviewing PZ, Dr. D and others, they told them they were making a film called 'Crossroads', which was billed as a general exploration of the interaction between science and faith. PZ posts the letter with which he was contacted here, along with a screen shot of the blurb for 'Crossroads' that at one point appeared on the Rampant Films site (it has since been removed).

The well-respected Times science writer Cornelia Dean interviewed the Rampant executives, and their statements can be found here. They essentially claim there was no deceit, and it was a marketing decision to change the name from 'Crossroads' to 'Expelled', the difference in descriptions between the two films not withstanding.

Well, that's just a lie. Wesley Elsberry researched the matter and found that the domain name for 'Expelled the Movie' was created back in Feb. of 2007, long before Dawkins, Myers et al were interviewed. No domain name was ever created for 'Crossroads.' Also, at the time the interviews were done, Rampant Films was not identified as a subsidiary of the more obviously-evangelical Premise Media , as it is now. Again, this was part of their deception, as investigation of their purported office address shows.

I won't bother trying to parse the competing accusations of dishonesty from both sides over the 'PZ Expulsion Affair', but based on their prior conduct, I find their denials and shifting explanations more than a bit hard to swallow.