The Etiology Of An Expelled Side-Show

[elfs]

A reader (who didn't give me permission to give out his name) pointed me to an interesting article about the video Beware the Believers, a funny little cartoon featuring caricatured views of the pro-evolution scientists at the forefront of the intelligent design debate rapping that Richard Dawkins is "The dick to the dawk to the PHD / He's smarter than you, he's got a science degree."

It was hard to say if the video was pro- or anti-science, but the amount of effort put into it showed it had some money behind it. As it turned out, the Expelled people paid for it. But the creator may have been playing fast and loose with both sides. Its ambiguity has made it a much bigger hit with the pro-science than anti-science side. And the anti-scientists can't say "Fooled you!"

A follow-up short (like 15 seconds) depicts Ben Stein wearing a t-shirt reading "Poe's Law." Poe's Law says that "It is impossible to distinguish between true fundamentalism and its parodies, because both often sound equally ridiculous to non-fundamentalists."

Comments

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Oh ghod, that video has had me laughing for weeks. While it was paid for by the production company for Expelled, it was made by an independent animator they had hired without vetting. Needless to say, he was much smarter then they were, and has created the nerd-core hit of the season. All he had to do was throw a few barbs at Dawkins for his ability to come off as an arrogant bastard, and those idiots thought it supported their position. I think it says much about that crew that the only thing they have produced of any artistic merit only has that merit because they could not see it.

[thoughtspiral.livejournal.com]

I knew it was anti-science from the start. The anti-science nutters have absolutely zero sense of humor and cannot tolerate even the mildest criticism. Obviously they thought this would be a devastating character attack on those sciency-schmiency evilushinnists.

Also the "he's SMARTER THAN YOU, he's got a SCIENCE DEGREE!" bit was obviously intended to resonate with the proud know-nothings and anti-intellectuals in the cdesign proponentsists' support base.

They forgot the "reality-based community" is much more willing to laugh at itself; after all, if you can't take criticism, you won't make it far in peer-reviewed science.